Yoshihiro Tatsumi was, when young, a fan of Mickey Spillane, the poor man's — the very poor man's — Raymond Chandler, and Spillane's fingerprints are all over "Black Blizzard," a page-turner in the best pulp style, published in 1956.
Like Spillane's fast-paced thrillers, "Black Blizzard" is a melodrama from start to finish. Star-crossed lovers share the pages with: a murder, a train crash, a pair of shackled criminals who flee into the mountains, a brutal father, a father who is not what he seems, a thug with a heart of gold, and, of course — how could it be otherwise? — a happy ending.
Tatsumi was just 21 when he wrote "Black Blizzard," but, with 17 book-length manuscripts as well as several volumes of short stories behind him, he was already a veteran and a professional. Perhaps that's what made it possible for him to whip off "Black Blizzard" in a mere 20 days. "I drew it all," he told Adrian Tomine, "in one continuous streak of productivity," and the burst of energy that compelled Tatsumi to complete "Black Blizzard" with such dispatch is the same energy that will propel readers through its pages, pages that, thanks to Tatsumi's skill, obscure the world outside. "Black Blizzard" does just what a pot-boiling, page-turner of a thriller is supposed to do: It enables us to escape.