I've read a few comic strips in which characters and storylines are introduced that don't really work; It can be pretty entertaining watching how different cartoonists deal or don't deal with the continuity problems in a serialized format; Roy Crane created a love interest that evidentally just wasn't good enough for Buzz Sawyer so he had her chased off of the edge of penthouse apartment by a Tiger in the middle of a storyline in which she was playing a key role.
Osama Tezuka handles the exit of the locust-like alien Scara from his comic Astro Boy in a subtler manner, but I was rooting for a quick death to her. I picked up Volumes 6, 7 and 8 of Astro Boy after Chris at The Beguiling piqued my interest when I asked him for Astro Boy recommendations. He explained that they were made up of a sequence of stories created just after the original cartoon had concluded with Astro Boyplunging to his death in the Sun. In Tezuka's first-person introduction to the story he explains that fans were disappointed by the death, so he contrived a way to bring him back for the Sankei Newspaper; The death of Astro Boy was rewritten- instead of dying he was blown back in time from 2017 to 1969, along with a shallow and annoying alien named Scara.
Scara begins the story by describing life on her 'highly advanced' home world and her recent wedding. While on her honeymoon, she grows bored of her new husband and, as soon as they're back home, laments her decision to marry a Scientist (I’m am very curious to find out what Tezuka’s romantic life was like at this period of his life, although I think that I might have a pretty good idea.) A rich business locust back on the home planet leaps (sorry) at the opportunity and begins wooing Scara with talk of a life of shopping and fun, fun, fun. The fickle Scara decides to marry the business man; a very unfortunate change of mind for her current husband, who according to the customs of their species, must fight his rival to the death.
I won’t give away the ending to the story (volumes 1-9 of Astro Boy were on sale for $7 when I was in The Beguiling last.) but, long and short, Scara ends up in the 20th century posing as Astro Boy’s sister. It was at this point when I started becoming suspicious that Tezuka might've things other than Astro Boy on his mind while creating the story. Scara, Astro Boy, and their new fried Shin-Shan the Beggar Boy, go apartment hunting, debate how they will get money (Scara objects to work of any kind, of course), and, after Astro grabs a diamond from deep within a Volcano to get by are finally able to go shopping. It's all quite mundane and is padded out with short doses of not quite successful drama and comedy. (A running joke is that Scara is always getting down on all fours, butt stuck in the air like a locust at inopportune moments.)
I got the distinct feeling that Tezuka was just sort of making it up as he went along, not necessarily a bad thing, but it requires a lot of concentration I would guess. Also, instead of telling the story purely with comic panels and dialogue, he begins to insert long stretches of dialogue and exposition set next to panels illustrating the scene in question; for a man able to complete ten pages a day, it seems like a shortcut indicating that the strip was not getting all of his powers of attention.
At one point in the story he has Scara declare to Astro that Robots are all meant to be slaves, just like on her home planet. That’s a mistake I remember thinking as I read it. Make the 100,000 horsepower robot’s best friend an unredeemable robot-hater! Good idea! Tezuka must have realized that he had created a storyline that was revolving around an extremely selfish, thoughtless, fickle, lazy and stupid character and was eager to get it over with. Not long after the Robot denigration Scara leaves for the country without Astro(who is pissed, obviously), shrinks herself to the size of a real insect and disappears into the grass.(see intro panel)
Once Scara is pushed from the plot the story gets back on track; Astro meets up with one of the first Robots created by man, Baro, which is a good thing; Robots always seem to be the most human characters in Astro Boy. Later on, the promise that Chris sold me on arrives; Astro winds up in the middle of conflict in Vietnam, where he creams American bombers and tank battalions determined to destroy a village of innocent civilians. I’d be curious to know what news of American atrocities in Vietnam sparked this change of direction for the strip, which again seems determined by the interests of a creator who was making it up as he went along.
Looking over the dates for the original printing of these strips in the Sankei Newspaper makes me think that the drop in quality of the first half of the story could’ve been due to the fact that Tezuka was deeply involved in his Phoenix stories that I was raving about over the weekend. Going by the dates provided, in 1967, the year that that the stories in Astro Boy Volume Six appeared in the Senkai newspaper (260 pages) he also completed the Phoenix Story “Dawn” (340 pages) and at least some of “Future” (287 pages.)
Keeping that in mind, I think that I can cut him some slack.
Addendum: Jumping ahead to Volume 7 it appears that Scara makes a comeback.
