Welcome to the Weekly Comics Hype! I'm doing these alphabetically, but occasionally skipping around a bit. I put the call out on my LJ, a few weeks ago, for some suggestions of Japanese series to read, and I wanted to share one of the ones I purchased with my readers: a genuinely dark and creepy little story called Monster by Naoki Urusawa.
A Japanese doctor named Kenzo Tenma learns in this series that no good deed goes unpunished. Working in Dusseldorf, West Germany in 1986, he is on the fast-track to a high-paying position of power in a frighteningly political hospital, and is engaged to the head director's daughter. But he finds the reality of this world at odds with his ethics, and disobeys the directors orders to save the life of a boy with a gunshot wound to the head. Doing so takes him away from operating on a politician who was admitted after the boy and the politician's death costs him heavily in the hospital's rather sick power structure.
But not long afterwards, the director and two of his underlings are all murdered...
This is an unusual series in that far too much of the material written about it gives far too much of the story away. So don't go looking it up. Especially on Wikipedia. I've only just begun this creepy tale, and it ran for quite some time - more than six years in the pages of the Japanese weekly Big Comic Original - and has been collected in eighteen digest volumes. It was later adapted into an animated TV series which ran for three seasons, and New Line Cinema is prepping a feature film version.
Monster features a number of compelling and chilling threads over the course of its pages. There's the mystery of the child with the bullet in the head and who killed his parents, who were East German defectors, and why his sister is so traumatized she can only repeat the word "kill." The hospital deaths are incredibly weird, and suspicion immediately falls on Dr. Tenma, and even though the police agree he cannot have done it, the murders remain awfully convenient to his career.
There's a certain Inspector Lunge of the Bundeskriminalamt who takes special interest in these events. Reminiscent of Lt. Gerard of The Fugitive, he's a tense, twitching man with a photographic memory, and an immediately memorable character. I can't wait to see what Urasawa does with him next.
It's slow-paced, of course, as Japanese dramas tend to be. But here, the mixture of the pacing, Urasawa's linework and the completely unpredictable chain of events work to the story's advantage. You won't have any idea what happens next in Monster, and will want to revisit the thrill-merchant where you picked up the previous edition as quickly as possible to continue the story!
Two of the eighteen volumes of Monster have been published in the US by Viz Signature, with a further three on the schedule. Your local comic shop would enjoy your custom; new books ship on Wednesdays, so why not stop in after work?
And a special Weekly Comics Hype thanks to Livejournal's lord_darkseid for his recommendation!!
A Japanese doctor named Kenzo Tenma learns in this series that no good deed goes unpunished. Working in Dusseldorf, West Germany in 1986, he is on the fast-track to a high-paying position of power in a frighteningly political hospital, and is engaged to the head director's daughter. But he finds the reality of this world at odds with his ethics, and disobeys the directors orders to save the life of a boy with a gunshot wound to the head. Doing so takes him away from operating on a politician who was admitted after the boy and the politician's death costs him heavily in the hospital's rather sick power structure.
But not long afterwards, the director and two of his underlings are all murdered...
This is an unusual series in that far too much of the material written about it gives far too much of the story away. So don't go looking it up. Especially on Wikipedia. I've only just begun this creepy tale, and it ran for quite some time - more than six years in the pages of the Japanese weekly Big Comic Original - and has been collected in eighteen digest volumes. It was later adapted into an animated TV series which ran for three seasons, and New Line Cinema is prepping a feature film version.
Monster features a number of compelling and chilling threads over the course of its pages. There's the mystery of the child with the bullet in the head and who killed his parents, who were East German defectors, and why his sister is so traumatized she can only repeat the word "kill." The hospital deaths are incredibly weird, and suspicion immediately falls on Dr. Tenma, and even though the police agree he cannot have done it, the murders remain awfully convenient to his career.
There's a certain Inspector Lunge of the Bundeskriminalamt who takes special interest in these events. Reminiscent of Lt. Gerard of The Fugitive, he's a tense, twitching man with a photographic memory, and an immediately memorable character. I can't wait to see what Urasawa does with him next.
It's slow-paced, of course, as Japanese dramas tend to be. But here, the mixture of the pacing, Urasawa's linework and the completely unpredictable chain of events work to the story's advantage. You won't have any idea what happens next in Monster, and will want to revisit the thrill-merchant where you picked up the previous edition as quickly as possible to continue the story!
Two of the eighteen volumes of Monster have been published in the US by Viz Signature, with a further three on the schedule. Your local comic shop would enjoy your custom; new books ship on Wednesdays, so why not stop in after work?
And a special Weekly Comics Hype thanks to Livejournal's lord_darkseid for his recommendation!!
blyddyn:
I was looking at your site, and couldn't find any mention of Alan Moores' "Future Shocks" - of which I consider "The Wages of Sin," to be the ultimate, I mean, "Yaargh ! Craven mongrels ! You'llnot keep AAnthrax Ghoulshadow B:A: down !" That is a classic exit line, precisely because it is so cliched....
blyddyn:
Just looking through the Dredd listings for th '80s - Gods, but there's some good stuff there, I'll have to dig out all my old progs.....