process of elimination

"HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED HOW ASTRONAUTS GO TO THE BATHROOM?" Visitors to the men's room at the US Space And Rocket Center in Huntsville Alabama were greeted with this question - at least they were the last time I was there, which was a good 25 years ago. A recorded voice led us gently but firmly through the various procedures necessary for elimination of bodily wastes in a zero gravity environment, accompanied with slides and actual examples of the various hoses, nozzles, collection bags, and accoutrements that our brave spacemen and spacewomen used to answer the call of nature outside Earth's atmosphere.

It was right around this time that the Japanese explored this selfsame scenario through the medium of -what else? Comic books. So, in honor of the last flight of America's Space Shuttle, we present a manga tutorial on How Astronauts Go To The Bathroom. Enjoy! WARNING: this deals with how astronauts go to the bathroom.



Mitsu-chan, Don, and Professor Space blast off on board the Space Shuttle for an exciting and educational visit to outer space. Many fascinating facts are revealed concerning rocketry, ballistics, orbital mechanics, radiation, and the behavior of living organisms in low-gravity environments. And in the midst of all this learning, Don's gotta take a space leak.



Everything seems to be fairly straightforward, but there are inherent difficulties involved in the ejection of liquid materials that Don has not taken into calculation.



You thought the restrooms at the ballgame were nasty? Space travel multiplies the ick factor by several thousand million as thoughtless or delinquent patrons can now contaminate, well, pretty much everything via FLYING PEE BALLS.



Thankfully astro-science was thinking ahead and provided our space environment with a handy pee-vacuum designed to clean up after Doofus here.



Proper astro-urination procedure is effected by inserting pee-nozzle apparatus (standard issue) into collection device, activating negative-pressure air control, and then allowing liquid to flow naturally into reservoir compartment. Pee-shy personnel should consult with astro-urologist.



Solid waste collection involves a giant vacuum that collects the, uh, solid waste, and is, uh, charmingly anthropomorphized. Thanks Japan.



Luckily for girls, who can't insert things into other things, there's a sit-down vacuum-enabled space toilet. And luckily for everybody, it has its own room where such things can be done in privacy. Thank goodness.



When you're finished - remember to take an astro-shower! Let's keep it clean in outer space.

Illustrations taken from the educational comic LIVING IN SPACE: SECRETS OF THE SPACE SHUTTLE.

Tomo Book No. 47

Depending on who you ask, the “golden age” of American comics starts somewhere in the late 1930s and ends anywhere from the Korean War to the Kennedy inauguration. Straitjacketed by this America-centric comic book collectors mindset, it’s tough to categorize Japanese comics from the same period. Is there a Golden Age of manga? Is there a Bob Overstreet-san categorizing faded Shonen Magazines and dusty stacks of tankubon, grading each according to condition and scarcity and injury-to-the-eye-motif
covers? God I hope not.



It’s this lack of raw data – raw data in a language I can read, anyways – that makes uncovering this kind of mid-Showa period manga (hah, here I am, categorizing away) so thrilling. What is this? Where did it come from, who was tracing Tezuka characters when they drew it, and what was it doing in an estate sale in Marietta GA in the mid 1980s? That’s where I found it, casually placed on an antique dresser next to a O.E.S. New Testament.

Number 47 in the “Tomo Book” series, this particular volume is titled “THE VANISHING WORLD” (forgive my rough translation) and features 4 stories of rockets, robots, Martian flying saucers, atom bomb tests, jet pilots romancing jungle girls, and general science fictional adventure; the Japanese equivalent of the Tom Swift sci-fi juveniles that American ten year olds were devouring at the time.



The artwork is generally pretty crude. You can get away with faking the cartoony Tezuka style once or twice but eventually the lack of structure or perspective, the weak crosshatching, the general ineptitude of the artwork (inside front cover signed “Yasuhiro Kozako”) shows through. And this is 1955: Tezuka was right in the middle of one of his most productive periods, Ishinomori was just getting into his Shonen Magazine groove, Tatsumi was moving beyond current styles and percolating the ideas that would, in a couple of years, emerge as "gekiga". Our Tomo Book No. 47 is an anachronism, even for 1955. Still, the breakneck pacing manages to brute-force the stories right through the weaknesses of the illustration, and the blue ink gives the entire production a reassuring elementary-school handout atmosphere.





Sometimes you meet robots on Mars;



And then sometimes the robots turn out to be beautiful girls. Life's like that.

Budding manga geniuses aside, most comic books everywhere are pretty much like “The Vanishing World” here – crude lowest-common-denominator distractions for children barely able to read. Impulse purchases for those who are barely old enough to have enough pocket money to learn what an impulse purchase is. Fifty years on, its value as a cultural artifact may outweigh its utility as an adventure story for children. But that’s OK. Rest easy, Tomo Book No. 47.

JUST DOING THIS TO MESS WITH OUR HEADS

Wouldn't it be great if Kodansha's "Osamu Tezuka Manga Complete Works" editions were in English? Well, they kinda are.





Yes! A charmingly typewritten synopsis of his classic shojo manga PRINCESS KNIGHT! True, the rest of the comic is in Japanese, but it's a start. Is there more?



AMBASSADOR MAGMA aka SPACE GIANTS! All right! So, how different is this from the Space Giants show we enjoyed as children?



Yeah, that's pretty different. For one thing, token Caucasian reporter "Liz" isn't even mentioned! Hey, what about KIMBA THE WHITE LION, you know, JUNGLE EMPEROR?



No, that's not Santa Claus there, it's Hige Oyaji and a grown-up Kimba - now named Leo - bravely facing the elements atop Mount Moon! A grown up Kimba?? What the heck?



Yes, the original manga goes places NBC would not dare to enter. At least not in cartoon form. But enough of these popular Tezuka works - did Kodansha release Complete Works editions of his more, shall we say, obscure manga?





Yes! Yes they did. JET KING, the story of an alien boy who can change his shape at will to better defeat evil, has a spoiler right in the English synopsis, so don't read it! Also in this volume, HIKARI is the story of a boy with crazy hair and two handguns who fights gangsters. Based on a true story.

But what about ASTRO BOY? I can hear you now, where's TETSUWAN ATOMU? Okay, here's your MIGHTY ATOM already.





This volume contains the story "The Three Magicians", which was one of the first Astro Boy stories I was ever exposed to, as it is also the subject of this LP:



Those three magicians get around.

Somebody should take the hint and get to work giving this classic Tezuka manga some actual North American releases; PRINCESS KNIGHT would sell like cotton candy at the fair and who would pass up a chance to own the original stories behind SPACE GIANTS and KIMBA THE WHITE LION? Not me! In the meantime, I suppose we'll have to be content with 30 year old typewritten summaries.