In this month's column I am going to claim an audacious link with that great "god of manga," Osamu Tezuka.
Though he is most famous for the nuclear-powered, peace-loving robot child he named Tetsuwan Atomu (known to English-speaking fans as Astro Boy) — a character he claimed he was inspired to create after an attack by a drunken GI — Tezuka's millions of fans have also enjoyed his stories of the genius Black Jack, a maverick illegal doctor, and Kimba the White Lion among many, many others.
It's widely believed that as a young man Tezuka qualified as a medical doctor, though up to the time he died at the age of 60 in 1989, he had never practiced medicine. This is what his English-language Wikipedia entry says, and it makes good sense. After all, he clearly knew a lot about surgery, as "Black Jack" is drawn with great anatomical accuracy.