Agnes Quill: An Anthology of Mystery by Dave Roman and various artists, SLG Publishing, $10.95
When I received this volume of stories for young adult readers, I was concerned that it would be a watered-down Franklyn Dixon/E. Nesbit “adventure.” Something about the book design seemed to suggest it. I shouldn’t have worried. By page three, Agnes has broken into a crypt and is cutting the head off of a rotting corpse to steal a necklace hidden inside. When I was twelve, that would have been the height of cool.
What makes the scene acceptable for the young adult reader is the fact that the ghost of the woman with the necklace in her skull is floating behind Agnes, giving directions. Welcome to Legerdemain, a vaguely Victorian city populated entirely by mad scientists, insane great aunts, daft explorers, scheming nephews, eccentric book shoppe proprietors, and the occasional innocent bystander. Every street is foggy, every building is haunted, and any corpse might spring to life, eyes dangling from maggoty sockets, at any moment. What a wonderful place to grow up!
The first of what I hope will be many volumes of Agnes Quill adventures contains four stories, about twenty pages of expository text, and some pinups by various artists. None of the exposition is necessary for enjoying the stories, and I would have preferred to have the information doled out within future stories, rather than revealed all at once. Legerdemain is a fascinating place, and Agnes a compelling character. I look forward to getting to know both.
The four stories are illustrated by four different artists employing vastly different styles, from the shadowy realism of Jason Ho to the cartoony fun of Raina Telgemeier. Readers who are more artist-oriented than I am might find the transitions jarring, but I found each artist appropriate for the story being told. Supernatural creatures were malevolent or cute, as the story required, and the overall effect was to make me wish I was a teenaged detective able to talk to ghosts. I’ll just have to live vicariously through Agnes Quill.
Emo Boy Vol. 1: Nobody Cares About Anything Anyway, So Why Don’t We All Just Die? by Steve Edmond, SLG Publishing, $13.98
I’ve been a music geek most of my life, but I’ve got to admit that the emo thing has largely passed me by. Coming of age in the punk era, and watching the whole goth thing develop, I always dismissed emo as something for the kids who couldn’t decide which scene to embrace. They couldn’t hack the cooler-than-thou attitude of the two opposing camps, so they carved out a pretentious little niche in the deeper-than-thou aisle. I’ve watched successive waves of tortured poets break on the shores of gainful employment, and with a few exceptions, like Fugazi, haven’t much cared.
Which is part of the mystique. I don’t understand them, I don’t care about them, why don’t I just die?
Emo Boy transfers this attitude into comics form. He’s the ultimate outsider; conflicted, misunderstood, and ignored when he’s not being bullied. No one likes him, but he’s not just Charlie Brown in slacker drag. He has… Emo Powers!
They’re not consistent, and they’re not reliable. He can’t summon them at will. All he knows is that amazing things happen when he gets too emotional; embarrassing things, tragic things. The powers might get him out of a jam, but they’ll never leave him looking good. I won’t give examples here, because the Emo powers are a big part of the humor of the book. Go read it for yourself.
I’m a little too old to be enraptured by tales of teenaged self-loathing, and as I said, I’ve never been into the Emo thing. Still, I was sufficiently entertained by this book to recommend it. Someone a few years younger and more into the Emo scene would probably like it a lot more.
Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, Shonen Jump Advanced, Viz Media, $7.99 per volume
I first encountered Death Note in a Shonen Jump Advanced anthology digest given away at a comics con. I always read the free stuff I get at cons, and sometimes it inspires me to buy books I wouldn’t normally buy. In this case, it’s inspired me to buy the 9 currently available volumes of Death Note. I intend to get the three remaining volumes as soon as they’re released. Marketers take note: giving away free stuff works!
Death Note is the story of Light Yagami, a Japanese honor student whose life is changed when he finds a book abandoned by a Shinigami death god. Anyone whose name is written in the book dies soon after. Light immediately sees the potential of the book and decides to kill all the evil people in the world, creating a utopia over which he can rule. His plans prompt Ryuk, the Shinigami to exclaim “I was right! HUMANS ARE FUN!”
As the story proceeds, we watch Light become increasingly amoral as he pursues his goal. His initial dream of changing the world becomes overshadowed more and more by his ambition to rule the world. He’s smart enough, and ruthless enough to succeed, but obstacles abound. Additional Shinigami come into play, and additional Death Notes. The rules governing the use of the Death Notes are slowly revealed, both increasing and limiting the abilities of the owner of the Death Note. Other geniuses, equal to Light in ability, reveal themselves, resulting in complex games of cat and mouse, with death as the penalty for failure.
It’s an intricate story, but so well told that it’s easy for even a non-otaku like myself to follow. Writer Tsugumi Ohba makes skilled use of foreshadowing, so that plot twists don’t emerge out of the blue, yet remain surprising. All too often when I attempt to read manga, sudden plot twists occur that presumably make sense to a Japanese reader, but leave me so mystified that I put the book down and seldom take it up again.
Tsugumi Ohba is an unknown. This is the first manga published under that name, but it’s so well-written that it is widely assumed that this is an established writer, writing under a pseudonym. I’ll go a step farther. This book is so accessible that I think the writer is a Westerner. I wouldn’t even be surprised to learn it was Neil Gaiman. Certainly, fans of Gaiman would find much to enjoy in this series. If you’re a mature reader looking for an access point for discovering manga, this is it.
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