BLACK JACK "Is There a Doctor?" Conclusion

We Have Already Seen...

...after the spoiled-rotten son of one of the world's richest men crashes his car and lies near death, the oligarch hires the greatest surgeon in the world, Black Jack, to save the kid's life.

However, the kid needs numerous replacements for damaged organs and limbs.

So the oligarch arranges for an innocent to be convicted and sentenced to death, so his limbs and organs can be harvested!

Note: to understand this Japanese comic, you must read right-to-left instead of the usual left-to-right (like the way you're reading this text)!

Besides being a talented writer/artist, Black Jack creator Osamu Tezuka was also a licensed physician, though he stopped practicing after he became a full-time manga creator.

Black Jack has been called Tezuka's alter ego, the kind of doctor he wished he could have been.
Since this premiere appearance in Weekly Shonen Champion (Nov. 19, 1973), he's appeared in hundreds of manga tales, and (in animated form) in several TV series and feature films, plus one direct-to-video mini-series.
Unlike most other manga characters, he's never appeared in live-action form.
However, the iconoclastic sawbones did appear (in animated form) opposite Hugh Laurie's live-action Dr House in magazine ads and a commercial on Japanese TV to promote the release of the 4th season of the House M.D. TV series on DVD in Japan...while plugging his own OVA mini-series!

(Both series were distributed in Japan by the same company, Geneon/Universal!)
To paraphrase the phrase used at the end of the James Bond films...
Black Jack Will Return!

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Black Jack

The Movie

CoronaVirus Comics CRACKED "O'Meagre Man"

Much like Blacula, The Omega Man is one of the few 1950s-1970s genre films...

...that didn't have a "straight" comics adaptation!

For those under-40s who don't "get" the dated punchline, the final reveal shows the leader to be the primary character of the politically-incorrect 1970s TV series All in the Family.

Illustrated by John Severin (with an assist on likenesses by his sister, master caricaturist Marie Severin), this story from Major Publications' Cracked #100 (1972) is the only adaptation and only spoof of the movie, which itself is the second movie adaptation of Richard Matheson's novelette I Am Legend!

(The first was 1964's Last Man on Earth, starring Vincent Price!)

All three versions specify that a virus kills most of the human population and mutates almost all the survivors into creatures (ghouls/vampires/zombies depending on which version you're watching)!

Note: two of the three cinema versions specify that the disease is man-made!

(The original novella indicates it's a natural mutation of rabies and carried by animals!)

In the Will Smith movie, it's called the "Krippen Virus" and was intended to destroy cancer cells.

In the Charlton Heston flick, it's nameless biological weapons used by Red China and the USSR in a border conflict which gets out of control!

In the Vincent Price movie, the plague's cause is unspecified.

Plus, the lead character in all three movies is an MD!

Last Man on Earth: Dr Robert Morgan (Vincent Price)

Omega Man: Dr Robert Neville (Charlton Heston)

I Am Legend: Dr Robert Neville (Will Smith)

BTW, Heston's character, Robert Neville, is a US Army MD, who creates a serum from his own blood, which Dutch (one of the unaffected young survivors who's also a medical student) can utilize to keep the others from "turning"!
Trivia: The Simpsons did their own satire of the 1970s movie as part of the annual Halloween "Treehouse of Horror" series...

OK, it's more "inspired" than an actual satire, but it is funny!

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I Am Legend/Omega Man

Which features both the recent Will Smith version and the 1970s Charlton Heston version!

(But not the 1960s Vincent Price adaptation.

That one, you can get here...)

Last Man on Earth