Dark Wraith of Shannara, adapted by Robert Place Napton, illustrated by Edwin David, Del Rey, 208 pages, $13.95.
In Odd We Trust by Queenie Chan and Dean Koontz, Del Rey, 224 pages, $10.95.
The Reformed, story by Christopher Hart, art by Anzu, Del Rey, 176 pages, $10.95.
Warriors: Warrior’s Return, written by Dan Jolley, art by James L. Barry, Tokyopop/Harper Collins, 112 pages, $6.99.
As more and more prose publishers become aware of the whole “manga craze” (assuming, judging by the trouble some publishers are having, craze is even the proper term to use anymore) they naturally want to jump on the bandwagon. But how?
One way is to take one of the popular authors in their stable (bonus points if it’s a children’s or young teen author) and team him or her up with a young, upcoming artist that draws in an “animae-style” sort of way. The author doesn’t necessarily have to do any of the actual writing chores. That can be farmed out to another hack, I mean upcomer. Just so long as their name graces the cover and it looks sort of mangaish, all is well. The goal here is to drum up interest in the author’s main line of books, after all, not make great art or (god forbid) entertainment.
As you can tell by the above snark, I didn’t find much of either in the passel of graphic novel/OEL spin-offs I recently made my way through. With one exception, all exhibited a near-grandiose level of incompetence and general awfulness. Only one proved to be passable. Which one made the cut? Read on and find out.
We’ll lead off with Dark Wraith of Shannara, which is an apocryphal tale set in Terry Brooks’ Shannara series of books, hitherto fore unread by me and not likely to be picked up anytime soon. It’s apparently an all-new Shannara tale, though the title page says “adapted by Robert Place Newton,” which confuses me. Perhaps Brooks just wrote the plot on a post-it note and handed it to Napton to stretch out. I dunno.
Anyway, the book is a dreadfully dull affair, full of awkward, overly detailed art by Edwin David, who seems to be trying to channel some cross between Jim Lee and — I dunno, Tite Kubo? — and succeeding horrendously. He’s especially bad at the action scenes; I frequently had trouble discerning what was going on or who was doing what to whom.
But the bigger problem lies with the story, which is remarkably shallow. A young boy with potentially dangerous powers goes on a mission to stop an evil witch. He does. The end. I’m serious here. Absolutely nothing happens in the way of character development and no underlying themes are explored. A number of characters whom I assume are from previous Shannara books poke their heads up, which I suppose might please fans, but really, I suspect that even hardcore Brooks devotees are going to find much to enjoy here.
Moving on we come to one of the more ballyhooed OEL titles of late, In Odd We Trust, a collaboration between best-selling author Deean Koontz and Australian cartoonist Queenie Chan (The Dreaming). The book is an offshoot of Koontz’s “Odd” novels, which focus on a young man who solves crimes thanks to his ability to see and communicate (sorta) with the dead.
A lot of the problems that plague the Shannara book turn up here, though really, if anything, Odd is a far worse book. Chan’s characters are stiff and bland except for their oddly shaped faces — her renditions of LBJ and Elvis look about as much like those people as I do.
In his movie reviews, Roger Ebert likes to talk about the “Idiot Plot,” where everyone is required to act like a complete idiot in order to advance the plot. That rule is in full effect here. Consider this: You know that your babysitter is being stalked by a homicidal maniac who just killed a little boy, would you allow her to watch your kid for a night? How about this: If you’re the police chief of a small town and there’s a maniac in your town, would you put all available manpower on the case or have them march in the town parade?
And right there’s another serious problem with this book. The plot centers around the gruesome murder of a small child, yet everyone acts like it’s the equivalent of having your bicycle stolen. People are upset, but no one’s freaking out. It’s telling that we never once meet the parents of the dead child. Ultimately, In Odd We Trust isn’t just a bad manga, it’s irresponsible and kind of offensive.
Christopher Hart isn’t a famous author on the level of Dean Koontz, though he has written a number of popular “How to draw comics” art instruction books. He’s also the writer of The Reformed, yet another angsty vampire novel that crop in bookstores these days like roaches. You know, vampires used to be wicked cool. They wore capes, spoke with Hungarian accents and chased after big-breasted ladies in lacy lingerie. Now they’re all weepy and emo and listen to Bauhaus and whine about their lot in life all the time. Thanks for fucking nothing Anne Rice.
Reformed is more of the same. Giancarlo gets all moony-eyed and depressed when he falls for virginal gutterwhore Jenny. Plus, there’s this other totally badass evil vampire that’s killing folks and making it look like Giancarlo’s handiwork, putting the police on his tail.
As with Odd, everyone in Reformed acts like they’re a quarter shy of 25 cents. No one behaves in a manner that resembles actual human behavior, because if they did, the book would be over in two pages.
Singapore artist Anzu fares little better than Chan or David. Her characters come across as just as stiff and awkward, and she seems to have little understanding of how to tell a story sequentially. I think I know why too. Most aspiring OEL artists aren’t concerned with learning how to make comics — they want to draw their favorite characters in cool-looking poses. It’s all about the splash page or the cool ass back cover (Anzu’s work on the back of Reformed is lush and better than anything inside). The intricacies of composition and panel progression are largely lost on this crowd. Perhaps they should be buying more of Hart’s books.
Having read all that, I turned with a heavy heart to Warriors: Warrior’s Return, the third volume in a three-part tale that’s in turn based off of Erin Hunter’s frighteningly popular series about (wait for it) wild cats. Not wildcats, mind you, but wild cats. I was in no mood for a watered down Watership Down and I prepared for the worst as I cracked the book open.
Surprise! Warrior’s Return is actually a competent, nay, reasonably well-done story. All the problems that plague the above books are largely absent (or at least not as glaring) here. It’s not even the best book I read that day, let alone the year, but I was supremely grateful to have been spared another train wreck.
The plot is overly simplistic: a cat gets lost from his tribe and finds his way back home thanks to the help of a house cat whom he eventually falls in love with. All the plot points and character motivations are hit early and often, but writer Dan Jolley at least takes the time to have his characters interact with each other in plausible ways and progress emotionally in some fashion from point A to point B. As for artist James Barry, his backgrounds need serious work, but I was impressed that he was able to evoke a range of emotional expressions from his cast beyond “mad,” “sad” and “glad.”
I never thought I’d have anything nice to say about a cat comic that wasn’t What’s Michael, but there you go. Life is full of surprises.
June 13th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Ouch… kind of harsh. I had never heard of any of the other artists besides Queenie Chan so I decided to look them up. From I’ve seen, at least with Anzu and Edwin David is that they seem to be primarily illustrators rather than comic artists.
However, in the case of Chan, I believe she has a lot of promise and the ability to tell a story. Where you see the stiffness in her characters, I’m sure will improve as the years come, especially with honest criticism such as you’ve stated. After all her short chick comic was linked her not too long ago.
June 15th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Perhaps researching the topic might help a bit when it comes to the Terry Brooks GN. It was actually quite good in my opinion, especially for a first take. It has sold quite well. There was more to it than was just mentioned here as well. I would recommend that people check it out.