Setting The Stage

Osamu Tezuka’s The Mysterious Underground Men grabbed me much like the volumes of Tintin did. Though not quite as precise as Herge’s handiwork, Tezuka’s book and the drawings inside of it elicited from me a comparable sense of wonder, its plot’s twists and turns arrayed in an elastic sort of reality paralleling the hyperactivity of collected Tintin while upping the fantasy factor. In Tintin and in The Mysterious Underground Men, the attention to setting is what elevates the standard adventure “jump one hurdle then another, clear one obstacle then another” style narratives. Tezuka’s depictions of the Earth’s interior, particularly the emergence of the termite people and the foray into their Queen’s palace, are imbued with danger necessary for the occasion, but also with some brand of wanderlust. Tintin hits this same nerve, perhaps even more frequently than The Mysterious Underground Men does. This attention to setting makes these comics more fully immersive experiences than those that focus nearly all of their attention on action. The place in which these actions occur is what lends the actions their oomph, something Herge and Tezuka both seem to be acutely aware of.