About Heroes

Emma vols. 2 & 3
By: Kaoru Mori
Publisher: CMX

I’ll say it again, just like the first volume I did not think Emma was going to be my cup of English tea….hahaha, alright that was lame. Those covers, at least to me, looked like an American artist trying to imitate manga. In these two volumes Emma and the Young Master Jones go out on a tour of the historic Crystal Palace, which leads to an unexpected romantic evening together. But things are not meant to be because news of their love comes to the rest of the Jones household. Of course Eleanor is not happy to hear about this. This leads Emma to make a most drastic decision concerning her class-breaking relationship with William. Emma's origins and her first meeting with Madame Stowner are shown in these volumes. We also see introduction of several new characters that will impact the series a little later. Emma eventually decides to leave London behind hoping to start anew elsewhere. Needless to say, these two volumes do a great job of shoving the young lovers into the reality of their forbidden love while providing a background for Emma and tons of character development. The art, as always, is beautiful and detailed with tons of work put into the historical setting. It is always a pleasure to see Emma negotiating the city when she goes on errands for her mistress. Mori uses grey tones to make the art in the book look antique. His author notes show a genuine enthusiasm for her subject, which is evident in the care and attention to detail that can be seen throughout this series. Mori went to a lot of effort to make each character, setting, and background unique and distinctive and succeeded brilliantly. Overall, it is great and well worth your time. It’s like Great Expectations only fun to read. A

Genshiken Volumes 1 and 2
Kio Shimoku
Del Rey

If you are a die hard anime/video game/manga geek (as in you would sell your mom for an original copy of Radiant Silver Gun), then you’ll appreciate all the references in Genskiken: The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture. You don’t have to be completely fanatic to enjoy this manga about a geeky club though; I thought it was hilarious because Kanji, one of the main characters, is having a hard time allowing himself to express his true passions (such as porn fanzines) even though he is around his kind. Makoto, another new member, is oblivious to the fact that Saki (a hot, normal chick) is trying to get in his pants. She even plays Puyo Puyo with him and cosplays as a puyo in order to turn him on. Instead, he chooses to hang out with his nerdy friends and kick their butts at 2D fighting games. As the story progresses in volume two, Saki almost becomes the main character, which is cool with me. She’s got the most conflict going on.

Shimoku created a manga within a manga called Kuji-Un for the characters of this manga to read and geek out over. We find this really cool because Omar had bought these cute girl figures a while ago and now we know where they’re from! Apparently it got so popular in Japan that they created figurines of the managa within this manga! I thought the girls looked familiar…. Finally, you have to read the excerpts at the end of each chapter from the club’s fanzine - each one sounds like someone is really analyzing his favorite character from Kuji-Un, just like we do on About Heroes everyday. A

Purgatory Kabuki vol. 1
Story & Art: Yasushi Suzuki
Publisher: DrMaster

I have been waiting for this book since it was announced in 2006. I really had no idea what it was going to be about, but that one page they showed at the Wizard Con Chicago kept my interest. It is a samurai story set in the underworld of the afterlife. Where former samurai Imanoturugi wants to leave and makes a deal to gather 1,000 swords from the fallen warriors who preside in the underworld. The story reminded me of Togari which I just read last week, but it was more confusing. The plus are its intricate details and consistency. The art in the front cover is what you get on the inside; it is all gorgeous to look at. Action packed, interesting characters, beautiful artwork, and little dialogue; you think with a formula like this nothing could go wrong. However, gorgeous art in small panels do not mean that they are a form of sequential art. It is very hard to follow the fights and fast paced scenes. I had to read it twice and look at it more than that to figure out who was who and what exactly was going on. Suzuki is an incredible artist, but you’ll spend so much time on each panel trying to figure out what is going that you’ll forget the main focus of the story. I was disappointed in the overall feel of the book and I hope volume 2 really picks up where this one was lacking. Is it worth the buy? If you like mindless action and gorgeous art (like I do), hell yes buy this book. But don’t expect more than that. Those character sketches at the end are completely gorgeous by the way. B-

Sugar Sugar Rune Volumes 1 and 2
Moyoco Anno
Del Rey

This looked a little cheesy when I flipped through it, but when I recognized the art style and realized it was done by the author of Flowers and Bees (a hilarious book about a guy trying to get laid), I definitely had to read it. Her art style is still the same in terms of the characters’ eyes and that the panels are overflowing with information, but she does adapt the art to fit the cutesy mood of her story.

It starts off slow like animes and mangas tend to do in order to introduce the concept and characters, but by the end of volume one, the story starts to pick up. Chocolat and Vanilla are the two candidates to become Queen of the Magic World. They must collect hearts in the Human World in order to accomplish this. Sadly though, it’s not real human hearts that they brutally rip out of the humans’ chests (Indiana Jones style, son!); they just collect pretty crystal hearts that don’t harm the person. Chocolat is in danger of having her heart taken if she falls in love with this jerky wizard dude, but unlike humans, witches only have one heart to give, so if he gets it, it’s curtains for her.

The characters really grew on me and I found myself rooting for them, even though they are two witch-girls who have candy names and cast candy spells. Again, Del Rey does a great job of explaining what the French and Japanese references mean. B

The Art of Yasushi Suzuki
Publisher: DrMaster

As much as I wanted to like Purgatory Kabuki, it got really confusing at times. But each panel was gorgeous to look at. I could only imagine what it would have been liked colored. So this is probably the next best thing. To get a book like this release in the U.S. is a blessing, because art books aren’t really in demand. It showcases his artwork from videogames, novels, and original illustrations. Such as his fantastic work on the N64 game Sin & Punishment (available now on the Virtual Console via Wii). There is plenty of artwork from Ikagura that will make fans of that series drool. It includes interviews with the artist and text taken from magazine articles. The text is written both in English and Japanese and the pages are printed in color with a glossy paper making them stand out. The only gripe I have is that I wish the book was longer, but seriously that is small gripe because any fan of not only manga art, but art in general should pick this book up. A

Uzumaki Volumes 2 and 3
Junji Ito
Viz Media

Junji Ito continues his horrific stylings in the second and third (and final) volumes of Uzumaki (which means ‘spiral’ in Japanese). The whole town is possessed and infected by the shape of a spiral, so much so that a guy slowly turns into a snail. This might not sound creepy, but Ito leaves no details out: the kid crawls into school drenched from the rain (since he can only travel in wet conditions), naked, with a shell forming on his back.

Most of the story is psychologically scary. If Ito had written it in prose, I would still be freaked out. But thankfully these nasty pictures add to the fun! I had to stop eating noodles while reading the first volume, but my favorite story is from the second volume: pregnant women at the hospital are infected by mosquito bites and stab spiral shaped drills into the other patients in order to suck their blood. But after the babies are born, they want to return to the womb, and a possessed doctor gladly helps by cutting the moms open and sewing the babies back in! On top of that, patients are feasting on the placenta that fell to the floor and grew into mushrooms. Nasty!

In the third volume Ito moves toward an actual plot besides spirals changing people. It’s still entertaining, but it my least favorite out of the three. It ends up that the physical town itself is the source of the spiral infection, and things are very bleak for the two heroes. On a side note, Kirie (the girl on the cover) has got to be one of the most boring characters ever! Her reaction to the insanity around her is a frown and a sweat drop on her head. But you know what? I still give this series an A! It’s so disturbing and disgusting that character development would only get in the way of you the reader experiencing the horror for yourself