Sneaky Peeks

If you care at all about comics, you need to go here, now.

Ok, there’s some cool stuff at the top there….some great illustrations, some preview pages, some cartoonist-y chatter….

Oh hey! What’s this at the bottom? King City 2, Chapter 1?

For those of you not in the know, King City Vol. 1 is 2007’s breakout graphic novel by Seattle cartoonist Brandon Graham, whose previous works include the Elevator collection from Alternative Comics, and a handful of erotic comics for Amerotica. The book came seemingly out of nowhere, filling the minds of comics readers everywhere with a vision of a dirty, streetwise future in a sprawling sci-fi city populated by spies who use cats as weapons,veterans who can’t forget the zombies they fought in Korea, and addicts whose bodies slowly become the drug they consume. It’s a wildly imaginative book that packs bizarre asides and puns into a story that’s actually heartfelt and sensitive.

These first pages from King City Vol. 2 showcase the wild flights of fancy that Graham’s story often takes, highlighting the main character’s training as a cat master (a spy who uses a cat like Batman uses his utility belt and gadgets), along with plenty of eye candy (the overhead establishing shot of the King City freeways is particularly nice) and background puns (”cervix entrance”….heh).It’s definitely a book to look forward to.

And that’s where this gets bittersweet. See, King City Vol. 1 was put out by Tokyopop, and their recent shakeups have left the future of King City, like many of their other OEL manga books, in doubt and maybe in search of a new publisher.  That’s if the company decides to release the rights to these books back to their creators.This aprticular book has a confirmed publisher for it’s french language edition, but the non-francophone among us will have to wait and see what happens before we get to sink our teeth into a print version.

Silver linings? With no deadline, the book is getting longer, with scenes that weren’t originally going to make the cut being reconsidered and added back in. Also, it looks like we’re going to be treated to new chapters on his Livejournal periodically, until a deal is worked out, or until it’s all online. Or, I guess, until he changes his mind. Also, Multiple Warheads, his Eisner nominated floppy-format serial that’s being published by Oni Press, is still safe and set to reappear soon, so the world won’t be deprived of his talent for too long.

Blackballed

A recent livejournal post by Bryan Lee O’Malley led me to check out the manga series Gantz, by Oku Hiroya, recently. Dark Horse is set to start publishing the series this summer, but the 250+ chapters that have appeared so far in Japan are available as scanlations for the impatient. O’Malley’s description reminded me a little bit of Battle Royale, and it sounded like it was worth checking out.

I spent the next several nights reading multiple chapters per night, intrigued, impressed, horrified, and disappointed at times.

The concept of the series is this: an assortment of people who have just died, suddenly find themselves alive again, sitting in an unfurnished apartment overlooking Tokyo. The only other thing in the room is a mysterious black ball, Gantz, which soon starts issuing forth orders. Their mission? To use weapons and combat suits (provided by the ball) to engage in a hunt for aliens in the city. If they survive, they can return to their lives…until the ball decides to bring them back to do it all over again.

The natural first reaction is confusion and disbelief, but the unwilling participants soon find that this game is deadly serious.

Like Battle Royale, Gantz uses the hyper-violent and fantastic narrative framework as a way to explore the moral and ethical choices of the characters. Do you let the other players in the game die to further your own survival? Do you put your life on the line to ensure the survival of others? Do you act out of altruism, self-interest, sadism, or fear? The hunts also come to represent exaggerated versions of the struggles in the “normal” lives of the protagonists. The central character, Kei Kurono, comes to anticipate the hunts as a way to feel a sense of self-worth, recognition, and accomplishment, in contrast to his undistinguished life as a middle school underacheiver. Masaru Kato, Kei’s former schoolmate, fights to protect those around him, the same way he fights to be a guardian for his younger brother.

Apart from the long, nuanced character arcs and copious gory action, there’s a sense of mystery to Gantz that keeps you hooked, at least for a while. Circumstances arise and the characters are forced to accept them and fight before they can try to rationalize or understand their situation. There are questions right from the start. What is Gantz? Why and how does it gather these people, and why and how does it transport them around Tokyo at it’s whim? Are these aliens real, and do they deserve to be killed? Why are the hunters and aliens invisible to the world at large during the hunt? Is there an end to this sadistic game? Answers come slowly, and each one only leads to more questions.

Despite the interesting subtext, Gantz is seinen manga at it’s heart, characterized by flashy battles, gallons of blood, and gratuitous nudity to appeal to its teenage male audience. The stakes of the game keep climbing, and the body count follows suit, as each chapter tries to top the last for outrageous violence. This is Gantz’s downfall, in my opinion. The central mystery takes a backseat, and becomes simply an excuse for increasingly sociopathic outbursts by the nominal protagonists, outbursts that spill over into the “real” Tokyo between hunts, at one point including a cold-blooded massacre of innocent civilians.

At some point, there’s a sense that Hiroya has stretched himself too thin. New elements are introduced to the story seemingly out of nowhere, and only serve to detract from the human focus of the first few story arcs. Psychic powers and vampires show up with no warning, reducing the contrast between the day to day reality and the supernatural scenes. Every chapter tries harder to push the envelope of violence and depravity. What started out as a way of exploring the human conscience becomes a series of brutal bloodlettings.

There could be something interesting to say about the resignation and acceptance of these circumstances by the characters. Gantz could work as a metaphor for war, for the increasing callousness of modern society, for the inundation of ultraviolent media, but in its race to keep the readers adrenaline levels pushed to the limit, it loses the provocative subtext. The latest chapters are adolescent power fantasy (which has been an element all along), with only lip service paid to the idea of right and responsibility.

It’s worth reading, if you’re the type of reader who can stomach over-the-top gory violence, but it’s also worth stopping at some point. Sadly, it looks like some of the most interesting ideas the series originally explored have fallen by the wayside.

The Wager

Here’s something that’s probably already been agreed with, disagreed with, ridiculed, praised, dismissed, dismantled, and distilled by every comics blog out there, but I figured I should note it here.

Steve Gaynor, a video game level designer according to his masthead, posted this thoughtful piece recently about the relative cultural significance of video games. Why is that interesting to readers of a comics blog (assuming there are any left visiting this poor site)? Because he draws some pretty astute comparisons between the two mediums.

I went into this article a little skeptical, imagining the worst sort of mouth-breathing dismissal. Comics are for kids!!! Superheroes are the be-all, end-all of the medium!!!! I was pleasantly surprised to find a knowledgeable and sensitive look at the similarities, one that encompassed the boundary pushing and forward thinking work taking place in comics and video games, but not shying away from examining their failures to gain broad cultural relevance.

Do yourself a favor and read the article. Even if you disagree, there’s a lot of interest to be found there.