Tezuka and the Influence of Film

As several people have noted, The Mysterious Underground Men significantly advances the use of splash pages and perspectival space beyond the other comics we have thus far considered. Though obviously it is problematic territory to consider film a kind of sped-up comic book or comic books to be slowed-down film, I nevertheless see certain interesting parallels between Tezuka's use of pace and panel and the visual language of film.

Structurally, the book has a lot in common with a film, or perhaps even with a TV drama. A list of characters almost like opening credits precedes the story, which opens with a self-contained episode introducing Little John. I see this as mimicking the 'cold open' format of TV shows. Throughout the story, the chapter divisions struck me as being quite similar to old TV serials like Commando Cody or the like, in that the chapters often segued into one another visually and narratively. There would be no apparent division between the two of them except for a change of scene -again a likeness to film- with the inclusion of text woven seamlessly into the image. (Sometimes the text that introduces the next chapter comes in the form of a newspaper headline, which of course alludes to the old 'spinning newspaper'method of film exposition.) In that way, the chapters seemed to follow the stylized cliffhanger format of TV episode; the viewer is intended to pick up the story in the same place, narratively if not spatially, and continue the episode.

The structure is far from the only thing that The Mysterious Underground Men has in common with film. Visually, the two overlap in their treatment of motion, pace, and perspective. Several of the splash pages, such as 2-3 or 98-99 have a self-contained motion that spills across the pages in the comic equivalent of a pan: the panels are trying to keep up with the action and consequently push their way out across the pages. The panels in page 72 use height in the same way that an upward pan or tilt would use motion to emphasize the relative placement of two objects separated by intervening space. By contrast, some of Tezuka's artwork freezes the motion in order to emphasize location or change the narrative pace. Page 74 in particular achieves both of these effects by a comic 'long shot' wherein we watch from a fixed perspective the gradual progression of Little John and Mimio down a hall. Their cautious movement is emphasized by how little they appear to move and the hall is imbued with immensity at the same time. Other panels, such as the first panel of the door on page 9 and the 'one hour later' panel on page 117 seem to have parallels with the cinematic 'pillow shot,' an interlude which neither drives the scene nor establishes a new setting. Whereas some of the earlier comics we've examined use the same size and shape of panel to tell their stories, the variation in Tezuka's storytelling makes use of the same innate sense of visual and narrative connection that filmmakers draw on when choosing their shots.