As in all the best action-adventure stories, the intention is that the excitement of the launch sequence builds on the thrill of the transformation scene, hopefully leading up to a headline-grabbing, rave-review-generating, merchandise-shifting climax. Here in the UK there’s an ace publicist working with the Ilex team, and in the USA the Abrams promotional sentai is racing into action. Thankfully The Art of Osamu Tezuka hasn’t shown up there yet…) The distributors’ sales forces have display copies. (One of my displacement activites while waiting for the book to arrive has been haunting the Book Exchange in Notting Hill Gate, where some London reviewers unload the advance copies they don’t want to keep. The bulk shipment won’t arrive for several weeks, and the official publication date is still some way ahead, but advance review copies have started to go out to publications with long lead times. Of course, I’m not the first to see the book. The dream metamorphoses into weighty, full-colour 3D reality. The first physical encounter smashes that distance. Until I actually hold it in my hands, a new book of mine is like a friend I’ve never met – I know it intimately, but at a distance. I knew how big it was going to be, but a set of dimensions couldn’t prepare me for something the size of a tea-tray sliding out of the package. Then there was that fabulous new-book smell, fresh cut paper and ink and dreams given form, that never fails to thrill. The DVD, a previously untranslated Japanese documentary on Tezuka, gives the book an extra dimension. I wasn’t expecting the PVC slipcover that protects the die-cut front and the DVD insert on the back, but also adds to the whole 50s-futuristic sci-fi feel of the book. I didn’t expect the gorgeous, subtly retro end-papers. They’ve arranged my words and the images I chose into a thing of beauty, and even given me a few surprises. I knew what the cover looked like, but I didn’t expect Astro Boy’s head and shoulders to be a thick die-cut applied to the cover, giving it a chunky, three-dimensional feel. Luckily, the design and editorial team for my book were among the few. He’s perceived in so many different ways from so many different angles in Japan, and yet here in the English-speaking world few people look beyond his TV animation. A book about Osamu Tezuka, who understood metamorphosis as a scientific and a philosophical process and used it in so many of his works, was always going to be an interesting metamorphic subject. The transformation of a book from manuscript to object is a metamorphosis that never fails to astonish me. But now it’s here: Elvis is alive, and is she ever beautiful! There were moments when I wondered if I’d dreamed the whole thing and was about to wake up and find my other half in the shower and the book just another figment of my dream-created past. though I doubt any Buddhist would agree that a person who’s been sitting by the letterbox every morning for ten days can claim freedom from worldly attachments. The fact that I haven’t killed a single postman this week, not to mention still having any fingernails left, virtually qualifies me for beatification. Add to this a series of allegations that, after each strike, backlogs are so large that some mail is simply binned, and you’ll probably understand my anxiety. A combination of increasingly sloppy service and a series of short strikes over pay and conditions have wreaked havoc on London’s mail deliveries all summer long. Alas, only in black and white movies does the Royal Mail still guarantee next-day delivery for first class mail. It left Ilex’s offices in Lewes by first class mail on 13 August. Yesterday, after ten days of nail-biting tension and anxiety, I received an advance copy of my new book. Astro Boy © Tezuka Pro, design © Abrams, Ilex
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