Watchmen on Pluto

Many of the “Best Of” lists for last year’s comics included a strange manga called Pluto. Manga is not regarded as high-end content in the west, so it’s inclusion was something of interest to many people, myself included.

Imagine my surprise to find out that it’s actually a retelling of Osamu Tezuka‘s Astro Boy series. Wait. A reworking of a historical classic is highly regarded by readers and fans? But this is comics!?!?!

Pluto follows the robot detective Gesicht in his attempts to solve the case of a string of robot and human deaths that have sprung up around him. This case becomes more puzzling when evidence suggests a robot is responsible for the murders, but robots are programmed not to kill, and this is the first robot murderer in eight years.

Soon we are taken on a journey of morality and sentience, we are asked to question everything and we start to wonder if the ways we look at the world are correct or if our vision is flawed. It’s a compelling read and once your into it you can see why it is so highly regarded, but there is still the matter of its origin.

In a time when the community and internet is flipping out over DC going back to Watchmen and “destroying” a classic by trying to update it, add to it or create new history for it there is another half of the comics community that is embracing Pluto.

Astro Boy may not mean much to westerners, but in Japan it is a national treasure and Osamu Tezuka is their Alan Moore. The man almost single handily made Manga in the nation. Astro Boy, Black Jack, Phoenix, Kimba the White Lion and Metropolis and many more. He had a body of work of over 700 series. Tezuka also worked in other media’s in addition to manga. In January 1965, Tezuka received a letter from Stanley Kubrick, who had watched Astro Boy and wanted to invite Tezuka to be the art director of his next movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Lion King was a rip-off of Kimba and Astro Boy ran for years as a cartoon.

He was a legend and for many any adaptations of his work were considered sacrilege, people did not want anyone tampering with his creations and messing with their fond memories of the stories. Sound familiar?

But then something happened and Naoki Urasawa was awarded the opportunity to work with Osamu Tezuka’s son, Makoto Tezuka, and create a new series inspired by Astro Boy as well as being an adaptation of  “The Greatest Robot on Earth” storyline from the series.

The Watchmen analogy still holds up, Naoki Urasawa was a very well regarded manga author, his 20th Century Boys is often referred to as “The Watchmen” of Japan. It is a mystery about a group of old friends who have fallen apart over the years getting back together to stop a doomsday device that is built by one of their old friends. It is Watchmen.

So you have one of the fathers of mangas works being expanded on by one of the best writers in the industry, with involvement from those involved in the originals construction. This scenario is so similar you cannot make it up if you tried!

Pluto would come out and be one of the best reviewed series of the year, it maintained a level of quality throughout it’s 65 chapters that many other series could never hope to reach. It managed to draw in new fans to the older source materials, increased volume sales for the books and also highlighted everything great about the original material while adding new concepts to it and updating it for modern readers.

Pluto represents everything DC is trying to do Before Watchmen and is a prime example of how to evolve a concept while not destroying the source material.

I think Before Watchmen is set up to succeed, regardless of personal opinions on it’s existence.  The teams involved in the books are some of the best in the industry and show that DC is serious about these books. No one wants to taint the source material by releasing half thought out stories with crummy art just to make a few quick bucks. You can create more of something and have it be as good as the original while being respectful of what came before. Pluto shows us that you can accomplish all of that and is a primes example of what DC is trying to accomplish and how well it can work out when thought out.

But only time will tell how well regarded Before Watchmen will be, but if it fails, just go read Pluto or 20th Century Boys. Both are some of the best comics on the market and I think possibly as good as Watchmen.

[Editors Note: You can read Pluto online Enjoy!]