Adolf Volume 3: The Half-Aryan

Adolf, The Half-Aryan

by Osamu Tezuka

I usually have quite the battle with the boys over limiting the comics/manga stuff they can read -- otherwise it might be all they read. I'm sure we'll have similar battles when they're older and try to drink light beer, and I take very seriously the father's responsibility to guide them and steer them towards the good stuff. No Budweiser for my boys, and no crappy comics either...

The issue with the manga art is of course the number of bare bottoms and pairs of frilly panties that appear every couple of pages, plus the fact that they need to check out 15 -20 books at a time just to read half the series! Are they churning this stuff out, or what? Anyway...

I checked this one out, and will go back for the rest of the story. There is some violence and the usual love story melodrama, but that's to be expected. The key is the WWII/Jewish persecution storyline, and how the young protagonists experience being thrust into the dangerous confusing adult world.

Explorations of worldview, questioning authority, cultural/religious differences, as well as how to tell a story in a different medium (or, when is a comic book not just a comic book?)...

connections: Maus by Art Spiegelman, Anne Frank, The Hiding Place, Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad...