It’s official—the blogosphere is having a Tezuka moment, with manga pundits posting rapturous reviews of Ode to Kirihito, Buddha, and Phoenix at a fearsome rate. With so much favorable attention being directed at the late great manga-ka, now seems like an ideal time to ask if Viz will reissue the master’s other offbeat doc-udrama, Black Jack. This Tezuka gem is equal parts House, Twilight Zone, and Scrubs, liberally mixing macabre humor with suspenseful medical drama as it chronicles the adventures of an amoral but supremely talented Frankendoctor. The indispensible webguide Tezuka in English summarizes a few of the doctor’s more impressive achievements:

full-body skin grafts, arm transplants, brain transplants, fingerprint transplants, grafting two people together to share one heart, extracting full-body parasites, operating at lightning speed, operating blind, operating in space, operating on a dozen patients at once, operating on dogs, cats, deer, bears, monkeys, birds, whales, aliens, ghosts, mummies, plants and computers, and removing a parasitic worm from his own intestines while under assault by a pack of wild dingos.

No doubt the faculty at New York Presbyterian would like to have a conversation with him.

Like the best of Tezuka’s work, the art is crisp, the pacing brisk, and the stories nuanced (even if the doctor’s skills strain credulity); though Black Jack offers surgical solutions to his patients’ problems, few plotlines reach a happy conclusion. Given the near-universal praise for Phoenix and Buddha, the manga community would surely greet a complete English-language translation of Black Jack with enthusiasm. (When Viz first published Black Jack for the American market, it only released selected chapters from the series, anthologizing them in two volumes which are now out of print.) And who knows? With an outside-the-box marketing campaign, maybe the folks at Viz can reach out to the millions of CSI, House, and ER fans who love their melodrama served up with a healthy dose of medical mystery and the occasional close-up of pulsating organs.

So please, Viz, if anyone in your marketing department is reading this, think about resuscitating the good doctor. He deserves another shot at manga stardom.

Read a review of Phoenix: Civil War (Volumes 7 & 8)