Astro Boy, Vol. 4

Once again, Tezuka Osamu serves up a hefty moral lesson, this time on slavery and greed, and how the lust for material gain can twist human beings into something ugly. Each of the four stories is entertaining, and surprisingly deep considering the simple style of art. In the first story, Astro Boy seeks the mysteries of Robot Land, a fantasy robot theme park where robots act as characters from history and adventure. If it sounds familiar, Tezuka's story came out 10 years before Yul Brynner's similarly themed film "Westworld." However, the robots do not turn bad, but are rather being kept as slaves by the greedy Dr. Haido, who uses Robotland as a cover for his illegal gun smuggling operation. The next tale, "Ivan the Fool," sees Astro Boy and some others on a trip to the moon. When they discover a valley of diamonds, and an ancient Soviet robot Ivan, the greed of one man and the incapability of someone who follows orders threatens to destroy the whole group. The short story "A Day to Remember," a special day in future Japan where robot versions of dead family members come back to visit for a single day, in the tradition of the Japanese Obon festival. A time machine and a dead little boy who looks just like Astro Boy lead on to adventure. Finally, in "Ghost Manufacturing Machine" a Hitler-like villain uses a machine to create an eternal ghost of himself that can live forever and inflict his evil on the world. Astro Boy and local hero-robot Platinum must fight against this unstoppable foe. As with all the volumes in the Dark Horse Astro Boy series, the individual stories are not collected in any particular order, but do contain a brief introduction from Tezuka himself explaining his story, and what he thinks of it.