Category: Graphic Novels

Kill Six Billion Demons First Impressions (Books 1 and 2)

by macksamson, posted in Graphic Novels, Western Media

I found 5 Worlds okay, The Witch Boy less than okay, and before them, I tried Amulet and Cleopatra in Space, to little success as well. I have been at my wits end to find a good Western graphic novel. But now, through a publishing medium that I didn’t know about until just recently, I might have just found a GN that I can seriously enjoy. And that GN, or webcomic rather, is Abbadon’s Kill Six Billion Demons.

In Kill Six Billion Demons, a young woman named Allison is enjoying some… er… quality time with her boyfriend when they are rudely interrupted by an assortment of demons. They kidnap her boyfriend, and stuff a weird thing into her skull, which transports her to another world. Yeah, it’s pretty simple.

First, in case you decide to read the original web version, I should give some pointers about the site to save you some headache. For some reason, when you select a chapter from the drop-down on the left, it displays all the chapter pages in reverse order. So unfortunately, you’ll have to scroll down to the very bottom of the webpage, and likely click to a second web page in the archive to view the actual beginning. It’s faster than going back to chapter one and clicking the chapter skip button over and over again! 

If you couldn’t tell from the intro paragraph, KSBD is a rootin’ tootin’ good time. It’s a bit expositiony at first, but it’s legitimately good exposition about Throne, the world it’s set in. It’s a very interesting and creative place, full of weirdos of all shapes and sizes. The creation story of Throne is very wild and complex, and it seems to integrate literally every religion known to man in its lore. It’s borderline overwhelming, and it makes a pretty straightforward plot seem more convoluted than it is.

One issue I did have- and it’s one that’s entirely my fault- is that I had a very hard time following a lot of the dialogue. For the most part, Allison’s portion of the story was fine. But whenever White Chain or literally anyone else came up, they pretty much spoke like the Bible met Shakespeare and had a kid. It is definitely very eloquently written, but like I said, it’s a SERIOUS mouthful.

My other issue ended up being with the cast. While they are by far the best graphic novel cast I’ve seen so far, they are high in abundance… and weird names. Allison starts out kinda whiny, but after the end of book 1, she stops messing around and becomes very spunky. White Chain is much more complicated… to the point where I don’t quite know what to think of him (or her?) yet. So far, my favorite character is Cilo, a blue devil who ends up tagging along with Allison and offers a lot of sass. Most other characters appear for about five seconds… and have some seriously weird names that went in one end of my brain and immediately out the other.

Overall, the story is seriously good. Just because my pea-brain was too small to comprehend it doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. The author really gave it their all when making this narrative and the world it’s set in. There is so much lore that it begs for rereads just so you can soak it all in. It can easily take over an hour just to get through half a book because of how much content there is.

Also, I finally read a Western comic with really good art. KSBD has an abstract and twisted style that suits itself perfectly. The character design is incredible, and much better than the other GNs I’ve read at this point. KSBD also seems to have a better grasp of actual PANEL FLOW than those others that I read. I don’t know why it was so much better, but it just was. While motion lines are still sparse, the illustrator uses perspective and gesture drawing to give the action scenes legitimate sizzle.

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Current Verdict: 8.5/10

It’s not perfect, but Kill Six Billion Demons is definitely the best Western comic I’ve read thus far. But since it’s a webcomic, updates will likely be sporadic, making it difficult to commit to the long haul. I’m willing to finish it; it’s just a matter of when. For now, I recommend it for fans of edgy stuff.

The Witch Boy Full Trilogy Review

by macksamson, posted in Children's Novels, Graphic Novels, Western Media

I said in my 5 Worlds post that I haven’t had the best track record with Western graphic novels. But you know what, I’m still trying my best to understand the appeal of the medium. Today’s [hopefully not] victim is The Witch Boy series, written by Molly Knox Ostertag and published by Scholastic (the same publisher as Amulet… good sign already).

A boy named Aster comes from a long line of magic, demon-fighting wizards. The men of the family are good at turning into magic, the girls are good at literally everything else. Young Aster sucks at shapeshifting, but he happens to have a knack for girl magic. Too bad it’s forbidden.

The Witch Boy is an episodic trilogy where Aster hangs out until some conflict rears its ugly head, and thank goodness it is! If this was a stand-alone graphic novel, it would’ve felt rushed. While it does spend a decent amount of time setting things up, the plot suddenly kicks into high gear out of nowhere, and the entire conflict of the first book is resolved in a very anticlimactic matter.

It doesn’t get much better later on, though. The other two books, The Hidden Witch and The Midwinter Witch, are presented in a similar manner. There isn’t enough time to really grow attached to any characters before sh** hits the fan. Each of these arcs would’ve been two or three volumes in a manga. “They would be three or four volumes in a manga, because manga suck and waste time with filler,” you point out. That’s not an inaccurate point; I hate the stupidly long cavalry battle in Prison School as much as the next guy. But a truly good manga will give you the right amount of time to get immersed in the world and the characters in a way that feels organic.

To be brutally honest, I don’t think I would’ve grown attached to the characters even if The Witch Boy was three times longer. They’re all my least favorite character trope; normal human beings. And despite the series being called The Witch Boy, the titular witch boy’s entire arc is concluded in just the first book. The second and third books tackle the character arc of Ariel Torres. She’s better than Aster, but not by a wide margin. While she’s given the most development by far, there is a disconnect because it’s all from the perspective of Aster- an observer, so you never really get to see her tragic backstory in its full crotch-kickedy-ness (professional term). Maybe the series would’ve been better if Ariel was the main character the whole way through?

If there’s any character I disliked the most, it was freaking Charlie. She’s the embodiment of that slice-of-life equivalent of wish fulfilment fantasies: the magical, down-to-earth, hyper-supportive friend who just appears to “save” the depressed main character. In this case, she saves Aster in the first book, and Ariel in the second book, by just compulsively wanting to help them for an undefined reason. While it’s certainly possible for someone this compassionate to exist, it’s not likely- given how unstable most teens are- and as indicated in my Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki post, I don’t think it’s a good element for a narrative.

I don’t feel like there’s any substance put into these characters, but that’s- again- a consequence of how short the whole series is. Also, like with the other Western comics I’ve read, you don’t get any monologue to really know how they feel. “Monologues waste time, like in those stupid battle shounen manga,” you argue. Again, in a bad manga, monologues can get excessive. But sometimes, it’s necessary in order to really get in people’s heads. “How about understanding basic human emotions and non-verbal cues?” Well, in that case, I’m sorry for not being good at social skills.

I get that there’s some underlying theme with genders, given the whole “boys do this, girls do that.” I don’t mean to sound ignorant, but as someone who had a My Little Pony doll for each of his LEGO sets, I couldn’t take such rigid labeling seriously, despite the fact that I do know it’s sadly commonplace. But due to Ariel’s priority over Aster, the series doesn’t even explore that theme in much depth to begin with.

In the end, my biggest issue- like with the other GNs I’ve read- lies in the artwork. I don’t really mind the simplistic, cartoony character designs, but I do mind the sparse use of motion lines. There are some motion lines, but they’re used for very trivial things, like hand gestures, and not during more urgent scenes, such as- you know- fighting a demon or something. “Use your imagination, you piece of crap,” you assert. Look, I read regular novels- which are almost entirely words- every day, and provided that the writing is good enough, I can paint a pretty vivid picture in my brain. The Witch Boy is targeted toward elementary schoolers, and going off of my experience as one, no kid would have the capacity to just “imagine” stuff with so little visual information.

My biggest issue with the art is how it’s used to tell the story, or lack thereof. I could’ve downed each volume in under an hour, but I took my sweet time and really tried to understand how the composition was supposed to, you know, work. But even with how much I stared at pages of this thing, I just couldn’t see it. 

Like with other GNs, The Witch Boy uses half a page- or even an entire page- with a mere establishing shot. Otherwise, most panels are rectangular and arranged in uninteresting patterns. But the author at leasts goes a couple of extra miles; by changing the negative space around the panels to black when it’s dark, and by having “slime-shaped” panels whenever something eerie is occurring. Unfortunately, I still couldn’t get immersed in the story, its characters, or its world.

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Final Verdict: 5.75/10

I didn’t enjoy The Witch Boy. I don’t know what it is, but trying to understand and appreciate these comics has been an absolute hassle for me. I exited my comfortable zone of Japanese culture and busty waifus, tried something unfamiliar, and it didn’t pay off. I’ll admit it, this negative review is entirely my fault. I apologize to the author for insulting something that they poured their heart into. Maybe someday, if I ever can enjoy a Western comic, I’ll come back to The Witch Boy, and realize just how great it truly was.

5 Worlds First Impressions (Volumes 1 -2)

by macksamson, posted in Graphic Novels, Western Media
Covers of books 1 and 2.

I did not expect the first comic I covered would be a Western graphic novel instead of a manga, considering the fact that I’ve been reading manga for over seven years. Since this is a Weeb Revues first, let me explain how I’m thinking of approaching comics. Most individual volumes don’t have enough material for me to write a good blog about them one at a time. Plus, there’s the fact that I have read ahead to the more recent chapter releases, thanks to things like Viz’s Jump subscription. So what I’m thinking of doing is to do a first impression of comics I haven’t read before, then a full review when I finish them. The problem is that you won’t get to know my general thoughts on the 100-odd manga I’ve already read prior to starting this blog… I’ll figure something out.

Before we get started, I need to give my background on Western comics. I grew up not reading a single comic book- with my only exposure to the culture being the Christopher Reeve Superman movie. I only just got into comics earlier this year- 2019. My first graphic novel was Amulet. I read the first three volumes, and I hated it. I don’t use that word all the time, but Amulet pushed me over the edge. I could have an entirely separate blog detailing exactly why I hate it so much, but I won’t, because there would be a LOT of salt. Later on, I read Cleopatra in Space. I found that one to be much better, but it seemed to be too fast-paced for its own good. I had planned to tackle 5 Worlds, published by Random House, third because it looked the best out of all the graphic novels I’d seen, and boy did I make a good call!

Being a kids graphic novel, the premise of 5 Worlds is pretty simple. The titular five worlds, consisting of Mon Domani and its four moon-planets, are going through real tough crap, thanks to deteriorating ecosystems and some evil whatsit called the Mimic. Apparently, the only way to turn things back to normal is to light beacons built on each of the worlds. Fortunately, we have people called sand dancers, who do interpretive dance to manipulate, well, sand. However, the beacons can only be lit by a special dancer who has the Living Fire. It’s a good premise with a lot of wiggle room for a fantastic adventure.

The characters, however, are less than fantastic. Oona Lee, the main protagonist, is a marginally better version of Emily from Amulet, but she’s still kind of generic. She’s also just about as much of an overpowered protagonist as Emily was; the dialogue has this “the sand knows” line often that lets us know how she’s able to do some of the things, that according to the rules established, she shouldn’t be able to do because she’s supposed to suck at sand dancing. An Tzu is my least favorite character; he jumps to conclusions way too fast, plus he’s been the least useful in terms of abilities. Jax Amboy is the best character, relatively speaking. He’s got a decent lover-boy personality, plus he’s pretty nifty in battle. But overall, this cast just doesn’t wow me. It’s not the authors’ fault; I had the same issue with both Amulet and Cleopatra in Space. I just can’t help but compare these comics to manga. The pacing and structure is very different between the two mediums.

For some reason, Western graphic novels seem to have quicker plot progression than manga, and the panels in them seem to be incredibly large, which means that they need more pages in order to convey the same content. 5 Worlds seems to be the most efficient out of what I’ve read thus far. It helps that the books themselves have averaged at 240 pages a pop, but even then it still moves too fast. As a consequence, they’ve had to “pull a Disney” (you know, like how parents commonly get killed off in Disney movies) so we can sympathize with the characters immediately: Oona Lee’s sister having run away from home, An Tzu having some kind of Back to the Future disease, and Jax Amboy not having any real friends (well, that’s what the description says). To compare this to a manga with similarly fast pacing, Made in Abyss, that manga might’ve had two unremarkable main characters, but it also had a cast of phenomenal side characters that left a strong impression on me, despite how brief their screentime was.

Similarly, when a big character-based plot twist happens, the emotional impact of it didn’t resonate with me since it occurs just as I’m getting acquainted with the character. I can appreciate that the authors don’t beat around the bush, but in this case, they’re beating the exact location that the bush will be in before it’s even existed yet! But keep in mind that I love One Piece, where you don’t get most characters’ full backstory until over ten years worth of published material.

The art of 5 Worlds is the best out of the three graphic novels I’ve read. It’s a very cartoony and whimsical style with eye-catching colors. Western comics seem to stack similarly sized panels together in order to showcase motion in a sort of flipbook style. I do not find this as impactful as with manga that normally use gesture drawing lines and foreshortening. I did flip through some DC and Marvel comics at my local library, and the action seems to be done similarly, to my surprise. I would’ve expected more from the significantly more complex artwork. Is it a strictly Western thing? Regardless of if it is or not, I can’t get used to it, as opposed to my first manga, where I could understand the medium almost right away.

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Current Verdict: 7.85/10

Despite all my nitpicks, 5 Worlds is shaping up to be one of the better Western comics out there. It’s just a real shame that the story moves too fast to really let it grow on me. It’s entertaining and appealing. I’ve read two volumes thus far, and I’ll try to finish this series and put out a full review. But with new volumes only coming out annually, it’s going to be a long process!