TOKYO -- Mark Bode remembers the densely lined black-and-white Japanese manga comics that his father Vaughn Bode toted home from New York City when he was a boy in the 1960s. Vaughn, who died in 1975 at age 33, was a legend of the American underground comics scene, inventing designs and characters that would resurface in landmark titles ranging from "Heavy Metal" and "Star Wars" to the animated "The Lord of the Rings " and "The Simpsons."