Ishinomori Week: The Skull Man

Once again, at long last, igadevil.com takes a break from talking about Kamen Rider to cover some of the other works of one of Rider's founding fathers, prolific manga artist Ishinomori Shôtarô. And of course, somehow find a way to relate them back to the Riders, but hey- this isn't called Igadevil's Tokusatsu Junkyard Page, now is it?

Will the world gain any new insight on a bunch of 30~40-year-old comic book characters? Will these articles create a shock wave that reverberates across the academic world, forcing scholars to rethink their theories on the human condition and the meaning of life itself? Will any of what I just wrote make any sense? And will we actually reach a full week this time? Read on!

I think everybody knows the first entry in Ishinomori Week 2012, at least by name, if not reputation:

Yes, Sukaruman or The Skull Man, who debuted in January 1970 with a one-shot comic in Weekly Shônen Magazine, the one with the wonderfully strange title of Bizarre Romanesque Drama-Comic: The Skull Man. The original masked avenger. Everybody knows the story: he's the guy that ultimately inspired Kamen Rider.

Well, sort of. When sketching ideas for the hero who would eventually become the first Kamen Rider, Ishinomori played around with various ideas and designs, including a riff on his then-recent hit character. You can see the results of that here (I really need to finish that series some day.) While there were a lot of unused pre-Rider designs, the Skull Man-inspired one is perhaps the most famous, the one most people tend to think of as THE unused pre-Rider design.

However, even Skull Man owes some inspiration to a character who predates him by a couple years and is part of the series that I think had the greatest influence on Kamen Rider overall: Ishinomori's magnum opus, Cyborg 009. One of the primary antagonists in nearly every incarnation of 009 is the villain simply known as Skull, who shares design traits with that pre-Rider Skull-guy (the full face mask; the rib cage motif, even the long boots & gloves) and, by association, the eventual design of Kamen Rider Skull many years later.

Kamen Rider also draws way more on 009's basic set-up of "guy kidnapped by evil organization and turned into a cyborg who escapes to fight them", although that's putting it very simply, as both stories go off in wildly different directions from there. Ultimately, I think it's fair to say that Kamen Rider's DNA is closer to that of Joe and the gang than it is to today's star.

So where's that leave Skull Man? Well, for that we have to look at the original Ishinomori comic, since I think it did influence Kamen Rider a lot, although in more abstract ways. It's so much deeper and more complex than "Kamen Rider is a Skull Man remake, except with a bug-man in place of a skull-man". Rather than a heroic struggle of good vs. evil, The Skull Man is primarily a macabre story of revenge. It's protagonist is also its antagonist, a man driven to extremes and willing to use any means to achieve his ends. While he's ostensibly up against some very bad people who brought it on themselves, he's no saint either. It reminded me a bit of The Phantom of the Opera, though Skull Man wears a mask not to hide a deformity or scars, but to conceal his true identity (which itself is really just another mask, when all's said and done.)

Yes, Skull Man isn't exactly a hero. He's often credited with being one of Japaneses comics' first antiheroes, but even that's a being pretty generous. He's first and foremost a terrorist, though with a greater goal than merely spreading chaos. But it takes a while before that becomes apparent: His first appearance in the comic involves attacking an EIA esearch facility, where he guns down security guards, beats up scientists (who are left to die when the place is blown up) and laughs like a maniac! This guy could give comics-Hayate a lesson or two!

And his accomplice, the shape-shifting Garo (no not that one!) is just as deadly, causing accidents and gruesome murders with his various forms: a Man-Bat, a Man-Wolf and a Man-Alligator. If those aren't sounding familiar, then I'll fill you in: the Man-Bat bears a striking resemblance to the comic version of Rider's Kômori-Otoko. The Man-Wolf also shows up in that comic, and the TV show had versions of both monsters. The alligator guy turned up again as an unused design for the original Rider series, though sorta inspired episode 13's Tokageron, and Amazon finally featured an Alligator That Walks Like A Man a few years later. Also, Ishinomori's Kamen Rider Black comic has an alligator/crocodile monster in it (there's a bat one too, but he looks different than the earlier characters.)

An aside on Skull Man himself; I love the design. It reminds me more of Riderman in particular than Kamen Rider in general, but that's really just the half-mask. He's got a slightly "dark Cyborg 009" thing going on with the dress uniform-style outfit. As for powers, Skull Man does manage some pretty epic feats over the course of the story, so he's meant to be somewhat superhuman. But his greatest asset is his mind, which is as brilliant as it is twisted. He carries around a futuristic-looking pistol that's pretty rad, and the eyes of his mask are also able to generate hypnotic/stunning waves.

At this point I should mention that to talk about Skull Man, I have to talk about The Skull Man, and by that I mean go through an overview of the plot including the big twist at the end. If you haven't read the original comic, I'd recommend checking it out first; you'll thank me later. In fact, I'd make the same recommendation for everything covered in Ishinomori Week! From here on it's spoilers a'plenty!

Alright, so Skull Man and Garo have basically declared a two-man war on everything that isn't them, and the cops are working overtime to figure out how to stop the madness. A young man named Kagura Tatsuo appears at the Tachiki Detective Agency and offers his help (as well as hauling in another victim.) Chief Tachiki doesn't exactly trust him, especially given his name (that of a notorious crime family) but with the casualties mounting and no leads, he agrees to the assistance.

Not that it does them much good, as Skull Man is always a step ahead of everyone else, pulling off one heinous crime after another. Garo continues maul people in woods, and the pair destroy an airliner, resulting in yet another catastrophe (and a pretty cool full-page spread.) Skull Man yuks it up while reading the paper back in his mansion, where Garo, when not turning into a Man-something, is his faithful, if mute, accomplice. If you want another Skull Man-Rider connection, the comic version of Hongô had a somewhat similar set-up, kickin' back in a mansion with Tachibana as his butler/confidant. I know what you're probably thinking, I'll get back to it in a second.

Not surprisingly, Tachiki starts getting suspicious since Kagura's involvement has just led to smug remarks and cryptic asides, and soon he's thinking that Kagura IS Skull Man. And he's right, but only too late does he realize this: Kagura/Skull Man wanted to get close to him, as he suspects Tachiki knows more than he's telling. He's also right, as the detective is part of a larger conspiracy, going back 15 years, when Kagura's real parents (he's adopted) were murdered as part of the cover-up.

There's a higher power that's secretly pulling the strings of the world (well, Japan anyway) manipulating financiers, industrialists and politicians to his liking. He's responsible for Kagura's parents' death, and Skull Man's objective all along has been to find him and get revenge. He even arranges for the police to "find" his hideout, only as part of an elaborate scheme to get him and Tachiki alone so he can get a confession.

It's been said before that the comic versions of Hongô Takeshi and Tachibana Tôbei have a bit of a Batman thing going on, with a Bruce Wayne & Alfred-style relationship and Hongô seeming to be a rich orphan. I think the analogy holds true of The Skull Man as well, with a main character that is driven by his parents' death, except that his behavior is more characteristic of a villain. Again, you could call him an antihero, but I feel like his ultimate goal is still fairly self-serving to the point that it's hard to say he's just doing bad things for an otherwise good cause.

There's an anarchic side to his actions (since he's fighting a repressive, subversive force that controls the world from the shadows) but it's not so much because he's trying to start any revolutions or free the world or anything; all that's just dressing. He's not even about watching the world fall apart due to this actions. That's all fun and everything, but it's just another detail. What he really just wants is to put a bullet in the head of the man who killed his parents.

So right after putting a bullet in the head of Tachiki, who fessed up as to the man's named (thanks to Skull Man's hypnotic powers) Kagura/Skull Man and Garo make tracks to the home of Chisato Kogetsu, the man behind it all.

Chisato however is an old man, living in isolation with a woman named Maya (no, not that one. Not that one either. And no, not THAT one.) Maya is blind and mute, but can communicate telepathically, and convinces Skull Man not to kill Chisato just yet so he can provide and info-dump that explains everything (mostly.) I have to say I think it's pretty clever that the master manipulator turns out to be an old guy who's basically ready to call it a day and (as we'll soon see) has realized that maybe being a master manipulator wasn't all it's cracked up to be.

So on with the secrets: Maya is Skull Man's sister, and Chisato is his grandfather. His son (Skull Man's daddy) was also a genius-level mutant! Yep, a mutant, and they even use the term shinjinrui, or "New Humanity", which you might remember turned up again in Inazuman. Chisato's son had two kids, Tatsuo and Maya, also mutants, and along with his wife he worked on high-level science and horrific experiments that Chisato feared could lead to the end of the world as we know it. So, not feeling fine, he had his son and his wife killed, and tried to have Tatsuo eliminated as well, though he escaped thanks to Garo, one of those horrific experiments. Unable to bring himself to kill Maya, Chisato instead kept her as a kind of servant/aide.

These revelations naturally drive Skull Man a little nuts, but all this was part of a bigger plan by Chisato: the four are encased in glass and then set on fire! Realizing what his lineage had become, the old man decided the only way to make amends to the world for what he wrought was to kill himself and his grandchildren. Sucks to be Garo, I guess! The story ends with Skull Man apparently burning to death while Chisato holds Maya and states the famously-strange last line of "We were born in the wrong era!!"

Not exactly your standard superhero fare, is it? The Skull Man is a strange story to be sure, but it's also an out-and-out classic. Like its title character, it's bleak, unforgiving and ruthless. There really are no sympathetic characters aside from perhaps Maya, and she only turns up at the end. Everyone else is a bastard or a casualty waiting to happen.

It's a tragedy, especially with that kicker of an ending. Even if Skull Man isn't a very nice person, we do sort of get attached to him over the course of the story, and he really gets screwed over by the last page. Not surprisingly, I think even back then Ishinomori always figured he'd get around to doing a sequel, since it's just begging for one. After all, if we don't see the body...

Sadly, he was never able to draw a sequel himself, though he was able provide the basis for the guy who eventually did. In the late 90's, Ishinomori worked with fellow comic artist Shimamoto Kazuhiko (pen name of Tezuka Hidehiko... hey, somebody out there must care) to create The Skull Man sequel. Shimamoto had already done the excellent Kamen Rider ZO comic adaptation and the strange but memorable "Imitation 7" one-shot story for Kamen Rider Black. A big fan of Ishinomori's, he also has done a pretty funny story that's usually included with the trade of ZO and Imitation 7, about his own fanboyisms. And of course, plenty more works of his own to explore (and I've only just begun with him.) While Ishinomori passed away in 1998, Shimamoto's comic, based on Ishinomori's notes and outlines, came out later that year, and lasted an epic 50 chapters.

Shimamoto's Skull Man is a whole 'nother story in itself, but I think it's probably where a lot of the "Skull Man, the inspiration for Kamen Rider" reputation really comes from, since the story (which is both a sequel and revamp of sorts) gives us a more heroic Skull Man, though one who is still motivated by vengeance. Also, he goes up against a secret organization that wants to rule the world with reconstructed humans (kaizô-ningen) and there's a spider monster, a bat monster, a Cobra-Man, a Bee-Woman...chameleon and scorpion guys... I think you get the picture.

If anything, Kamen Rider inspired this more long-running version of The Skull Man. I'm oversimplifying and it's different enough to be more than a mere copy, but it is pretty amusing to read this as a Rider fan; it's practically a who's-who of Ishinomori original Rider comic homages.

And of course, eventually the guy to the right shows up:

As well as some butt-kicking Rider-Women! The last chapter is practically Ishinomori Heroes: Year One, and that's not an overstatement. Part of this came about from Shimamoto needing to take the story in a new direction with Ishinomori's passing, so what better way than to do the ultimate tribute to Ishinomori's legacy? All I know is, it resulted in one of the coolest double-page spreads of all time (okay there's a lot of them, but I'm talking about the one right near the end.)

Despite all this, it's still ultimately the story of Skull Man, continuing to learn more about the mystery behind his parents (let's say it's not as cut-and-dry as you may think) and his battles against the evil Rasputin and his Shocker-analogues. It's a pretty great comic and thankfully has been fully translated and released in the US, though you may have to dig a bit to find all 7 volumes.

Also licensed in the US is The Skull Man anime, which came out in 2007, from the aptly-named Studio BONES.

At the time of this writing, I haven't seen it myself, though from what I hear it's not exactly a straight adaptation of either comic. In fact, it had its own comic tie-in drawn by MEIMU, who did the Ryuki TV Special comic adaptation as well as Kikaider Code 02. I've heard mixed things, but I would like to check it out some day. Apparently it even ties together Skull Man with the Cyborg 009 Skull, so that right there has me interested.

What I have seen though, is the live-action "pilot episode" that preceded the anime, Skull Man: Prologue of Darkness. Yep, it's Skull Man's first true foray into the world of Tokusatsu! It features Hibiki himself, Hosokawa Shigeki, although sadly he doesn't play Skull Man. No, the skeletal one doesn't even turn up until near the end, but when he does, it's pretty cool. This Skull Man uses knives and runs closer to the "dark hero" of Shimamoto's comic, but he's as brutal and unforgiving as Ishinomori's.

The plot is simple, but there is a nice twist that, while easy to guess, was still fun to see unfold. It's got an unusual look to it too, being shot mostly on (I assume) green screen, with limited sets and some pretty heavy use of CGI. I'd recommend checking it out, and I particularly like the comic book-ish opening credit sequence (though it's begging to be scored by Danny Elfman.) Skull Man's redesign for the pilot and subsequent anime series is pretty good; once again, it reminds me a little of the Phantom (of the Paradise, this time) crossed with the designs from THE FIRST.

Ultimately, Skull Man occupies a strange place in the Ishinomori pantheon. He's responsible for inspiring character designs, elements and themes used in numerous later stories, and at the same time he's a million miles away from the heroics of Kamen Rider, Kikaider or Inazuman. He's the original guy, and yet the majority of his appearances came well after those other characters had been around for years, and most of his incarnations draw inspiration from them. He's a grim, colorless vigilante, but his legacy is one of colorful, kind-hearted heroes. He's one of Ishinomori's oddest creations, but I'm sure glad he exists.

"Yes, The Skull Man! The Skeleton-Man from the Kingdom of Death!"