We leave the Western Hemisphere heroisms of Batman behind (see our previous post HERE), and now head off to the Eastern Hemi for BIG X, a very different flavor of super powered hero, as featured in this vintage Asahi Sonorama flexi record storybook from Japan. Legendary creator, Osamu Tezuka's boy with the iron body may not have had the same level of impact upon the world of manga and anime as his other masterful creations like Astroboy or Kimba the White Lion, but BIG X is still one heck of an action packed, WW2, sci-fi adventure about good vs. evil, and is freakin' overloaded with mad nazi science and rampaging robots. The manga ran in Shonen Book from November 1963 to Feb. 1966, while the TBS / Tokyo Movie anime TV series (now considered "lost" except for a handful of episodes) aired from August 1964 until Sept. 1965. As mentioned, this is a Sonorama flexi disc version, as well as a storybook, and below are my photos of every beautifully illustrated page, including pictures of both sides of the record. CLICK HERE to listen to the awesome BIG X theme song, and then click HERE, HERE, and HERE for more classic Japanese cartoon flexi fun found in the AEET Archive! For even more BIG X awesomeness, I've added a few pictures of my vintage villain bot "V-3" to the end of the post. I picked this up at the All Monsters Attack Convention in Indiana in 2022. He's missing the head fin, unfortunately, but it was still too cool to pass up! Does anyone have a 3D printer?
3 comments:
Love the cover, that ninth scan, and the transparent red disc.
Assuming there's no crazy age-related fading, seems only a few of these pages were printed with a yellow pass, and even the blue here is mostly present in the lightest possible screens. Only that sweet cityscape behind the red sports car in scan number five fully utilizes dark blue.
It's always interesting to see the ways industries have economized this sort of thing. Some printers lighten colors to keep press run speeds up (more ink coverage results in damper, curlier paper that may need to run at slower speeds to keep from jamming. It's especially true of newsprint, so comics presses tended to limit color saturation based on total percentage of coverage, one of the reasons cheaper books might also look lighter or fade faster, or a dark page had to balanced by a lighter page on the reverse). Using less ink is also cheaper, of course. I'd say the changing colors of the V-3 robot in this story had as much to do with saving money as it did artistic design--and yet the artists were fully capable of pulling that look off with charm.
That V-3 toy is cool as heck, by the way. I think I like him without the head fin even better. It really brings out his Frankensteiny look. If you do find somebody with a 3D printer, I'm in the market for the folding wing glider that's missing from my Microman Steel Jeeg.
I didn't know anything about Big X until now, so once again AEET introduces us to new, interesting and in some cases obscure but neat things that deserve to be remembered and enjoyed.
Thanks as always to your posts.
There's a lot to love in this artwork, if by Tezuka or by one of his assistants. This early in the field you can really see the Disney / Marvel / DC mixture that made a lot of this.
The poses are all dynamic; there's a lot of good play with distance sizing, even as simple an illustration as our hero just punching towards the camera. Even in just frames, there's action and movement and nothing feels static.
This is the kind of god tier illustrating that helped kickstart an entire genre.
Our hero injecting himself with the serum is, as simple as it is, a really nice illustration. Really drawn to that one.
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