Murder Hogwarts: Deadly Class Volume One

I like to read cheerful things, so when I heard about a comic about a school dedicated to creating murderous assassins, I said Count me in!

Deadly Class: 1987: Reagan Youth tells the uplifting tale of one Marcus Lopez Arguello. A homeless teenage boy, Marcus' family was destroyed directly because of cuts to mental health programs made by President Ronald Reagan. The trauma of losing his family was compounded by cruel abuse suffered as he was shuffled through the child services system. As a result, Marcus took some rather direct action against his abusers, and is now not only homeless, but on the run for murder.

When he's offered enrollment in the Kings Dominion School of The Deadly Arts, Marcus initially refuses. But it becomes clear that he was chosen not for his ability to kill, but for some other more humane quality he displays. After some convincing by a tattooed girl with a talent for katanas, he enrolls.

This first volume details Marcus' introduction to the less than welcoming School of Deadly Arts, with its many factions and allegiances. The student body is almost entirely composed of the children of drug lords and assassins from around the globe, so don't expect any cheerful Harry Potter-like scenes of golden lit fraternity round a roaring fire. These are kids with chips on their shoulders and blood on their hands. Still, we get to see kids just being kids: lying about their families, having crushes, making bad interpersonal decisions, maybe taking way too much acid, and this being 1987, discussing how great the Smiths are. That, and killing homeless people for a class assignment.

The final arc of this volume deals with Marcus and his new friends taking an ill advised trip to Las Vegas, which goes as well as you would expect.

I am a fan of Deadly Class' writer, Rick Remender, and he does not disappoint. My only criticism of the book would be one character out to murder Marcus (get in line, pal) that just goes a little too far on the Edgy Meter. Aside from that, Remender creates a cast that is fascinating and unsettling. The art by Wes Craig is perfect for this book, and his action scenes are just a joy to stare at in wonder, complemented by Lee Loughridge's page-popping colours.

For a comic about murder and the horrors of society, Deadly Class is a beautiful book. The perfect gift for the lonely outsider in your life.

I Am A Hero Omnibus 4

As I pick up each new volume of I Am A Hero, I ask myself: Is this where it starts to suck?

As I finished reading I Am A Hero Omnibus 4, I sighed and thought ''No, not yet."

One of the themes that runs through this zombie apocalypse saga is how people become unexpected heroes, in the process surprising themselves moreso than anyone else. The first volume centered on mentally ill manga artist Hideo Suzuki, but as the story progressed more and more instances of small heroism became evident.  From an elderly woman giving a teenage girl proper boots as chaos rages around them to those infected with the zombie virus struggling to save their loved ones, I Am A Hero casts a wide narrative net to express this theme.

The story also has shown the worst that humanity can offer, especially in times of crisis. This volume centres around Hideo and struggling Hiromi taking refuge with a group living on the roof of an open air mall. Hideo's relief at finding some sort of sanctuary is shattered as he discovers the truth: a cruel dictatorship has arisen among the young men ruling the terrified refugees, demanding complete obedience or face being thrown down to the zombie hordes below.

It is among these refugees that we are introduced to Tsugumi Oda.  She is suffering especially hard underneath the mall roof tyranny, yet still retains enough anger to survive. Much of the focus of this volume is on Oda, and how she still retains her humanity, especially when it comes to Hiromi and Hideo.

This volume highlights the monsters that people can become moreso than the threat of the zombies. But the odd zombies--or ZDQs, as they are called in the story--are given more light, as we see just how cruel this virus can be. These are not the shuffling, mindless hordes we see in Romero movies or The Walking Dead. They are just as deadly, but far more heartbreaking.

The volume also has some great action scenes, especially around an attempt by the roof crew to get supplies from the mall food court. At this point, the pages tended to fly by as I wanted to see just how in hell things would end.

I Am A Hero continues to be the best zombie comic I've read in a very, very long time.

The Ride: Burning Desire

Imagine my surprise when I discovered The Ride: Burning Desire was a celebration of a comic that come out 15 years ago, a comic I had never heard of.  I spend a lot of time in comic book stores, and I think I have a passing knowledge of most books from the Big Three. Guess not.

As explained in this issue's backnotes, The Ride is a shared pulp/noir world where comic creators were given free rein to tell their stories. A 1968 Camaro--the titular Ride--would serve as a connection between stories.

Being a fan of crime stories, be it Elmore Leonard, Brubaker's Criminal, Rucka's Stumptown or Hard Case Crime novels, I thought I'd give this a try. Even without having read the previous stories, The Ride: Burning Desire was still an enjoyable read that pulled me in the way good crime stories do.

The comic is divided into two stories. The first story deals with ex-con/ex-cop Samantha Vega. Fresh out of prison, she's working security at an exotic dance bar when some assholes decide to step out of line. This results in Vega getting arrested by a police force with a long memory that features a lot of Vega, and why she ended up in prison.  Things are made clear to her in a small room, and we know that things are about to get worse. So, joyful.

The second story is entitled Sparkles, with gorgeous art by Adam Hughes. It deals with Kiri, a woman whose brother in law covets her a bit too much. This ends in his meeting with a rather unexpected unhappy ending, and Kiri having to take it on the lam. It also seems to allow Hughes to draw a very Power Girl looking Kiri in the nude, and make a head wound look a lot like a vagina. Free rein, remember!

The Ride is a cool idea, and the writer and artists here make it even cooler. I look forward to the next issue.

G.I.Joe Volume One

I have a fondness for comics based on toys. This is based on my having grown up in the Seventies, where I fell in love with Marvel's toy based comics. Memorable titles from my youth were Doug Moench's run on the giant robot comic Shogun Warriors and the superb first 12 issues of Bill Mantlo and Michael Golden's Micronauts.  The latter in particular was especially important to me, since it was one of the rare comics--toy based or otherwise--where things actually changed and didn't revert back.

This has led me to give almost any comic based on a toy or video game a shot. And that brings us to IDW's G.I. Joe.

I never watched the cartoon when it was around, so my only real experience with the Joes have been the abysmal movies and the comics. So while many readers would approach this book with memory glasses firmly in place, I came just hoping for a good read.

And it was. This collection sets up the initial conflicts between the Joes and the mysterious evil organization of Cobra. Destro--he of the silver face mask--also plays a vital role, with all three major character groups either learning of one another and/or exchanging panels of gunfire.

The script is by longtime comic writer Chuck Dixon, with an unsurprisingly airport thriller approach to the military. Everyone in the Joes--male and female--are clearly not to be fucked with, with the only soft side to their personalities being their code names. The strongest characters with the most focus are Scarlett for the Joes and the cold and calculating Baroness for Cobra. (Scarlett is in this so much that there is a meta joke that she should maybe change her code name to 'Multi-Task'.)

Robert Atkins' art is crisp, with some great use of colour.  The book has a competent flow to the pages, even when Atkins has to present battle scenes with various POVs.  There is no photocopying or use of block colouring to fill in panels, so you know this book was made with care.

It was a fun read. Once again, toys and comics make a great mix, at least for me.

Roadside Picnic

What struck me the most about Roadside Picnic is how it felt like it could have been written last year.  With the prevalence of doomed world stories and the popularity of games like Fallout and Metro 2033, Picnic feels like something written to cash in on that popularity. But no--this is the work that clearly inspired those things.

Roadside Picnic tells the story of how the world fares after an alien invasion, but an invasion where the aliens didn't pay that much attention to the humans whose planet they briefly hung out on. Having only stayed for two days, the aliens departed, but left a lot of junk behind in six different areas of the Earth. It is the dangerous acquisition of these even more dangerous items and how that affects those who venture into these 'Zones' for a bit of profit that is the core of Roadside Picnic's story.

The book is bleak as the items the stalkers (the term for those who enter the Zones) are curious. There are no clear answers as to what happened, or what will happen next. As Ursula Le Guin points out in her introduction,  the Strugatsky's focus on the everyday people and how this Visit affected them. As it would undoubtedly be if and when we meet alien life, there will be a lot of confusion and no real governmental direction. And maybe that's another reason why Roadside Picnic feels so current--it nails exactly how things would occur.

A wonderful book.

Naomi #1

A few weeks ago I was in my local comic shop and noticed a copy of Naomi on the wall going for an eye-widening price. I asked the owner why it was so expensive, and he replied that the title was extremely popular. He then said he liked it himself, so when a reprint of #1 came out, I picked it up.

After reading it, though, all I felt was annoyance.

Now, I understand that Naomi is part of DC Comics' Wonder Comics imprint, aimed at a teen audience. I am at least three decades from being a teenager. Still, Brian Michael Bendis is shepherding this endeavour, a writer that I have often enjoyed, so what could go wrong?

Well, a few things. Let's put them in order.

1. This book cost me over $5 Canadian, taking into account the glories of the current American exchange. For five dollars I received very little in the way of story.

2. The selling point of this new series is 'the biggest new mystery' of the DC Universe. But we are given no reasons to care what this mystery may be, other than Naomi's own interest, which isn't about the DC Universe at all but only her own teenage, self absorbed interest.

3.Naomi herself. In any mystery, the reader should have some interest or connection with the investigator (the lead character). But we learn nothing really about Naomi.  Well, we did learn that she's 17, she spends time on her phone (even when she's supposed to be working), she has a Superman obsession, she's in therapy because of issues and oh, yes, she feels special in some undefined, but probably awesome, way.

4. Her friends are equally annoying and undefined. One friend dresses like a goth but totally really thinks Superman is cool. Another friend is just constantly giddy. She dances around for no reason, and likes to hug Naomi.She also has pink hair.  When Naomi is upset, she suggests they eat, undoubtedly before she bursts into laughter again and spins a pirouette. Character work at its best.

5. The mystery itself is--shocking!--related to Naomi. And the only person who has any knowledge about it is someone who looks weird. Everyone else in this town is either giddy or clearly hiding something, but will still talk to a teenager about aforementioned mystery because adults don't have anything else to do.

6. The art by Jamal Campbell is beautiful. But he clearly uses cut and paste on one page, moving one image to another panel while using the same background over and over. It's a small thing, but I don't pay for comics for artists to take shortcuts. If an artist is taking shortcuts, then reduce the cover price.

7. Naomi reads like a checklist designed to attract younger readers, but for all the wrong reasons.  There isn't a focus to create characters as much as there is a need to have readers see themselves on the page. The idea that a teen reader would care about a mystery about the DC Universe is ludicrous. I don't see any teenagers buying comics in my store, only sad men in their thirties and forties. They care about stuff like the DC Universe, and characters, and good stories. You know, the audience Marvel and DC forgot about years ago. Oh, sorry, like, my cynicism totally slipped out.


While trying to attract teen readers is a good idea on paper--and probably sounds great in board meetings--the one thing DC and Marvel fail to acknowledge is that teenagers may be interested in books like Naomi, but they won't pay for it. They will download it off a pirate site, even if they think to look for the next issue, which is in itself a big ask.  They'll torrent manga and anime all day, but ask them to lay cash on a counter--virtual or otherwise--and they'll roll their eyes.

In the end, Naomi wasn't for me, and was never intended to be. If Bendis and co-writer David F Walker had spent more time building characters everyone could relate to, maybe I would have picked up a second issue. But as it is, this just brought the day I stop buying all American super hero books that much closer.

We Never Learn Volume One

In a futile attempt to broaden my diminishing horizons, I thought I'd read something I've never read before: a romance manga. Leave the classics to another day.

Written and drawn by Taishi Tsutsui, We Never Learn tells the story of high schooler Nariyuki Yuiga who is working desperately to win a scholarship because his family is poor, courtesy of a dead yet still inspirational parent. His principal agrees to give the desperate Yuiga the nomination for this salvational scholarship on the condition that he tutor first two, then three, other students.  Of course it isn't that easy, because these students are all superstars in their own fields but have terrible blind spots that Yuiga must overcome with his power of super-tutoring.

His charges include Fumino Furahashi, a wistful ace in humanities and creative writing who wants to study the sciences but freaks out over anything math related; Rizu Ogata, who is compared to a calculator because of her speed in finishing math problems, but of course wants a future in the arts field because she is perplexed by the one problem she can't solve: human emotions; and finally, Uruka Takemoto, who is maybe the best swimmer in the universe but has the attention span of a gnat.

This volume introduces each character and shows Yuiga's attempts to find a way to help them. We learn about their little quirks and peculiarities, from Fumino's belief that her dead mother is perhaps a star in the sky, Rizu's sad habit of playing games by herself, and Uruka having a crush on Yuiga,and her selfish desire to be liked by Yuiga more than he likes the others.

Uruka takes up most of the active romance angle here, since the others seem too wrapped up in themselves to even notice Yuiga as something other than yet another tutor. There are brief glimpses of  romantic insight as both Fumino and Rizu notice how kind Yuiga is, but their dedication to school soon eclipses that. In fact, other than Uruka, the only one who seems generally interested in Yuiga is his own sister, who freaks out at these new girls in her brother's life. Maybe it's a cultural thing.

In lieu of romance, though, we get quite a few jokes, most of which either centre around misunderstandings, (Yuiga tackles Uruka because of reasons,  which the others see as a rather forceful make out session)  mistakes that are interpreted as inappropriate (Uruka mistakenly sends Yuiga one of her swimsuits as a gift , which could be interpreted as a possible fantasy aid, since she is forever waltzing around in her Speedo,)  and/or boobs. To this end, there is helpful gradation of cup sizes for comedic purposes, with Fumino being the smallest, Uruka being larger and Rizu being so large that Yuiga's siblings take note and shout out how large her breasts are when they first meet her. Maybe it's a cultural thing.

(Or it's just an attempt to win over shonen readers who find this romance manga in their beloved Jump. A little from column A, a little from column B.)

We Never Learn is oddly enjoyable, with each chapter either highlighting a character insight with Deep Emotion or climaxing in yet another blushworthy inappropriate comment or unexpected physical entanglement. There are also actual study aids thrown into the mix, so a reader might actually learn something, when they aren't waiting for another full panel of Uruka's backside as she dives into yet another pool, or Rizu putting on a tight bathing suit, or Fumino taking a bath, or....