THE WALLFLOWER VOL.6-7
Written and Drawn by Tomoko Hayakawa
Adapted by David Ury
Published by Del Rey

This may be the most frustrating manga currently being published. WALLFLOWER tells the tale of a young, hardcore goth girl named Sunako. Sunako’s aunt runs a boarding house, and allows four attractive young boys to move in and live for free, on the condition that they turn Sunako into a proper “lady.” Now, the potential here is terrific; there’s a reason that PYGMALION has been done in so many different forms: it works. So with the potential for romance, intrigue, and a look at the lifestyle of someone who is truly an individual having this put upon her, WALLFLOWER comes equipped with the tools to be great. But it never quite gets there, and that falls squarely on the shoulder of the creator, Hayakawa-chan.

Hayakawa is, herself, quite a bit like her protagonist Sunako. She likes goth culture, alt-bands, and owns a chair with skulls on it. Her material in the back matter is thorough in discussing her life. But it also serves to completely take the life out of her manga.

Sunako is drawn, for the most part, in super-deformed fashion. Against the collection of pretty boys, she is presented as a dwarf-sized, shapeless, featureless girl. The only chapter where we get Sunako consistently drawn at normal size and look is one wherein she eats some bad mushrooms that turn her into exactly the “lady” that the guys have been charged with creating. My God!

What does that say about the woman creating the book? Here she is, practicing and advocating Sunako’s lifestyle, but rather than proudly present her in her full glory, she spends most of her time hiding Sunako and who she is. When she does draw Sunako as a full-person (in the non-mushroom stories), the goth girl is lovely, strong, and powerful. This makes WALLFLOWER read like one giant hang-up for Hayakawa, as if she’s afraid of her own femininity and the strength of her own sexuality. Neutering Sunako is a way of neutering herself. It’s immensely troubling.

Also in the back matter, Hayakawa reveals herself to be nastily shallow. In volume six, she wails that no one ugly could possibly be nice. She tries to repent in volume seven, apparently after many of her readers called her on the carpet, but it feels trite and hollow. In the end, THE WALLFLOWER is a decent-enough book, but it would be well-served by being the one title to not have the additional material, because the creator buries herself and her creation through it. I’ll keep reading the story, but I’m done with Hayakawa-chan, I think.

GHOST HUNT VOL.2-3
Based on the Novels by Fuyumi Ono and Drawn by Shiho Inada
Adapted by David Walsh
Published by Del Rey

Mai Taniyama is a sixteen-year old girl who has lucked into the most interesting part-time job in Japan. Shibuya Psychic Research takes on cases involving the paranormal, and Mai, crushing hard on the seventeen-year old owner Naru, has decided to stay on the job, after paying off her debt the SPR in volume one. These two volumes find the modern “Ghostbusters” dealing with a haunted house occupied by a terrifying doll and a school where a cursed desk seems to be causing students to be horribly injured. Volume two, which features the doll, is quite disturbing, and shows that not every case the team takes will have a rational, logical solution (as opposed to the truly paranormal). Inada-san does a very good job of balancing the mystery against the needs of the characters involved, and Mai shows growth as a person and as a member of the team as the volumes progress. GHOST HUNT may not get a lot of fanfare, but it’s a very good manga that has appeal across age and gender lines. Seek it out.

TALES OF ARMY OF DARKNESS #1
Written and Drawn by Various
Published by Dynamite Entertainment

I’m sure it’ll read as blasphemous, but I’ve never been a huge devotee of the EVIL DEAD/ARMY films, though I did enjoy the third one (which this book is named after) well enough. The main character, Bruce Campbell’s “Ash” has proved popular enough over time to inspire solid merchandise and DVD sales, and that’s translated to comics, as the AOD series have been solid sellers. This effort brings together talents like Robert Kirkman, Ryan Ottley, Robert Napton, and Michael O’Hare to tell tales that fit between the cracks of the movies and the comics. As with most anthologies, the material is kind of hit and miss, and it’s somewhat telling that the best story in the book focuses on love interest Sheila and her efforts to move forward in time and get back to Ash’s side. Still, out of six stories in the book, only one, “You Have No Honor” falls completely flat. The book is also fairly understandable to the new reader. Not my usual cup of tea, but a winning effort, regardless.

SUPER REAL #1-2
Written and Drawn by Jason Martin
Published by Super Real Graphics

For those with long memories, yes I have reviewed issue one previously. However, that issue one was a longer, self-distributed version than the one eventually printed and published through Diamond (which I am discussing here). At the time, it was clear that the book could use some tightening, and this new version of issue one is much better than it’s previous edition. Martin’s story, which features five 20-somethings chosen to be on a reality TV show where they’ll be given superpowers, is still intact, and issue two gets the ball going forward a bit better. The one sequence from the original issue one that I thought flopped was happily missing from the new number one (involving parodies of Bush, Cheney, Larry David, and Brian Bendis), but it was a dirty tease, because it shows up in issue two. Ah, well. Now that his characters are together and in place, Martin has to turn his focus towards pace, and bring in the powers. According to the back cover of issue two, that appears to be next. I’ve had the good fortune to see SUPER REAL develop over time, from the “preview edition” to the original number one to now, and it’s been a joy and privilege to watch the process, even when it doesn’t necessarily bowl me over. Can’t wait to see where it goes next.

BODY BAGS: 3 THE HARD WAY
Written and Drawn by Jason Pearson
Published by Image Comics

“Body baggers” are bounty hunters with, if not a license to kill, a license to maim and cause maximum property damage. Clownface is the baddest of the bad, and his new sidekick happens to be his fourteen-year old daughter, a wiseass with a penchant for skimpy outfits and shooting first and never asking questions. That makes BODY BAGS pretty much the epitome of socially irresponsible and irredeemable comics… which is, admittedly why I like the book. There isn’t much about the book that isn’t totally wrong; cheesecake shots galore, ludicrous graphic violence, pounds of profanity. It reads like Pearson has a checklist next to the drawing board, and he isn’t going to be happy until he’s crossed off every line of it. Two of the three stories in this book were printed elsewhere, and are earlier efforts by Pearson before he truly found his inner serial killer. But the lead tale is off-the-rails psychotic, and shows the series at its best (worst) and is worth the cover price alone. Not recommended for the faint of heart or those who actually have good taste.

TRUTH, JUSTIN, AND THE AMERICAN WAY #1
Written by Aaron Williams and Scott Kurtz and Drawn by Giuseppe Ferrario
Published by Image Comics

A young slacker doofball named Justin winds up in an alien super-powered suit on the night of his bachelor party in this cutely nostalgic effort from PS238 creator Williams and PVP creator Kurtz. If the set-up sounds like it might be an homage to THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO, you’re absolutely correct, as the creative team is clearly a fan of that old chestnut. The book is also full of lots of other nods to 80s pop culture (including BACHELOR PARTY and WKRP), making it sort of a loving nod to a bygone era. What will be interesting is to see if Williams and Kurtz can keep Justin charmingly inept. GAH crashed and burned because the source of the humor, the main character’s inability to operate the suit, eroded as the series moved forward. Right now, Justin doesn’t even realize he can fly. That’s a perfectly fine place to be. JUSTIN isn’t a homerun, but it starts as a solid single to the outfield.

FUTURE SHOCK
Written and Drawn by Various
Published by Image Comics

This is Image’s effort for Free Comic Book Day, 2006. Last year, Image put out a sampler from the FLIGHT anthologies, which was by far their best FCBD book to date. This year, they have gathered scenes from future issues of eight different books and brought them together under one cover to decidedly mixed results.

The question is: whom is the FCBD sampler geared towards? If it’s aimed at trying to interest younger readers, then why have the opening page (from FEAR AGENT) be one where the hero of the story is using foul language, why run a sequence with trhe SAVAGE DRAGON being sexually seduced, and why show a sequence from SPAWN that has a little girl begin swarmed by bugs? If it’s aimed at older readers or mature readers, then the teen-friendly SHADOWHAWK and INVINCIBLE bits feel out of place. The bits that I think were done perfectly in either case, though, are the pages from WITCHBLADE, which are well-chosen, and cheesecake free; the sequence from NOBLE CAUSES, which is a whopper that makes you genuinely curious what’s going to cause that scene to occur, and the material from GODLAND, which is exactly representative of every issue of the book. I know Kazu Kibuishi took FLIGHT elsewhere, and I like the concept that Image comes up with here, but I’m not sold on the execution.

JEREMIAH HARM #2
Written by Keith Giffen and Alan Grant and Drawn by Rael Lyra
Published by Boom Studios

Issue two of this hard-edged sci-fi shows much more promise than issue one, as it begins to work in some characters that give the series depth, and ups the action quotient. When last we left off, Harm had been released from prison with the false promise that if he retrieved three escapees, he’d be let go. Of course, the escapees are the worst of the worst, and were actually put in prison by Harm himself; plus, they had headed off towards a backwater planet named Earth (where Harm is from), so it was all kinds of complicated. Now, Harm arrives, just in time for the escapees to attempt some mass murdering, but Harm first has to escape from the futuristic free clinic where his arrival has left him, in order to save lives. It’s the doctors in the clinic who give the book its first real sense of “life” and stakes, moving HARM away from being a solely nihilistic exercise and towards something with a smidge of heart and depth. I still think the color scheme doesn’t bring out Lyra’s gorgeous art as well as it should, but this is on the right track.

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING: SOME PEOPLE NEVER LEARN
Written and Drawn by Various
Published by Boom Studios

The aforementioned Giffen, along with folks like John Rogers, takes another stab at re-writing the dialogue balloons on old, public domain comics for humorous effect in this uneven sequel effort. Wisely avoiding the over-use of homoerotic jokery that bogged down the first WHAT WERE, the yuks get a little broader in tone this time, ranging from snarks on THE MATRIX, to George Lucas, and Freudian psychology. Andrew Cosby’s “Fan Boy”, about a young lad who time travels to try and stop George Lucas from creating Jar-Jar is a knockout, so good that it makes every other story in the book suffer by comparison. The other three stories are okay, but lack the impact and smarts of Cosby’s work. Doing this sort of remix was sort of pioneered by the amazing John Lustig (LAST KISS), and I’m a fan of the concept. SOME PEOPLE is worth the cover price for “Fan Boy”, and the rest of the stories are decent enough that you don’t feel burned in any way. A slight thumbs up from me, I guess.

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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