One More Tip of the Sword

Yatala the Giant from Osamu Tezuka's "BUDDHA: Volume

4--The Forest of Uruvela," pg.332, 2003

One more intentional nod from THE CLIFF-Books 1&2 to a comic book master whose work inspires me does not reach quite as far back as my childhood... it reaches back to me in 2006 walking from the University of Toronto's Architecture, Landscape and Design building down to Pages Bookstore on Queen St. West (now a condo showroom...!)  I had a chunk of change in my hand... the long-awaited student loan instalment.

Did I spend it on architecture books?  Save it for my rent?  Invest it in a defense fund?  No!  I bought the entire phone-book sized set of  Osamu Tezuka's epic BUDDHA... a comic book chronicle of the Buddha's lifetime and many other lives interwoven, some of which were purely from Tezuka's imagination.  (Tezuka is the godfather of Japanese comic books.)

Below, from my own new comic book is a penguinista who emerges from behind a tree to shock the intrepid trio of travellers--Mutt Blue of the Cliff; Partridge Bark of Cornea and Torvek Rotinski of Skullborough-- and attack Sheriff Raymont Raymont's posse.  It is a tip of the sword to Osamu Tezuka's "BUDDHA," which is an incredibly moving masterpiece.

Big Bob attacks Sheriff Raymont's posse

from THE CLIFF-Books 1&2 , 2012