Today, November 3rd, would have been the birthday of 2 of the greatest comics artists that ever lived. Many in the west would never have heard of them, but Osamu Tezuka, who's Black Jack series inspired this piece, and Goseki Kojima, the artist of Lone Wolf and Cub are Japans finest. Coinsidentally they were both born on exactly the same day.
This piece was inspired by a short story in Black Jack, volume 12 called Invader. In it, a young boy in hospital starts sensing that everyone around him has turned evil. He concludes that the doctors, nurses and his own mother have been taken by aliens and that the people around him are not who they want him to think they are. He falls asleep and in a dream is led away by a young man, who urges him to follow him to freedom.
As the story unfolds he finds out that he has a terminal illness (the right hand side panels) and that people around him had tried to hide that fact from him so as not to frighten him. This is why they were all acting strangelyl. The young boy goes in for an operation and as he slips into his drug-induced sleep, he sees the young man again (depicted in a later mailart piece) who tries to get him to jump across a chasm. It's then that he realises that his saviour is not who he seems, but is instead a messenger from the other side who wants him to come to his doom.
Realising that he is loved, he spurns the Invader and the story ends.
This story really stood out among the compilation and I read it again and again, with Elena noticing I had tears in my eyes at one point.
It is said that the best writers can convey a message that is universally understood by all people, and this story came as close as I've ever been to saying that someone understood what it felt like to be at deaths door.
If you've not read anything by Osamu Tezuka, Black Jack would be a great place to start
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