BAMBI AND HER PINK GUN VOL.2
Written and Drawn by Atsushi Kaneko
Translation by Duane Johnson
Published by Digital Manga Publishing

Two volumes in, BAMBI has taken its place as perhaps my favorite manga. It’s crude, ludicrous, and completely lacking in anything resembling social value… and if that isn’t enough to convince you to buy it, then I don’t know what would do the trick.

The titular heroine is a simpleton, really. She’s kidnapped a little boy on behalf of some “old men”, and she’ll kill anyone or anything that crosses her path and disrupts her mission. As volume two starts, she’s lost the kid to some rival kidnappers, and there’s going to be Hell to pay. And for two hundred pages, that’s pretty much it. Death, destruction, dastardly deeds. BAMBI is the bastard child of Peckinpah, Tarantino, and Miike, littering page after page with spent shells and bloody corpses. And it’s utterly brilliant in its execution.

Is this book for everybody? No. Certainly anyone looking for a sympathetic character to root for would be lost in these pages, though you certainly grow fond of Bambi and her simplistic, killing machine personality. But if you believe in comics as conceptually being “paper movies” then BAMBI AND HER PINK gun is the single best summer tentpole action flick at the multiplex right now. Digital Manga’s website doesn’t list when volume three is scheduled to ship, but personally, I can’t wait.

SPAWN: SHADOWS OF SPAWN VOL.2
Written and Drawn by Juzo Tokoro
Translated by Francis Takenaga
Published by Image Comics

I was surprisingly entertained by volume one of the SPAWN manga, and nothing about volume two changed my mind about how I felt about the series. While I was never able to get into the saga of Al Simmons or feel sympathy for him as a character, Ken Kurosawa is an entirely different story. Like Simmons, he led a violent life before being sent off the mortal coil; however, his reasons and motivations for the man while alive are very different and make his return as a Hellspawn feel more tragic.

Volume two finds Ken continuing to learn more about his powers as a Spawn, and meeting some of the more interesting denizens of the Spawniverse along the way. For instance, he runs into his own “Angela” in the form of Mikaela. She’s a Spawn-hunter, focused on sending creatures like Ken back across the great divide and into Hell where they belong. How rude! But of course, he must also focus on protecting his younger sister, which was the primary reason he returned to Earth to begin with. And she so happens to have some nasty supernatural enemies of her own…

Tokoro-san does a nice job blending solid art and interesting character moments over lengthy chapters. There’s a genuine sense here of how well-thought out the story beats are, and how much room he was given to work in Todd McFarlane’s sandbox. If you’d have told me six months ago I’d seriously be enjoying a SPAWN series like this, I’d have demanded you go pee in a cup and head straight for the lab. Just goes to show why you should give things a chance.

SHADOW MAGIC VOL.1
Written and Drawn by Tiffany Lei
Published by Arcana Studio

When you think about the manga market these days, the primary outlet for OEL mangas (Original English Language) is dominated by Tokyopop. It certainly surprised me to discover that Canadian indy publisher Arcana had dipped their toes in the water. As you might suspect, the first effort has a few rough patches, but they’re issues that can be remedied as future volumes come together.

Lei’s story is a complex one, and on first pass (even aided by the description on the cover) I was a bit confused by it. In a far-off dimension, a few brave souls help lead a revolt against their emperor and escape to Earth. However, their arrival brands them as bad guys and they find themselves indebted to an ancient culture here on the planet. Now, much, much later, those souls must rediscover themselves and restore a barrier they broke in getting here so that Earth is safe from other inter-dimensional assaults. Whew!

Now, there’s nothing wrong with attempting to tell a complex and involved story. Aim high and risk failure rather than aiming low and being boring. But it’s production that let’s down Lei, and a tendency for her to take shortcuts in her scripting. I like that the book is printed on a newsprint-quality paper; the book is in black and white, and the mangas produced overseas are printed on the same type of paper. Unfortunately, the inking and graytones turn to mud or get confusing on too many pages. Again, this is something that can be fixed in future volumes, now that the artist sees how this book looks. However, the scripting issues were a much larger problem, and again indicative of a younger creator spreading her wings.

The two big issues were voice and dialogue choice. The story is confusing for the first half of the book because Lei rushes through much of what’s happening and doesn’t strengthen her narrative voice. The reader loses traction in trying to determine what’s happening. Youthful enthusiasm. But the dialogue stuff is the one true sin. It is never, never acceptable to use IM speak as dialogue. I don’t want to see “WTF?” or “OMG!” in a word balloon. No no no no. This is a book, not a conversation on Yahoo Messenger. Naughty naughty. Fix a few of these issues up, and the series should have as good a chance as any to succeed.

GACHA GACHA VOL.2-3
Written and Drawn by Hiroyuki Tamakoshi
Translated and Adapted by David Ury
Published by Del Rey

When last we left poor Kouhei, he was given the job of keeping an eye on his best friend Kurara and keeping her out of trouble. The reason: upon returning from summer vacation, she had developed a split personality named Arisa, and Arisa is a bit more sexually developed than Kurara. Adding to the conflict is that Kouhei is in love with Kurara and dealing with Arisa is more than he can take.

Fan-service? Just a bit. But I credit Tamakoshi; as the story progresses through volume two and into the third book, he works to ground the story in some genuine human feeling, as Kouhei and his feelings grow more complex, and a third character enters the mix to muddy up the waters. It turns out that Kurara’s predicament is the work of a virtual reality game designed by her mother, and she actually has 151 personalities running around in her head, and a young Japanese-American girl named Reona is brought in as an expert programmer in the hopes of helping Kurara gain control of what’s happened to her. And when you put three hearts into the mix, you get some very traditional romantic comedy scenarios.

Of course, the book really finds itself in some of the other personalities that pop out of Kurara. My favorite: Rin, a ninth-level black belt ass-kicker determined to beat down everyone in her path. My least favorite: Alice, who’s about as uncomfortable a fan service character as possible. She’s a sexually curious fourteen-year old girl, the naïve flip side to the older seductress personality, Arisa. It feels pervy just reading the sections she shows up in, and I don’t groove on that. As long as Tamakoshi sticks to the emotional core, I enjoy the series well-enough; I just wish he’d do it a bit more often.

NEGIMA VOL.8-9
Written and Drawn by Ken Akamatsu
Translated by Toshifumi Yoshida and Adapted by T. Ledoux
Published by Del Rey

NEGIMA is also a series known primarily as a fan-service manga, but as the book progresses, Akamatsu shows a willingness to step back and attempt serious storytelling. That turns the book into a wildcard of sorts, and has made it grow on me.

In fact, volume eight is about as straight of an action thriller as you could ask for. Negi is working himself to the bone, training for an unknown mystical battle, and when finally confronted about why, he spills the tragic origins of his interest in becoming a mage. It’s sad stuff, and when the time comes for Negi to prove himself, it’s rousing and cathartic to see the little boy rise up and put his skill and his character on the line.

That isn’t to say that Akamatsu forgets the side of cheesecake, though. Volume nine finds him right back in the thick of the teenage love drama that creates the foundation of this book, and plenty of skimpy outfits and “misunderstandings” follow.

To NEGIMA’S credit, it never feels icky or pervy, not the way that the moments with Alice do in GACHA GACHA. There’s a fundamental innocence to Negi himself, as a ten-year old, that really takes sex out of the equation. Love is what’s on everyone’s mind, not the acceleration of his or her hormones. Through it all, the book manages to remain cute, and that’s a good trick. The work of a true magician, you might say.

See you in seven.

Review materials may be sent to: Marc Mason, P.O. Box 26732, Tempe, AZ 85285. You can also find me at Happy Nonsense and The Comics Waiting Room

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