Reddit mentions of The Push Man and Other Stories

I second the Ayako recommendation. I'm not sure what your friend's tastes are as far as genre but his Princess Knight series is one of my favorites and is just now being translated.

If she likes Osamu Tezuka, she might also like Yoshihiro Tatsumi's work - he is another artist that helped shape modern manga. His stuff often deals with the darker side of human nature. I highly recommend his short stories. Hope that helps :)

> My research is focusing on public opinion of urban life, and I just thought it would be cool if I could incorporate pop culture into a portion of it.

I don't know any film that covers this (that others didn't already mention), but something you might wanna look into is some of Will Eisner's work. Specifically A Contract With God gives an amazing and gritty look into urban life in the 1950s (IIRC). There's a couple other books that are very similar to that and some of the alternative work that was done in comics are really amazing. Another GN I loved was Pushman, which is a super gritty look at urban life in Japan in the mid 20th Century, back before anyone published material on sexuality, abortion, and other topics that were considered taboo even by artists themselves let alone publishers.

Honestly I think graphic novels and film are extremely related in how we process them and relate to the characters and you can see that with the commercial success of comic book movies (the suggestions above are nothing like super hero comics though, don't worry).

Yoshihiro Tatsumi perhaps? The Push Man and Other Stories in particular features a lot of stories about working class men and sexual relationships.