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Wednesday, January 06, 2010 ( 1/06/2010 06:41:00 AM ) Bill S.  “NOT EVERYONE MAKES IT OUT OF MALICE ALIVE.” Though more novel than comic, Chris Wooding’s “Part Novel/Part Comic” Malice (Scholastic Press) rests on an inventive central plot gimmick. The first book in a YA fantasy trilogy about a nefarious comic book that’s used to lure young readers into a deadly alternate universe, Malice blends elements of King and Straub’s Talisman with Candyman to tell the tale of two middle-schoolers who get trapped in this threatening new world. The two kids, Seth and Kady, are driven to investigate after their friend Luke disappears from his home and they see an illustrated version of their buddy in an ish of the independently produced comic Malice. Per Ring-y urban legend, Malice’s readers are granted the ability to enter the world of the comic book by gathering a bunch of ritual ingredients, burning it all and repeating the mantra, “Tall Jake, take me away.” The duo’s inquiry brings ‘em to a sinister London comic shop called Black Dice and run by a fat figure named Scratch who’s like a nasty J.K. Rowling reimagining of the Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy. Soon, Seth (the more impulsive member of the twosome) has followed the ritual and himself become stranded in Malice, where you can check out any time you want, but . . . As Seth struggles to survive his new environs, Kady attempts to investigate the makers of the Malice comic book in our world. We’re given several glimpses of Tall Jake, the malicious figure responsible for taking kids into his world, and a witchy figure named Mrs. Benjamin, though we don’t yet meet Grendel, the artist responsible for drawing the comic book’s glimpses of life and death in Malice. As a comic book series, the fictional Malice seems singularly unsatisfying: we're told the comic has no overriding story, just a collection of disconnected vignettes depicting kids in peril. The book contains six such graphic sequences, illustrated by Dan Chernett (but credited to “Grendel,” of course, within the book itself), though they all connect to the book's main storyline. Five of these offer snippets of Seth’s adventures; the first, featuring the seeming demise of Seth and Kady’s friend, ends with Tall Jake presiding over the scene like the horror host in a pre-code comic. Chernett’s art is perhaps a bit too cleanly lined to capture the greasy menace of a world where children’s lives can get sucked from their bodies to provide power for a clock tower -- or menacing biomechanical creatures lurk in every shadow -- but it tells its part of the story fairly efficiently, even if the transitions from text to comic and back again aren’t always so smoothly handled. Wooding’s story is a decidedly dark one, and Malice proves a grimy and claustrophobic labyrinth: suitable to a setting that’s restricted to black-and-white panels. Even the real world proves unfriendly to our kid protagonists: both Seth and Kady’s parents prove highly ineffectual, and the only positive figure of adult semi-authority that we see in the entire book is a mousy looking businessman who unexpectedly stands up for Kady. It’s a neat touch: to her friend, the man would have been a symbol of dull British adulthood, “the kind of guy that Seth was so afraid of turning into.” But, as Kady realizes gratefully, the guy proves a life saver. Sometimes, Malice tells us, there’s even heroism among the Hollow Men. # | Saturday, January 02, 2010 ( 1/02/2010 09:37:00 PM ) Bill S. WEEKEND PET PIC: Here's a photo of Xander Cat catching some of that mid-day sun:  THE USUAL NOTE: For more cool pics of companion animals, please check out Modulator's "Friday Ark." # | ( 1/02/2010 03:27:00 PM ) Bill S.  “TOO MUCH SWEETNESS ROTS YOU, WHETHER IT’S FOOD OR WORDS.” Tokyopop’s BLU line may be focused on prettyboy love, but that’s not the entirety of the yaoi manga line. Submitted for your approval: Kairi Shimotsuki’s Madness, a violent post-Apocalyptic yarn of tender love and bloody berserker rage, of pixelized penises and grisly swordplay. It’s a far cry from the gender playing romcom moves of a BLU Manga series like Liberty, Liberty!Our central mismatched twosome is comprised of Izaya, a boyishly naïve priest, and Kyo, the handsome leader of a murderous gang called Madness. As the series opens, Kyo is imprisoned in the dungeon of a village church, suffering from amnesia and unaware of his murderous past. Young Izaya has been tending to the jailed Kyo, and though he knows of the amnesiac’s past, he believes that Kyo is at heart a gentle spirit. But when a former member of Madness runs amuck through the village of Philistine, searching for Kyo’s sword Siegfried, the smell of blood revives the prisoner’s memory in time for him to effect a Bugs Bunny-style escape and rescue Izaya. Once he’s saved the day, though, Kyo’s anti-heroic nature fully re-emerges. He forces Izaya to leave with him, threatening to kill everybody in Philistine if he doesn’t come. The young priest learns he is something called a “Suppress,” which gives him the ability to somehow dampen Kyo’s berserker rages. (“I’ve got heads to collect,” the would-be bounty hunter says, “and I’ll need a Suppress with me.”) Izaya’s power is vaguely linked to the Suppress’ sexual attractiveness, and since every guy he meets seems to find the young priest dreamy (including a fat brothel owner who attempts to rape him), his Suppress abilities could be clearly formidable if he ever learned how to wield them. As the twosome makes its way across the land, they meet up with two other former Madness members: a flamboyant bounty hunter named Oboro (“C’mon, can I get a ‘long time, no see’ fuck?” he flirtatiously asks Kyo) and Kyo’s former Suppress, a pneumatic albino swordswoman named Miyabil who apparently attempted to kill her former lover in the past. Why the big-breasted assassin-turned-prostitute tried to do in Kyo is a mystery left unanswered at the end of the first volume. It’s clear that she, like everybody else in the series, finds Izaya irresistible, though. The first 272-page volume balances scenes of bloody carnage (somewhat murkily reproduced on some pages, unfortunately) with yearning lust-packed panels ‘tween Kyo and Izaya. The fullest sampling of the latter occurs near the end of the book, after Kyo has a vision of his childhood that rekindles the sensitive side Izaya knew back in that church dungeon. “In that jail cell you were everything to me,” Kyo says, but, of course, this moment is short-lived. Miyabil pops onto the scene with a great gaping sword wound in her side, and hard-ass Kyo -- doubtless revived by the scent of blood -- re-emerges. So much for that tender moment. Madness’ translated dialog has its share of awkward moments, but the “Mature”-rated series also can be engagingly rowdy -- particularly when Miyabil and the incorrigibly horny Oboro are on the scene. For all its violence, there is still an air of lightness to the series, writer/artist Shimotsuki remaining mindful of the general yaoi audience’s romantic sensibilities, no doubt. Labels: sixty-minute manga # | |
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