Story Adaptation: Alessandro Ferrari
Layout: Simone Buofontino
Inks/Clean Up: Igor Chimisso
Character Studies: Igor Chimisso
Background/Settings: Massimo Rocca, Davide Turotti
Characters: Kawaii Creative Studio
Cover: Eric Jones

Star Wars created by George Lucas.

IDW Publishing’s graphic novel adaptation of Star Wars: The Force Awakens comes in at a compact length of under 80 pages. It’s a mostly faithful shot for shot recreation of the 2015 film in comic book form. A few scenes are omitted or their order is occasionally flipped to move things along. No new material is inserted into the film’s story. There is a price to pay for such economy. The comic adds nothing of note to the source material, other than the novelty of seeing it in the hands of an alternative set of artistic sensibilities. And the book’s directive to tone down the violence results in an anemic reading experience. The supposably high stakes (the fate of entire worlds hang in the balance) don’t come across as dire enough to possess any urgency on the page.

For anyone just looking for a printed version of the film to carry around, the half-dozen illustrators listed at the back of the book do a good enough job with the film’s futuristic technology and exotic locales. But everything feels cramped, which is a big problem for a narrative dependent on enchanting the reader with its fantastic setting. Events move briskly without allowing for some breathing room to admire what's taking place. Comics is a medium that manipulates the reader’s sense of time, but this comic’s pacing feels disjointed as it races from scene to scene.


And when some scenes or lines of dialogue are streamlined, this has a negative impact on the story’s character beats. The whole plot is basically a race to find the last jedi Luke Skywalker. But that objective seems to get lost as former stormtrooper Finn and scavenger Rey stumble from place to place. When they finally run into infamous smuggler (or is he a Rebel Alliance hero) Han Solo and copilot Chewbacca, the emotional impact of the meeting is so deeply underplayed that Han seems remarkably unconcerned considering that these two strangers he just met might be holding the key to finding Luke.

But the book isn’t really interested in adult comic book nerds. The pseudo-Disneyfied cartoon designs for the characters indicate IDW is trying to corner a younger demographic for the Star Wars franchise. So key elements like elaborate dogfights with spaceships or whatever implied sexual tension that would launch a thousand ships are put aside for “BEEBEE-ATE” and Rey behaving like the plucky hero. In this respect, she’s an acceptable role model.

By Chihiro Ishizuka
Translation: Melissa Tanaka

On first hearing of its premise, Flying Witch sounded like secondhand Hayao Miyazaki. A teenage witch in training “packs up her belongings (including a black cat familiar) and moves in with her distant cousins in rural Aomori to complete her training and become a full-fledged witch.” But the manga is actually closer to the popular Yotsuba&!, with the lead character Makoto Kowata as the oddball outsider inserted into the lives of a nondescript family. The magic she occasionally demonstrates is mostly played for comedic effect. Every mundane thing is a source of wonder to her. Creator Chihiro Ishizuka even draws in a streamlined style reminiscent of Kiyohiko Azuma.

With a story like this, a lot depends on the lead character. This is where Flying Witch falls short. As mentioned above, Makoto doesn’t perform a lot of magic. She’s actually not supposed to talk about her abilities to the uninitiated. But the irrepressible Makoto immediately babbles to a classmate she only just met. And her one act of flying in this volume occurs when she puts a broom through its paces at the local market. Those particular scenes make an impact early on. But Makoto isn’t eccentric enough a personality to pull it off every time. Her primary character trait is that she easily gets lost. This plays to diminishing returns every time its used. And it doesn’t help that the people around her, especially most of the members of her host family, can be a little blasé about Makoto’s novice witch status.

Thankfully, the story picks up steam later when members of the magical community show up. A creature called the Harbinger of Spring looks like someone who came out of a Miyazaki feature. And a much more experienced witch drops by to demonstrate how to pull off an ancient spell to Makoto.


It's still not enough to enliven the ordinary setting. Ishizuka is sparing with the use of hyper-detailed backgrounds. The page layouts are pretty boring: rectangular panels composed mostly of talking heads, arranged in two or three tiers. The main characters are very similar in appearance and facial expression. Only Makoto’s ten year old cousin exhibits more varied reactions than the rest of her family. That’s because she’s the only one young enough to be still astonished by the revelation that witches are real, and one of them is now living under the same roof. As far as these opening chapters are concerned, Ishizuka still seems to be working out how to achieve the proper balance between the supernatural and the mundane.

By Yuichi Yokoyama
Translation: Ryan Holmberg

Like audiences of other popular media, comic book readers have been conditioned to expect certain storytelling conventions. This makes reading the manga of Yuichi Yokoyama a unique experience. Yokoyama is an oil painter who exhibited no interest in comics during his youth, whether native or foreign. Yet he’s gone on to create several comics that are gorgeous to look at. At first glance, they contain all the basic vocabulary of the medium: picture panels, word captions, speech balloons, speed lines, etc. But the accompanying genre elements are missing, or at least being suppressed: plot, setting, character development, dramatic conflict, have been drained of their comforting familiarity. Instead, they’re usurped by an uncompromising sensual assault that will leave the reader reeling. Other comic creators have brought their own idiosyncratic design sensibilities to their stories. But Yokoyama’s work feels like an alien lifeform imitating human behaviour.

Take the plot of Iceland. Three strange looking men (at least I think they’re men) show up in the frozen North searching for a fourth individual. They enter a seedy bar to enquire about his whereabouts. Once they find him out back, the four leave town. None of the characters exhibit an inner life. No one offers an explanation for their individual actions. Their speech patterns betray no emotion or personality. They all speak in flat tones. In the end, the reader has no more idea as what just happened in the story. The only thing that indicates any emotional content is an undercurrent of aggression with their interactions, as if every person is sizing up everyone they encounter. The taut atmosphere is a concession to the plot’s pulp influences. Only, there’s no cathartic release in the form of physical violence.

But Yokoyama’s visual aesthetic immediately distinguishes him from more traditional mangaka. Leaning on his fine art background, Yokoyama resorts to modernist figurative abstraction combined with Pop Art typography. His characters look and move as if they were part machine, and wear elaborate patterns on their oddly shaped heads and bodies which obscure recognizable facial features, like a Cubist-inspired squad of extraterrestrial superheroes. This artificiality extends to the unnatural geometry of the icy setting. There’s nothing subtle about Yokoyama’s gaudy structures and bold compositions. And the bombastic nature of the action might vaguely remind Japanese fans of classic manga aimed at young adult males, though filtered through a very different set of artistic sensibilities.


The action, as such, is most evident when the trio enters the bar. They detect a loud repeating noise (DODODODO) as they approach the building,. Once inside, they’re immediately overwhelmed with an audiovisual spectacle. A large television monitor dominates one side of the room, playing nonstop military footage: guns blazing, tanks rolling, planes dropping bombs, soldiers shooting with their firearms, explosions booming. None of the patrons are bothered by the commotion. On the contrary, they seem to thrive in it.

Yokoyama’s ability to convey the sensation of sound is most impressive. The onomatopoeia are displayed as bold, mechanically reproduced Japanese text, spread across each panel. They practically block the reader from viewing the rest of the panel. And this goes on for several pages as double page spreads. Even in a purely visual medium, the noise is deafening. And in a story where very little happens, this is weirdly the climactic scene of the story. It’s a relief (if only a temporary one) when the trio finally leaves the bar.

That is what makes Iceland puzzling even as it is energizes. The book is so loud it denies introspection for even the reader. How can one think with all the noise going on? All one can do is immerse themselves in Yokoyama’s audiovisual pleasures.

Reviews:

Tetris: The Games People Play
Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Captain Phasma
5,000 km Per Second
A User’s Guide To Neglectful Parenting
Love and Lies Vol. 1
She and Her Cat
A City Inside
Wonder Woman #31
My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness
Sheena, Queen of the Jungle #0-1
Calexit #1
Solanin
Spy Seal #1
Mister Miracle #1
Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #22
Batman/Elmer Fudd Special
Wonder Woman: Steve Trevor Special
Loverboys
Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid Vol. 1
Wonder Woman Annual #1
Flash #22
Libby's Dad
Flash #21 & Batman #22
Action Comics #977 & Batman #21
Black Cloud #1
Guardians of the Louvre
Superman #19 & Action Comics #976
Man-Thing #1
The Old Guard #1
WildC.A.T.s #1
Spawn #1
Justice League/Power Rangers #1
The Mighty Thor #15
The Unstoppable Wasp #1

Commentary:

More NonSense: Best of 2017, Part 2
More NonSense: Best of 2017
Bright Lights (2016)
More NonSense: Eddie Berganza vs C.B. Cebulski
More NonSense: Cartoon Diversity
More NonSense: SPX 2017 Edition
More NonSense: Jack Kirby Centennial
More NonSense: Comic-Con 2017 Edition
More NonSense: Harry Potter 20th Anniversary Edition
More NonSense: The Wonder Woman Film Edition
More Nonsense: Kung fu Kenny Edition
The Circle (2017)
More NonSense: Ghost in the Shell Edition
Arrival (2016)
More Nonsense: Fighting Facism
Kong: Skull Island (2017)
Logan (2017)
R.I.P. Jiro Taniguchi (August 14, 1947 – February 11, 2017)
More NonSense: You’re gonna make it after all
More NonSense: March
R.I.P. Tyrus Wong (October 25, 1910 – December 30, 2016)

By Box Brown

Box Brown has made a career uncovering the stories behind pop culture objects of a very specific milieu, namely early 80s Americana. He’s authored biographies about two infamous celebrities: pro wrestler André the Giant, and comedian Andy Kaufman. With last year’s Tetris: The Games People Play, Brown instead tackled a video gaming classic. The resulting graphic novel reveals that his approach to biography works just as well for talking about nonhuman subjects. After all, Tetris didn’t just emerge from the void like one of its signature puzzle pieces. Someone had to invent it, and others had to fall for its charms. Some people might be aware that the game was the brainchild of computer scientist Alexey Pajitnov, when he was still working at the Academy of Science in Moscow. Even fewer will know what measures were taken to export the game to the Western world during the final stages of the Cold War. Brown’s examination of the complex business machinations behind Tetris’ international success is very accessible because he keeps the attention centered on the personalities involved, and not on the technologies that made it possible.

Before getting into the story of Tetris, Brown lays out his thesis for the comic. His short examination of the history (and prehistory) of games leads him to conclude that they are an artistic enterprise, the creative fusion of the competitive spirit and the child’s act of playing. Games nurture analytical skills and model human behavior by connecting with the audience’s desire for diversion, whether it be the ancient board game of Senet, the 19th century Japanese card game Hanafuda, or the video game consoles manufactured by Nintendo and Atari during the early 1980s. Every games’ popularity is a reflection of their respective society. With Tetris, Alexey’s own contribution to history was to combine the pleasures of classic puzzle games with real-time problem solving made possible by video games into an endlessly iterating loop.

Alexey himself isn’t one of Brown’s more enigmatic protagonists. He’s portrayed as a Steve Wozniak type of figure who created Tetris in 1984, during his free time in order to give expression to his ideas and entertain his friends. He showed no interest in profiting from his creation. The game would soon become a viral hit in Moscow, shared through floppy discs. A version of Tetris would make its way to Hungary, where it would be discovered by Robert Stein of U.K.-based Andromeda Software.


From here, the story becomes a lot more complicated as Alexey gradually loses control of his own creation. Various American and Japanese companies would vie for the distribution rights to Tetris, and at some point had to negotiate directly with the Russian government agency named Elorg. Like many tales from the nascent personal computing and video gaming industry, many of the parties involved were stumbling over a mess of patent, copyright, and trademark issues. Tetris would be ported to virtually every popular computing platform even when the legality of its distribution was still far from settled. This confusing state of affairs would eventually culminate in a huge 1993 legal battle between Nintendo and Atari.

If Brown were appealing just to the gaming crowd, he’d get lost comparing the varieties of Tetris being produced during this time, and judging each on their technical merits. That would make for an unwieldy comic. Thankfully, he’s more interested in the various business personalities fighting for a piece of the game. His chapter breaks are structured around their involvement, each character being helpfully introduced with a formal portrait and accompanying caption, isolated on the page by inky black. His blocky cartoon style is even more minimalist than in Andre the Giant, all the better to facilitate his understated, third person narrative voice. The only thing keeping the art from becoming completely flat is Brown’s choice of vibrant yellow to add volume to his black and white forms. But Brown is first and foremost, a storyteller. The comic still proves to a page turner despite the large cast of characters and numerous plot twists.

With everything said, Brown’s sympathies lie ultimately with the humble Alexey. He sees him as a master of his craft. Alexey wanted more than anything for the world to know his beloved game. As he explained during a 2015 appearance: “If I made a big fuss about the money, they would immediately have crushed my efforts. They would have crushed Tetris. Tetris would have been left without a champion to stick up for it and guide it. We would not be here today.”

Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Captain Phasma
Story: Kelly Thompson
Art: Marco Checchetto
Colors: Andres Mossa
Letters: Clayton Cowles
Covers: Paul Renaud

Star Wars created by George Lucas.
Captain Phasma created by J. J. Abrams.

Captain Phasma was the new character from The Force Awakens who failed to impress the fans. This lukewarm reception was a byproduct of the disconnect between the hype surrounding her during the lead up to the film, and the limited screen time which ended with her being KO’d by Chewbacca, then tossed into a trash compactor by Han Solo after being easily forced to disable the Starkiller Base shields. What a pushover! Where was the badass we were promised? And what’s the point of casting Gwendoline Christie to play the role when Phasma is just as useless (and anonymous) as every other stormtrooper? With the next Star Wars film on the horizon, the character’s rehabilitation is in full swing. This year’s Journey to Star Wars comic focuses entirely on Phasma’s actions starting from the climax of The Force Awakens. Since it’s known that she will be back for The Last Jedi, how did she get of Starkiller Base? The answer given certainly paints her as a larger than life, if somewhat ludicrous figure.

The Shatterred Empire art duo of Marco Checchetto and Andres Mossa make their return, this time teaming up with writer Kelly Thompson. The concentration on a smaller cast and shorter time frame results in a much tighter story. But as in the older comic, it still begins with the final battle of the last film. Checchetto and Mossa display their usual prowess in portraying chaotic space combat with the Assault on Starkiller Base. Phasma escapes the compactor thanks to the Resistance attack inadvertently blowing a hole in its side. With only six minutes to go before the planet destructs and her troops in total disarray, Phasma’s first act is to cover her own ass by wiping the computer logs of any record of her disabling the shields. Computer logs that I presume won’t even be around for much longer.


Still, they provide her a motivation for the rest of the comic. Phasma discovers that a certain lieutenant Sol Rivas had accessed the shield systems a few minutes later. Because she can’t have Rivas tattling to anyone about who switched off the base defences, Phasma runs around looking for Rivas so she can exterminate him. It’s quite a sight as she dodges falling debris and multiple explosions. She even ziplines through a chasm like Captain America from his first film. At one point, Phasma even spots from a distance the lightsaber duel between Kylo Ren and Rey. Pffft! Who cares when there’s someone else who needs to be killed? Remember, all this wackiness takes place within those measly six minutes.

Like any First Order officer possessing a healthy survival instinct, Rivas has already escaped to outer space. So the remainder of the story is about Phasma tracking him down with the aid of a TIE Fighter pilot and a BB-9E droid. It’s not a spoiler to say that these throwaway characters won’t survive her wrath. And since she’s still in the First Order’s good graces by the time of The Last Jedi, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that neither does Rivas. But the trail of destruction she leaves in her wake is absurd and horrendous. A planet’s population is sacrificed to her scorched earth policy, including a bunch of merfolk and a few sea monsters. On the one hand, her single-mindedness is practically superhuman. But it’s also a testament to the First Order’s brainwashing (or Lucasfilm’s attachment to her) that Phasma doesn’t just follow the simpler path and become a deserter. It worked out for fellow soldier Finn.

By Manuele Fior
Translation: Jamie Richards
Book Design: Michael Heck

5,000 km Per Second is a love story spanning the lives of two Italians named Lucia and Piero. The comic begins with their first teenage flirtation after Piero notices Lucy settling into an adjacent apartment and is immediately smitten by her appearance. Egged on by his best friend Nicola, the chapter ends with Piero making an awkward effort to catch Lucy’s attention. The narrative feels set to explore the unfolding tale of their first love. Instead, the start of the next chapter is set several years later and in a different country. Lucy and Piero have since broken up and are pursuing their separate careers. The succeeding chapters flit back and forth between their respective lives. And it ends with a bittersweet attempt to reconnect from the now two middle aged former lovers, significantly worn down by the intervening years. This is a story of how romantic relationships fail without showing the relationship itself, and without the plot contrivances usually employed in more glamourous Hollywood productions.

What compounds the deceptiveness is the ink and brushwork of Manuele Fior. The lush tones and bright palette are initially inviting and even indicative of a certain youthful naivete. And every change in location carries with it a sense of hopefulness. Fior’s expressionist figures are reminiscent of Paul Cezanne or a young Pablo Picasso. Their sensuous quality combined with the delicacy of Fior’s watercolors imbues every place with an exoticism that evokes the excitement of traveling to foreign places for the first time. Whether it’s Lucy studying the works of Henrik Ibsen while overlooking a lovely fjord in rural Norway, or Piero participating in an archeological dig in Aswan.


But the mood changes at the midpoint as Lucy and Piero slowly become disconnected from their environments. The initial excitement fades, only to be replaced by a sense of alienation. What once looked beautiful becomes oppressive. Time marches relentlessly forward, as expressed through the comic’s meticulous use of three-tiered rows of panels. The colors start to fade as if in response to their internal change. Lucy and Piero's attempts at cosmopolitanism only go so far. The local inhabitants remain mostly strangers or adversaries. The new country doesn’t become a second home. And returning to the old country doesn't provide any greater sense of belonging. When the much anticipated reunion finally takes place, Lucy and Piero’s accumulated life experiences and differing perspectives have created a vast gulf separating them. And yet, every relationship and heartbreak they’ve experienced separately is haunted by the shared memory of their first love. The memory which emerges from their meeting succeeds in interrupting the comic’s forward progress and allows for a flashback to circle the narrative back to the brightness of the first chapter.

But it’s only a momentary relief before life, in all its glorious indifference, forces them both to keep muddling forward.

By Guy Delisle
Translation: Helge Dascher

Guy Delisle has earned a reputation as a cartoonist who portrays himself as a hapless explorer. In my review of Jerusalem, I wrote “Noting the strangeness of a place may not be particularly insightful analysis, but it works perfectly for Delisle. His stockpiling of numerous insignificant details mirrors how most clueless Westerners experience the rest of the world. Delisle has become the spokesperson for early stage culture shock because he never achieves true mastery of his subject. Not that he seems to care.” I also observed how raising a family has been increasingly taking up more of Delisle’s time and energy, making his travelogues even more rambling and incidental. His post-Jerusalem work hasn’t shown an appreciable evolution in his basic narrative style, but his storytelling in books like A User’s Guide To Neglectful Parenting have become more manageable by tightening their focus on one aspect of the cartoonist’s life. In this particular case, Delisle collects random anecdotes about his less than stellar approach to caring for two precocious children. And unlike his travelogues, there isn’t an arc connecting these separate incidents.

Delisle adapts the same everyman persona he’s used in the past. This works just as well in conveying his cluelessness when it comes to communicating with kids as it did with the locals of foreign lands. Only this time, he gets to be demonstrably angry and intimidating as a supposably adult authority figure. His level of self-absorption is just enough to be relatable to other harried parents. This results in the kind of dismissive condescension and obliviousness mixed with annoyance the average adult normally exhibits towards children. In the book’s opening story, Delisle neglects to replace his son’s fallen out baby tooth with money for two nights in a row. When the son begins to suspect his parents are the real Tooth Fairy (or its French equivalent), Delisle lies with “If it was us putting the money under your pillow, do you really think we’d forget two nights in a row?” When his son seems unimpressed with the amount of money he received for yet another tooth, a visibly upset Delisle pulls out a one-cent coin and gives the game up by making the threat "Next time I'm gonna give you this here instead of two euros!" The son’s open mouthed reaction is subtle, and hilariously appropriate to the occasion.


In addition to resorting to those kinds of white lies, Delisle engages in even more of the usual parental shenanigans. He pretends to be more informed about subjects where he knows nothing. He feigns interest in his children’s activities. He inadvertently (or deliberately) terrifies them. He occasionally harangues them, especially his son for not showing more interest in traditional manly activities like fixing the house plumbing. Anyone who’s survived their childhood and remembers the hurtful things parents casually heaped on them will understand the often impassive expressions of Delisle’s kids. But they’re also the straight man bearing witness to his inappropriate behavior. When free to write about characters he genuinely cares about without tying them to a larger, sprawling travelogue, Delisle’s humor shapes up to be sharper and funnier.

In the book’s most curious anecdote, Delisle gets to be the curmudgeonly artist reflecting on his own status in the industry. When his daughter brings him one of her drawings for inspection, Delisle does what is expected of any parent and praises her young efforts. But after a slight pause, his inner editor takes over and he begins critiquing the drawing like it’s another magazine submission. He points out all its various technical flaws, then gathers himself once again and launches into an extended rant about young cartoonists and their unwillingness to put in the work and learn proper drawing skills: “I know what you're going to say ... You're going to tell me it's your ‘style’ and that you did it on purpose. Well, kiddo, let me tell you, there's a hell of a difference between drawing like a hack and having some kind of style. Not everybody's Art Spiegelman, you know."

Heh. I wonder from where a younger Delisle heard that from?

By Musawo
Translation: Jennifer Ward
Letters: Daniel Cy
Cover Design: Phil Balsman

At first glance Love and Lies possesses an interesting premise. To combat declining birth rates (an issue of real concern in present-day Japan) the Japanese government enacted the “Yukari Law.” The state was empowered to match every single 16 year old with each other into arranged marriages for the purpose of optimizing procreation. The law didn’t just aim to stabilize the Japanese population, but to improve it through the use of eugenics. Basically, the government has the genetic information of every citizen on file in order to to find the best possible marriage partner for every individual. At the beginning of the manga, members of the original generation affected by the law (known as the “Yukari Generation”) have grown up and are presently raising children of their own. The program is widely touted as a success, and their offspring have been declared to be “mentally and physically gifted.” Those children who're coming of age are currently receiving their government approved marriage notices. But will this generation prove to be as acquiescent as their parents?

Anyone raised to cherish ideals like “democracy” or “inclusiveness” will be horrified at the prospect of living in such a xenophobic and oppressively heteronormative society. They would probably compare the story's premise to fictional dystopias like Brave New World or The Handmaid's Tale. But that would be very very far from the image Musawo paints in the manga. A couple of confused teenagers do express discontent for the status quo at the very beginning, only for the scene to be played as comic relief. Love and Lies is first and foremost, a boilerplate high school romance. And not necessarily a challenging one at that, based on reading this volume and viewing a recent anime adaptation. The near future sci-fi elements are pushed so much to the margins that the story might as well be a dramedy set in the present about an arranged marriage involving the usual love triangle.


The introduction to aforesaid triangle is main protagonist Yukari Nejima, unfortunately named after the very law responsible for his existence when it brought his parents together. Yukari is the archetypical nonentity of a male character found in so many shonen manga. You could even say he’s actually an argument against the success of the law, because he’s as dumb as a sack of hammers. Naturally, his earnest ineptitude is considered an attractive quality to the much more charismatic characters surrounding him. This includes the hottest girl in his high school class Misaki Takasaki. Yukari’s had a crush on Misaki since the fifth grade, but couldn’t muster the courage to talk to her. However, he discovers that she reciprocates his feelings on the very night he receives his notice. Her opposite and Yukari’s arranged future wife is the doll-like Lilina Sanada. She quickly exhibits greater wit and initiative in their first meeting. And of course, there's best friend and aloof popular boy who has his own adoring coterie of female fans, Yūsuke Nisaka.

Funnily enough, there’s a more ambitious story struggling to break through the more familiar material. Misaki and Yusuke haven't received notices despite their age. And this could be connected to a shared secret they’re both hiding from Yukari. Yusuke even drops a bombshell on the reader at the end of the book. But most intriguing is an early but all-too brief hint that things may not be alright with the government agency playing matchmaker to the nation’s 16 year olds. Two officials practically stalk Yukari in a park at night just to hand him his notice. And that’s after he receives the notice in the form of a suspiciously glitchy email. Who does that in real life? But this gets drowned out by Yukari’s unceasingly inane dithering,  the awkward and inappropriate conversations between the two female leads about what makes Yukari such a catch, the fanservice oriented art surrounding Lilina and Misaki, or Musawo’s not so subtle fetish for getting characters to engage in big, sloppy kisses. Yum.


As gross as that last part sounds, it does point to what’s good about the story. Love and Lies may be weak in the world-building department, and its social analysis is at best, insubstantial. But at least it gets one thing right about its characters. They’re still horny teenagers. No matter how jaded they claim to be, they're grappling with emotions brought on by puberty. Given half the chance, some will even flout authority by sticking their tongues down each other's throats.

Story: Makoto Shinkai
Art:Tsubasa Yamaguchi
Translation: Kumar Sivasubramanian
Original Story: She and Her Cat: Their Standing Points (1999) by Makoto Shinkai

She and Her Cat is one of many tales told around the world about pets showering their owners with unconditional love. Expanding on a five minute animation created by Makoto Shinkai, the manga goes a bit beyond the usual portrait of animal companions and their owners. The titular cat Chobi isn’t the main point of focus, but a POV character who provides a peek into the life of his owner, a young woman named Miyu. Because Chobi is just your average house cat, he doesn’t truly comprehend her behaviour. As a creature of habit, he simply notices when Miyu is becoming more anxious and slowly deviating from her daily routine. Then one day, she doesn’t come home. Unlike Chobi, we the readers have already surmised that Miyu is undergoing a bout of depression brought on by pressures from work and her personal life. Though the specifics will mostly elude us.

Shinkai isn’t really able to maintain the illusion of seeing events through Chobi’s limited perspective. There are a couple of scenes with Miyu were Chobi is entirely absent. And Chobi sometimes resorts to human concepts which should be beyond the understanding of any cat. But as a framing device, Chobi allows us to view Miyu’s life as a series of vignettes. The story begins in spring and takes place over the course of a single year. Chobi’s narrative voice makes the most sense when the cat is paying a high degree of attention to the tiny details, particularly those details pertaining to the changing seasons. His loving description of his own surroundings evinces an unexpected sensuality which is complimented by the atmospheric artwork of Tsubasa Yamaguchi, who’s particularly attuned to the varying quality of ambient light as it’s filtered and diffused by the environment. When matched with Shinkai’s quiet narrative, Miyu’s descent into depression synchronizes with the looming cold around her in a way that almost feels inexorable.


As Miyu gradually withdraws from all human contact, it would seem that the ingredients are being gathered for the making of a desolate winter. And this tracks with Shinkai’s penchant for bittersweet endings. But for once, this is a sunnier conclusion from him. He swerves away at the last minute, thanks to a timely intercession from Chobi. Shinkai charts a new course which renews his characters, thanks to the healing power of pets.

By Tillie Walden

A City Inside Is a tone poem crafted with appreciable virtuosity. It begins with an unnamed young woman lying on a divan while conversing with an unseen individual. From the manner of their conversation, it becomes apparent that the woman is inside a therapist’s office and preparing to go through some form of regression therapy. She enters into the requisite dream state by being gently absorbed by the divan. The sequence works because of how it’s illustrated by Tillie Walden with beautiful minimalism. The divan’s sloping form and repeating patterns make it appear as if the woman is floating on the surface of a large body of water. And when she sinks into the divan with the assistance of the therapist, the sequence recalls the experience of baptism or of retreating into the innocence of one's childhood.

The central conflict which prompts this bout of self-examination is a personal struggle - at its most abstract it’s a choice between love and freedom. Or maybe it’s between stability and personal growth. Or reality or fantasy. The message is open to interpretation. Whatever the case, the struggle is viewed as a reverie composed of a series of phantasmagorical images. The therapist serves as the narrative voice which ties them together, since the woman remains silent once she goes under. But the overall impression of her life is of someone constantly seeking solitude. We first see the woman as a little girl growing up in a large house located in “the South.” The narrator claims that she was happy living with just her father to keep her company. But virtually every panel portrays her being alone with her thoughts, engulfed by the long shadows cast by the house and her rural environment. It doesn’t actually come as a surprise when the narrator says that she left her father when she was only 15, “trying to escape those southern ghosts.”


When we see the woman again, she’s already a young adult living contentedly in the sky. She spends her time writing stories about nonexistent places she wants to visit. Then one night, she meets another woman bicycling past her home. The two begin a romantic relationship, which brings them both back to earth. Only this earthbound existence doesn’t suit our protagonist, who begins to contemplate leaving her lover. But the uncomplicated narrative belies the artistic challenge of capturing its contrasting environments. Walden accomplishes this through her skillful use of black and white composition. Inky shadows and silhouette figures balance areas of bright white, and the resulting shapes generate a pleasing rhythm throughout the comic. Textures and patterns create subtle visual motifs which are better appreciated through repeated readings. On a more surface level, Walden’s quiet, dreamlike imagery evokes the surreal landscapes found in the work of classic cartoonists Winsor McCay and George Herriman.

The resolution to her conflict is as fantastic as it is ambiguous. As the therapist’s voice makes the woman consider her future, the surreal landscape she inhabits suddenly expands into an immense and beautiful city. Every object and structure within it embodies some part from her life. But as she wanders the empty metropolis as a much older figure, her final thoughts turn to the people she knew, cared for, and eventually left behind. It’s still a future the woman has yet to choose when she comes out of her reverie and leaves the office. And that tantalizing conclusion makes for a more appealing comic.

Story: James Robinson
Art: Carlo Pagulayan
Inks: Sean Parsons, Jason Paz, Scott Hanna
Colors: Romulo Fajardo Jr.
Letters: Saida Temofonte
Covers: Bryan Hitch, Alex Sinclair, Jenny Frison

Wonder Woman created by William Moulton Marston, H. G. Peter, Elizabeth Holloway Marston, Olive Byrne.

The Wonder Woman run of writer Greg Rucka, with artists Liam Sharp and Nicola Scott, set a pretty high bar for future creators, reversing most of the controversial aspects of the New 52 version began by Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang, and restoring many classic elements. This new story arc by writer James Robinson (making his return to DC Comics) and artist Carlo Pagulayan is okay, I guess. But it definitely feels like a much more conventional take on the character. Moreover, the arc unfortunately dips into a bit of continuity porn. I thought the whole Rebirth initiative meant we didn’t have to worry about this any more. But here’s the the official summary of this issue from DC’s website:

Spinning out of the pages of DC UNIVERSE REBIRTH and JUSTICE LEAGUE: DARKSEID WAR, legendary writer James Robinson (JSA: THE GOLDEN AGE, STARMAN) comes on board to answer one of the biggest questions of the year: Who is Wonder Woman’s brother? Taken away from Themyscira in the dead of night, the mysterious Jason has been hidden somewhere far from the sight of gods and men…but his life and Wonder Woman’s are about to intersect in a terrifying way, bringing them face to face with a cosmic threat they never imagined!

I suppose it was too much to hope for Geoff Johns to forget about this last minute revelation from his run on the Justice League. It was simply put on the back burner while Rucka was allowed to tell a very different story. I really would have preferred that DC went back to Diana being sculpted from clay. I was even under the impression that Rucka’s run had erased the whole storyline of Diana being the love child of Zeus and Hippolyta. But I guess our Chief Creative Officer’s master plan for the DC Universe included biding his time until he could rope another writer into continuing this plot thread. And now we have Robinson.


Frankly, this development is jarring given the Wonder Woman comics that have been published in the last year. It obviously doesn’t fit with the existing material, or the direction being mapped out before Robinson took over the series. It’s very much an artifact of the New 52 era. And a noticeable effect of its insertion is that the comic moves away from Diana’s strong female cast to a more male-centered focus Johns seems to prefer. The resulting narrative where the villain plots his revenge and stages a comeback is a lot more formulaic. The cast now includes New God Darkseid, his daughter Grail, the yet unmentioned Jason and other sons of Zeus, named and unnamed. However, to anyone coming to the comic from the recent Wonder Woman film, the opening page spread is reminiscent of the climactic battle between Diana and Ares. Since her film counterpart acknowledged the god of war as her “brother,” this would appear to be a misdirection meant for them.

The comic contains a few more references aimed at the film audience. The capable Pagulayan draws a certain mysterious figure to resemble hobo Clark Kent as played by Henry Cavill from Man of Steel. That’s also another misdirection. And Diana herself is clearly meant to resemble Gal Gadot. So I’m glad he didn’t attempt to make Steve Trevor look more like Chris Pine. Otherwise, Pagulayan works in the idiom established by past Wonder Woman artists within the last twenty years.

Overall, this is a somewhat unsatisfying introduction to the new arc. Half the comic is taken up by an underwhelming fight between Grail and one of DC’s C-list characters. And there’s a lot of exposition to get through which slows down the pace. Maybe the arc will make more sense in future instalments, but so little happens in this comic past the fight. More immediately, this feels less like a Wonder Woman story than the setup for an event story which just happens to include her.

By Kabi Nagata
Translation: Jocelyne Allen
Letters: Karis Page
Cover Design: Nicky Lim

My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness opens with mangaka Kabi Nagata attempting to have sex while inside a Love Hotel room with an escort she hired from a lesbian escort agency. She’s sitting on one end of the bed wearing a terrified expression on her face. Nagata is 28 years old, never been kissed, never been in a relationship, and has only recently come to the realization that she prefers women. She’s spent most of her youth suffering from bouts of depression, manifested in her life as eating disorders, acts of self harm, an inability to hold down a steady job, or form lasting friendships. So, off course she’s scared. The book’s opening (and its risque cover) initially produced an expectation that this would be a story of sexual hijinks, the stress of dating, and the difficulties of being single in the modern world. But I suspect that those thoughts were conditioned by the consumption of too much Hollywood entertainment. What actually follows is an extended and earnest bout of self-examination, gradually leading Nagata to the realization about how much she’s been suppressing her own sexuality in order to fulfill her own preconceptions about responsible adult behaviour.

Nagata’s focus is narrow. She talks about the toll depression took on her own health with great candor. By her own telling, the problems began when she dropped out of university. The resulting loss of a sense of direction would make her extremely anxious. But even securing a part-time job fails to deliver for Nagata the sense of belonging she desperately craves. On the contrary, her self-harm and eating disorders escalate to the point she has to be hospitalized. In one of the most harrowing moments in the manga, Nagata is overcome by an intense desire to eat while in the middle of her shift. She starts stuffing a bowl of uncooked instant ramen into her mouth, but is forced to stop when she notices how the hard noodles have torn into her gums and caused Nagata's mouth to bleed.


But this isn’t a tell-all book. Nagata’s increasing self-awareness forces her to confront how her emotionally stunted relationship with her parents has shamed her into feeling completely inadequate as a functioning adult. There’s a lot of ground to be covered here which Nagata declines to explore in greater detail. She also keeps her portrayal of other supporting characters similarly nebulous. They’re mainly described as either being disapproving or supportive towards her. Every act of kindness shown to her tends to overwhelm the inexperienced Nagata. This includes the escort from the book’s opening. As a mangaka, her primary source of information about sex are the doujinshi she’s read. And as a client, Nagata prefers to ignore the economic nature of the transaction she initiated and would rather project an artificial intimacy to their encounter. But it’s arguably an illusion she needs to maintain just to make it through what is to her a new experience.

The loosely drawn chibi style Nagata employs is both very conventional and a little unusual. Mangaka often use it for the bonus material included at the end of a manga volume, and it helps establish a tone of breezy intimacy between author and reader. But it’s not something typically employed for the long-form narrative. The most eye-catching part of the book's design is the pleasant tri-color scheme (black and white, plus pink) which belies the subject matter within. Otherwise, this aesthetic can sometimes appear a bit too generic.


But it’s not hard to feel for Nagata. Her vulnerability is genuine. And it’s painful to witness her toil so hard to achieve any sense of self-worth after a decade of feeling useless. Whatever Nagata’s particular circumstances, there’s something all-too familiar about the struggle to overcome loneliness.

Sheena, Queen of the Jungle #0
Story: Marguerite Bennett, Christina Trujillo
Art: Moritat
Colors: Andre Szymanowicz.
Letters: Thomas Napolitano
Covers: Emanuela Lupacchino, Fabio Mantovani, J. Scott Campbell, Sabine Rich, Moritat, Andre Szymanowicz, Ryan Sook

Sheena, Queen of the Jungle #1
Story: Marguerite Bennett, Christina Trujillo
Art: Moritat, Dimi Maheras
Colors: Moritat, Casey Silver
Letters: Thomas Napolitano
Covers: J. Scott Campbell, Sabine Rich, Ryan Sook, Moritat, Andre Szymanowicz, Carli Ihde, Michael Atiyeh, Cosplay Photo

Sheena created by Will Eisner and Jerry Iger.

Despite being one of the more popular characters from comics Golden Age, Sheena has fallen into partial obscurity as the jungle queen archetype declined in popularity. I should note that I don’t really follow the character, which makes it difficult to trace her history. Sheena has bounced from one publisher to the next, with her continuity being adjusted along the way. Sheena was transplanted from Africa to South America during the 1980s, distancing her from her original but regressive “Darkest Africa” setting. Her last comics appearance was published by Moonstone Books. That series took its cue from a reboot written a decade earlier by Hollywood writer Steven E. de Souza for Devil’s Due Publishing. As was his habit, de Souza located Sheena in the banana republic of Val Verde (the same settings of the movies Commando and Predator). Her biological parents were changed to be an American man and a local woman. I presume this was done to avoid the equally regressive convention of a displaced white saviour living with the natives and becoming their leader/greatest warrior. This latest incarnation from Dynamite Entertainment follows in the steps of the de Souza reboot.

Sheena held one advantage over other jungle queens which has kept her from completely vanishing from our collective memory - her iconic appearance. Jungle queens have always catered to adolescent males. But Sheena popularized the fashionable leggy blonde who wore an impractical leopard-skin swimsuit, a choice which allowed for both the display of ample cleavage and maximum freedom of movement. It’s a  look that’s been shamelessly copied many times, with diminishing returns. And none of her imitators could claim to be the first female character to headline her own title, making Sheena a pioneering figure for the statuesque “Amazon” beauty as heroic lead. The prevalence of this body type in comics has since come under considerable criticism for promoting a pretty narrow view of women in general, and rightfully so. Not that the Dynamite comic makes any apologies for this piece of the character's legacy.


Hiring Moritat to be the series regular artist certainly doubles down on these qualities. But he’s still a bit of an unconventional choice. His anime-influenced aesthetic is a departure from the more familiar good girl art of past cartoonists. Moritat’s beautiful women are not what is often referred to as classically proportioned. They’re all voluptuous torsos and limbs that go on forever. His figures are elongated in a way that the anatomy doesn’t always seem to properly hold together. Sheena is drawn with juvenile facial features which imbue her with an unexpected and strangely elf-like bearing. This is further enhanced by the digital coloring which gives her darker skin tones than past versions. Moritat’s Sheena seems like a deliberate move away from the more traditional caucasian-looking portrayal of the character. But she also doesn’t resemble anyone hailing from any country in the real world.

This hazy exoticism extends to the rest of the story. The plot requires Sheena to enter an ancient ruin already covered up by jungle overgrowth. Despite its state of advanced decay, the structure’s various boobytraps are still in working condition because off course the are. Now I realize that Val Verde is a fictional nation, but seeing as how it’s also supposed to be located in South America, I found it odd that the ruin’s architectural details more closely resembled ancient South Asian art than anything found in pre-Columbian cultures. Later on, Sheena defends the tribal inhabitants of the jungle from the armed goons of a greedy multinational corporation bent on strip mining the place. The portrait of the natives are fairly generic: diminutive brown-skinned people who wear loincloths, carry primitive spears, and live in thatched houses. The attempt simply feels lazy. I could also point out the dissonance of seeing lemurs, which are native to Madagascar, included in the cover.


So at this point, there’s not a whole lot to recommend the comic if you’re not already a fan of Moritat’s brand of cheesecake. Or the alternative covers drawn by other artists. The most intriguing part of the story right now is that Sheena has experienced at least two separate encounters with flying drones being operated by an unidentified male university student or professor searching for something lost in the jungle. It’s kinda creepy that someone has the ability to spy on Sheena from the air, even though those encounters are purely accidental.

But for me, the most baffling sequence involves a camera. While prancing around the ancient ruins, Sheena finds an abandoned 35mm SLR camera which still contains a canister of exposed film. Despite her unfamiliarity with the device, Sheena instinctively pockets the canister. After she escapes and reaches the open air, Sheena unspools the film from inside the canister and examines a single frame of what is now a magically processed roll of color negatives. WTF! Just because virtually everyone takes pictures with digital equipment these days shouldn't be an excuse for this kind of slapdash storytelling.