THE PREEMMINENT "GEKIGA-KA'S "FIRST GRAPHIC NOVEL FROM FIFTY YEARS AGO Created in the late 1950s, "Black Blizzard "is Yoshihiro Tatsumi's remarkable first full-length graphic novel and one of the first published examples of "Gekiga." Tatsumi documented how his love for Mickey Spillane and hard-boiled crime novels led him to create this landmark genre of manga in his epic, critically acclaimed 2009 autobiography, "A Drifting Life." With "Black Blizzard," Tatsumi explores the dark underbelly of his working-class heroes that five decades later has made him one of the best-known Japanese cartoonists in North America. Susumu Yamaji, a twenty-four-year-old pianist, is arrested formurder and ends up handcuffed to a career criminal on the train that will take them to prison. An avalanche derails the train and the criminal takes the opportunity to escape, dragging a reluctant Susumu with him into the blizzard raging outside. They flee into the mountains to an abandoned ranger station, where they take shelter from the storm. As they sit around the fire they built, Susumu relates how love drove him to become a murderer. A cinematic adventure story, "Black Blizzard "uncovers an unlikely love story and an even unlikelier friendship.