Comic Picks By The Glick

I know I’ve said this before, but when you’ve got a series whose storytelling is more episodic than serialized the wait between volumes doesn’t sting as much.  Granted, I’d love for this series to be more popular so we could get caught up to the Japanese release (and get the spinoffs as well).  This isn’t going to be the volume to do that as it tells three stories involving our favorite unemployable Buddhist college graduates who make their living fulfilling the tasks of the dead.  The first and third stories involve the crew taking on two very different styles of government corruption -- some good ol’ misappropriation of funds and a lucrative but dubiously-backed construction project.  Nothing special in terms of the basic stories, but they do involve Kurosagi’s evil doppleganger, web-based urban legends, a phone that can see the thoughts of the dead, old-and-new-school execution devices, and a form of distributed computing that’s ahead *rimshot* of other examples of its type.  They’re still well-constructed and host to Carl Horn’s always entertaining localization.  I guess my main issue here is that they’re just not on par with the title’s best efforts -- take it as a sign that run-of-the-mill “Kurosagi” is still plenty entertaining.

Then there’s the matter of the story in the middle which is a dramatic stylistic and narrative departure for the title.  Essentially it’s “Kurosagi” re-imagined as an animated American-style police procedural.  Artist Housui Yamazaki changes up his style to one that borrows affectionately and effectively from the likes of Bruce Timm while writer Eiji Otsuka shows us what the cast would be like if they hailed from the States instead of the Land of the Rising Sun. Pete Tanaka (Karatsu), Jose Donoso (Numata), and Linus Brautigan/Mr. Blanket (Yata/Kerellis) are all pizza deliverymen who are recruited through decidedly unconventional means by one Yoyogi Cohen (Sasaki) and her associate Diana (Makino) to help the FBI with identifying unidentifiable corpses.  Their introductory job:  Find out who has been stealing skin from random corpses in L.A.

In the footnotes to this volume, Horn states that he’s of the opinion that this story represents Otsuka’s thoughts on what an Americanized version of “Kurosagi” would be like.  Given that Dark Horse has been developing this series for film (veeeeeeeerrrrrrryyyyyyy slooooooowlyyyyyyy) I’m undecided as to whether they should take this as a compliment or not.  On one hand, the basic structure of the series is intact and the story itself wasn’t bad -- liked the reference to “MPD Psycho” that was worked in there.  The execution does feel a bit simple and forced in a way the regular series usually isn’t.  As a pilot for a series, I can see this winding up on the likes of TNT or Syfy rather than a major network.  It’s an interesting stylistic diversion, memorable mainly for how different it is than its actual quality.  Longtime readers will be glad this volume exists, and as for anyone else who thinks that any of this sounds remotely intriguing you’re encouraged to pick up the omnibus edition of the first three volumes which will be out in another week or two (plug over).

jason@glickscomicpicks.com

Could be said to follow on from this.  My thoughts on "Wytches" vol. 1, "Rumble" vol. 1, "Invincible" vol. 21, "The Wicked + The Divine" vol. 2, and "The Autumnlands" vol. 1 -- listed and discussed in ascending order of quality.

This series came to my attention at that manga publisher roundtable I attended at Comic-Con.  A series about a practitioner of Japanese calligraphy who moves out to a rural island is selling better than the publisher expected?  I have to see how such odd subject matter is connecting with fans!  As these things go, the answer turned out to be far more simple than I was expecting.  The practitioner in question, one Seishuu Honda, has hit a wall in his profession after he’s called out by his former instructor for having a style that’s “just plain dull.”  Not knowing what to do next, Honda takes his dad’s advice to go to a remote island in the Gotou Archipelago to cool off and find himself.  The village he winds up in is as rural as you can get for Japan, filled with avuncular old farmers who drive their tractors down the road, run-down houses in desperate need of kid-proofing, lots of friendly neighbors, and local festivals as well.  It’s also home to one incredibly energetic kid named Naru whose boundless energy can’t help but bring Honda out of his shell a little.

That’s right, “Barakamon” is the Japanese equivalent of the “straight-laced city slicker goes to live out in a rural town and is charmed by their unique ways” story/trope that we have in America.  All the stories here are as formulaic as you’d expect, though the localization does a good job of preserving the Japanese-ness of the setting to help it stand out.  This is the kind of manga you read in order to experience a part of Japan that you don’t often see featured in most series, and a lot of its appeal derives from that aspect of it.  Of course, most of the stories play at Honda’s uptight nature in a way that makes him seem kind of dumb.  At least mangaka Satsuki Yoshino develops a good rapport between the calligrapher and Naru as the latter slowly endears/wears down the former with her act first and think later mindset.  Naru is adorable and exasperating in equal measure, just like you’d expect from an actual eight-year-old.  I’m not sure if she’ll grow more or less entertaining in future volumes, but I’d much rather see Yoshino shake things up a bit and give us some stories that aren’t quite as predictable and formulaic as what we get here.

It’s actually been a while since I’ve followed a Vertigo series that was cut down before it could finish its run.  Yet here we are with the third and final volume of “Hinterkind,” a title about the creatures of myth reclaiming the world from humans after an apocalyptic plague known as the Blight.  We get to learn about the origins of the plague and get a glimpse at what life was like before and during the time humans were being wiped out in the title story.  For a two-part tale, it’s quite well put together by writer Ian Edginton and artist Francisco Trifogli, covering a fairly large cast and timeframe without feeling too rushed.  Not only does it flesh out existing cast members like rogue Jon Hobb and Asa the doctor, but it also sets up how America became “America” in the first arc.  It’s good stuff that reads like it was planned before the axe came down.

I mention that because the rest of the volume is almost pure “We gotta wrap this up now!” storytelling.  It all centers around a battle that brews and flares between the Sidhe and the Skinlings that at least introduces a memorable antagonist, Psamira, for what it’s worth.  Though the jumping between the cast works as well as it usually does, everything gets considerably more rushed until the very end when a dragon settles the conflict in his own way.  The final three pages take us through what feel like Edginton’s grand plans for the series.  Even if there’s no way that the way they’re presented could truly feel satisfying, I’m at least glad he offered them up for reasons of closure if nothing else.

Even if his dialogue never really crackled, Edginton did bring us some likeable and interesting characters in this series and developed a fascinating world in the space he had.  Trifogli wasn’t big on flash, but it was easy to appreciate the detail in his work as he made the difficult task of illustrating a ruined world populated by lots of different creatures (and humans) look easy.  He’d be a great fit for a project in the Mignolaverse over at Dark Horse, though I’m sure the artist will do well wherever he winds up.  I wish we had more, but even with its abbreviated end I’m glad with the “Hinterkind” that we got.

...it'll just be coming up later than usual due to some technical and logistics issues.  Expect another review tomorrow.

One could say that Chise Hatori has led an unlucky and unloved life.  This would be before she was auctioned off for the tidy sum of five million pounds to a mage with an animal skull for a head named Elias Ainsworth.  While this would seem like just the latest tragedy in a life that is full of them, Elias immediately whisks her off to Europe and informs her of three things:  One is that she is going to be his apprentice.  Another is that she is a “Sleigh Beggy,” a kind of “queen bee” of magic users.  The last is that she’s going to be his wife as well.  That last one might seem like it’s going to be rather problematic story element to deal with, but mangaka Kore Yamazaki manages to get around it in some interesting ways.  Primarily through establishing Elias as a kind of “other.”  If his “animal skull for a head” didn’t indicate that he is not like us, his vast knowledge of magic and general lack of such regarding social customs drive the point home quite well.  Basically, he’s someone who doesn’t get that just because you buy someone at an auction doesn’t mean they’ll want to be your wife.  Even with these issues, Elias is still presented as someone who cares for Chise, and she makes it clear that she’s not too keen on the idea of becoming this magus’ wife anytime soon.  It’s not all serious as Elias is amusingly castigated for his lack of social graces by his friend and artificier, Angelica.

Questionable social practices aside, this is a very good-looking series that mines the familiar idea of magic being something that people have forgotten about in the march of progress quite well.  We see Chise learn about the dangers of interacting with the faeries who congregate around her, share a dying dragon’s dream of flight, and begin to unravel a centuries-old curse.  Even though this takes place in the present day, the fantastic exists right alongside it and ready to snap up the unwary at a moment’s notice.  Yamazaki is good about setting out the rules of magic here, and I’m curious to learn more about magical society in this world as well as what being a “Sleigh Beggy” actually entails.  The characters are also fleshed out quite well in this first volume.  Chise steadily becomes more assertive as she learns about this world and grows more comfortable within it.  Elias may seem like the unflappable wizard with all the answers, but we see relatively early on that he can be “flapped” and in quite amusing ways as his interactions with Angelica show.  Really, this first volume was a fantastic start and I’m very much looking forward to seeing how Chise and Elias’ lives develop from here.

Masamune Shirow is the Frank Miller of manga.  That’s because it’s hard to overstate the contributions of both men to the medium of comics in their heydays, and the works they created are still being drawn upon for adaptations in other media.  They also experienced a sharp decline in their standing within the industry after releasing sequels to their best-known works, “The Dark Knight Strikes Again” for Miller, and “Ghost in the Shell 2:  Man-Machine Interface” for Shirow.  Since then, subsequent projects haven’t done much to re-endear them to fans.  Most people are split between whether or not “All-Star Batman” is “so bad it’s good” or “just plain bad” while “Holy Terror” was a weak attempt to mine post-9/11 sentiment for drama.  As for Shirow, I never got around to reading “Ghost in the Shell 1.5:  Human-Error Processor” because part two was just that bad.  These days it appears that he only gets out of bed to illustrate porn.

Currently, both creators are working with additional talent for their latest works.  Miller is co-writing the third “Dark Knight” series with Brian Azzarello while Andy Kubert provides the bulk of the art.  Shirow… well, he’s not really collaborating with Rikdou Koushi for “Pandora in the Crimson Shell.”  He only provided the story and background for this title and let the “Excel Saga” creator run with it.  It’s not so much a collaboration as one creator imposing his style on another’s idea.  For what it is, “Pandora” is pretty harmless.

Don’t let what’s said on the back cover fool you, this is not the end of Jonathan Hickman’s run.  As I’ve said many times before on this blog, “Secret Wars” is the true finale and we’ll have to wait until November *crosses fingers* to see how that turns out.  So if you’re thinking that this volume ends in some kind of cliffhanger that leads directly to the main event… you’d be right.  That particular resolution is offset by the fact that I had a pretty good idea that it’d be coming and the explosive moments of high drama and payoff that have characterized this stage of the writer’s run. Still, there are parts where you wish the writer would’ve used the twenty issues that make up “Time Runs Out” a bit more constructively.