Osamu Tezuka's vaunted storytelling genius, consummate skill at visual expression, and warm humanity blossom fully in his eight-volume epic of Siddhartha's life and times. Tezuka evidences his profound grasp of the subject by contextualizing the Buddha's ideas; the emphasis is on movement, action, emotion, and conflict as the prince Siddhartha runs away from home, travels across India, and questions Hindu practices such as ascetic self-mutilation and caste oppression. Rather than recommend resignation and impassivity, Tezuka's Buddha predicates enlightenment upon recognizing the...

The Eisner and Harvey Winner

The third volume of this epic graphic novel send Siddhartha further into a world mired in pain and suffering. The journey to peace and enlightenment looms far but bright.

Prince Siddhartha quickly learns that the monk's path is covered in thorns and self-abuses much more profound than shaving your head. His new companions Dhepa and Assaji accompany him to plague-ridden town, ruled by the ravashing Visakha. On a different path filled with as many vararies is Devadatta, an orphan who learns only that bad almost always gets worse.

To strange cities, and...

The Eisner and Harvey Winner

In this fourth volume of the award-winning graphic novel biography, Buddha slowly discovers that his destiny lies in a path not readily available to him. With fellow ascetics Dhepa who has complete faith in the purifying quality of painful physical ordeals, and Assaji, who can predict everyone's death to the hour, Buddha travels through the kingdom of Magadha into the Forest of Uruvela, where The Middle Path and Enlightenment wait beyond a series of death-defying trials.

Awake under the Pippala tree...