jasonfranks

KAGEMONO #2 was just reviewed at indycomicreview.com.

Four stars from reviewer Alex Haas. 

"It's the believability of these characters and situations that truly offers the scare factor.  These are people you might have met, regardless of the fantastic nature of the setting.  There is something very creepy in their humanity, which is the factor most often dropped in horror writing."

Still available from Blackglass Presss or from a variety of Melbourne comic shops, of course.

-- JF

 
SEAGUY VOL 2
I liked the first SEAGUY book. It didn't exactly make sense int he real world, but its own internal logic was rock solid, the storytelling was flawless and it had really interesting things to say about my old bugbear, the Hero's Journey and the structure of myth. Volume 2 picks up right where volume 1 left off and, while its rewards are a bit skimpier, it's just as much fun as the first one.  I find that I prefer Grant Morrison's miniseries to his bigger works. Grant, at his best, is a viciously clever and alarmingly sharp. At his worst he is self-indulgent, pretentious and repetitive. I love WE3 and  THE FILTH. ANIMAL MAN is interesting, but I think  he refined the ideas he presented there a lot better as he went along. THE INVISIBLES, dare I say it, is occasionally a work of genius but more often than-not get diluted into nonsense that I can only ascribe to a lack of discipline.

SEAGUY, I guess, is meant to be disposable pop superhero metafiction: something only Grant might conceive of, let alone manage to sell to a big publisher--twice. Great stuff. You need to read it.

LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLMEN: CENTURY 1910
The first non-DC volume of Alan Moore and Kev O'Neill's synthesis of pulp heroes from the ages into new stories. This one feels a bit redundant, though. Moore showed us what happens to most of these characters into the second half of the 20th century; booting them back to 1910 for connective-tissue story tying them back to the second miniseries feela  bit pointless. I'm not sure what the plan is--are Top Shelf going to publish more volumes of this quickly? This one seems all setup and minimal payoff. This book is a 'musical' in parts, working in Mack the Knife  from the Three Penny Opera. 

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THEATRE OF WAR
I admit, I picked this up because the art is by John McCrea. Paul Jenkins is a good writer, but I wouldn't have picked this one up just for him. And... man. I read the first few pages and I had to skim the rest and stare at the pretty pictures, this was so uninteresting.  I was at first a bit amazed to see John McCrea working so close to the house Marvel style--and the the inker changes three times through the book, and by the end of the story (I think inked by Victor Olazaba) the McCrea whose work I lknow and love is a lot more evident: thicker, more organic lines and syrupy-looking blacks. Not recommended.

INCOGNITO
Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips continue to make the exact kind of comics I want to read. This fourth issue of INCOGNITO is a terrific and this right now is the only book I go looking for as the issues come out. I don't think it's as strong as CRIMINAL, Brubaker and Phillips' other current (ongoing) project, but it's still the most interesting thing coming out of mainstream comics right now. 

BATTLEFIELDS: TANKIES #2
Gath Ennis and Carlos Ezquerra doing war comics; not a tough sell any way you stretch it. Terrific, no-bullshit, meticuolously-researched blood-and-guts war comics served with lashings of grim humor. Fantastic work by two of the absolute best in top form. 

-- JF

Enough bitching about bad TV and comics. Thought I'd review some interesting stuff instead.

GUNSLINGER GIRL
By Yu Aida
This was a gift. I don't think the English translations are available in Australia. Probably not a book I would have picked up, just browsing.


The unlikely premise is that an agency of the Italian government, Section 2, is running a program in which disabled adolescent girls are cyborged, conditioned, and turned into assassins. Each of the three protagonists (Henrietta, Rico and Triela) girls is paired with a 'fratello', or handler: an adult male responsible for managing them in the field, as well as for their training and welfare. The assassins are adolescent girls who happen to be be killer cyborgs, and the stories are all built around this incongruity. They're quite cleverly configured to show different views o f this, rather than being 'mission' stories with a few character moments on the side.

Henrietta is, I think, the most extreme of the characters: smallest and most innocent of the characters, as well as the most frightening: she's quick to violence, but she doesn't really understand that this is unusual.  She's had a traumatic past which I think has been brainwashed out of her--she is in the program because of injuries sustained while her family was murdered. Her fratello, Giuseppe, is more caring than the other girls', and also the most reluctant to medicate her for conditioning. Henrietta figures prominently in two stories, and they each show a side of her: the first is about her little-girl dreams, the second is about how little she understands about being an ordinary girl.

Triela is a little older than the other two, so she's a little wiser and more independent, or at least she likes to think so. She's also a bit of a princess. Her story, 'The Snow White', is a smarter and more self-aware episode that directly addresses ideas of family, loyalty, and obedience.

Rico's story is my favourite. Born deformed into a dysfunctional family, Rico loves her life with the agency. She's never had functional limbs before, she's never been able to go outside or socialize with her peers. Her fratello is quite indifferent to her needs, but she's nonetheless upbeat and positive about everything--and completely unquestioning. She does whatever is required of her, no matter how appalling, with unmitigated joy. This is highly unsettling.

Alright, the premise is ridiculous, but the stories are cleverly constructed and after a while you pretty much forget about it. The dialog is pretty crisp--hard to know if this is Yu Aida's doing or translator Eiko McGregor's. Artwise, the book is a bit plain. Aida does a great job on the scenery, but the layouts are very simple and direct and a lot of panels could do with a bit of background. The camera cuts and zooms but never dollys or pans, so it's hard to get a good understanding of the space in which the action occurs. Framing is very direct, a lot of stuff faces you dead on.

Aida's figures are smooth and well well modeled. Adult faces are quite stylized but easily distinctive. The girls are rendered with Big Eyes and can be difficult to tell apart but for their hairstyles and dress. Nobody really looks Italian.

I was a bit uneasy about this book initiually, but there's no hentai quotient. Little, if any of the artwork looks designed to titillate, and, while Aida (gender unknown, apparently) addresses the matter of affection versus conditioning, he  (?) does so without sexualizing the girls. In fact, Aida is quite sensitive in the way he handles the relationships: the girls have crushes on their fratellos, who variously regard them regard them as daughters, pets or tools.

Overall, an interesting book. Could be visually more interesting--it's visually and coherent, but the storytelling is pedestrian and Aida relies a bit too much on scenery splashes and images of adorable minors toting precisely-rendered firearms to give the book impact. Some of the stories are a bit obvious, but overall it's a pleasingly restrained and well-written work. I believe there's an anime.

-- JF