Tatsumi died of cancer at the beginning of March in Tokyo, at the age of 79. Short strips were spread across 30 or so pages, in black and white with heavy lines showing sad, hunched characters in Japanese cafes and bars, hostess clubs and dingy flats. It was The Push Man and Other Stories, Drawn & Quarterly’s first collection of Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s work in translation. It didn’t have much in common with the pocket-sized cartoonish mangas teeming with violence and superheroes nor did it sit easily with the classic American and European graphic novels also sharing the shelf. Y ears ago, as a naive 21-year-old stacking shelves in a branch of a now-defunct chain of bookshops, I was drawn to the heavy, black cloth binding of a book containing what appeared to be a serious collection of manga, with stately Japanese characters marching down the spine.
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