Comic World News

April 22, 2008:
CWN and the Grand Finale! -

February 4, 2008:
In Conclusion - David ends his CWN run with Tezuka's MW from Vertical

February 2, 2008:
Acting Like You Have Nothing to Prove -

February 2, 2008:
The Shoegazer Returns - A New Year Begins, And Our Narrator Makes A Pledge

January 30, 2008:
Tim's Reviews -

September 13, 2007:
Wizard World Chicago Loot, Part One - Stykman, Empty Chamber, the Ztarian Saga, and yes, Little Bunny Foo Foo

February 15, 2007:
I Come Not to Bury Nick Cage... - But to mourn the death of my punchline

November 20, 2006:
The End - Rich's last Chicks & Romance

November 8, 2006:
Joann Sfar's Klezmer - And a Front Racks Hiatus

October 4, 2006:
This Month's Guest: Dave Gibbons - From the pages of Elephantmen!

September 18, 2006:
Back in Berlin - or How I spent my summer

July 29, 2006:
KICKING UP A STORM - An interview with David Lloyd

June 19, 2006:
You Ain't Never Had A Friend Like Me. - Graeme looks at Spidey's "genies"

December 18, 2005:
Disappointed - Sad news for fans of Busiek's CONAN, Stephen King, and others

December 13, 2004:
JUSTICE UNPLUGGED 2 at last !!! - By Fabrice Sapolsky & Xavier Fournier

December 2, 2004:
THE TWELFTH AND FINAL STEP - Say it ain't so, Dan.

November 23, 2004:
The importance of editing -

September 29, 2004:
Mystery and Conundrum indeed! - Where in the world is Jason Pomerantz?

September 13, 2004:
Hello and Goodbye and Hello Again - Change is in the air at CWN and it smells sweet.

August 12, 2004:
The Rise of the Web Toon - New Business Model or Dumb Luck?

July 30, 2004:
The Name Says it All... - Spin Doctors revamp Boomerang.

July 27, 2004:
Bigger Isn't Always Better -

June 8, 2004:
Pre-emptive Strike: MoCCA Arts Festival - Looking forward to the con, rather than looking back at it

The Layer Method
Our top Secret time-saving technique for creating and merging balloons and tails in Illustrator.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Perfect Worlds

Goong: the Royal Palace and To Terra...

Goong: The Royal Palace (Ice Kunion) by Park So Hee was not quite what I expected. Pitched as a look at what South Korea would be like if the monarchy was still in place, I had expected the narrative landscape to be drastically different, with significant social and political ramifications in evidence.

But in the first volume of the appealing series, royalty has been equated to celebrity � glamorous and remote objects of gossip. They adhere to the traditions and trappings of their station, but there�s no evident power associated with it. In other words, it�s a contemporary version of royalty, with duty divorced from governance and dignity at odds with notoriety.

Perhaps that will change as the story progresses and readers will get a clearer sense of the royal family�s political functions, but for now, it�s a serviceable backdrop for an appealing, sometimes pointed romantic comedy. Fortunately, Park has assembled an appealing cast of characters and rendered them in a pretty, stylish fashion.

Chae-Kyung hardly seems like the kind of girl who�d attract the attention of a crown prince. She�s a middling student, but she�s funny and outgoing. Her disposition wouldn�t seem to lend itself to palace life. That�s precisely why Crown Prince Shin decides she�d be the perfect bride. In typical adolescent fashion, he finds the way to accede to his parents� wishes for a hasty marriage while still irritating them as much as possible.

While they don�t particularly like each other for the conventional romantic-comedy reasons � she�s too quirky, and he�s too arrogant � each has a reasonably compelling reason for agreeing to the marriage, though neither is especially pleased with the arrangement. They�re forceful and canny enough to find the benefits in a situation where they have little control.

Park is familiar enough with the mechanics and style of this kind of story that she can take good-natured pokes at them. Some of the early scenes feature very funny digressions that imagine what would happen if this was a more conventional girl manhwa. In reality, Goong isn�t that far removed from its conventional counterparts, and Park indulges in just as many category standards as her peers, but at least she has a sense of self-awareness and wit about it.

And if the story doesn�t take advantage of its royal setting in the ways I expected, it does quickly establish a sympathetic and interesting cast. It would be great if Park invested future chapters with more socio-political depth, but it will still be a perfectly engaging romantic comedy if she doesn�t.

*

A few weeks ago, Vertical offered some galley proofs of the first volume of Keiko Takemiya�s To Terra� via the publisher�s blog. The book is Vertical�s first step away from the manga of Osamu Tezuka, and it�s notable for a number of reasons.

Takemiya is one of the Magnificent 49ers, pioneering women manga-ka who remade the sh�jo category. To Terra� was one of the first examples of a woman sh�jo artist making the shift to sh�nen works. (In the early days, comics for girls were often considered a training ground for male manga-ka, as they waited for entry into the big leagues, so plenty of men had already made the sh�jo-to-sh�nen transition.)

It�s an acknowledged science-fiction classic, but like Tezuka�s Buddha and Ode to Kirihito, it�s anything but a static museum piece. The concerns Takemiya addresses in the To Terra� feel frighteningly contemporary.

Human society has overcome environmental disaster. Earth�s resources had been spent to the point of exhaustion and planetary inhabitability. To remedy the situation, humanity undertook a frightening experiment in social engineering called Superior Domination. Daily life became strictly regimented, with the citizenry sacrificing independence for security.

Children are raised removed from general society by approved foster parents in a process that selects the worthy to achieve citizenship on Earth. Passion has been replaced by order, and the only love that seems to matter is love of the state that protects and nurtures humanity.

Chilling as that sounds, there�s an even more unsavory side effect. An evolutionary offshoot of humanity, the telepathic Mu, has been targeted for elimination by Superior Domination. They�re viewed as emotionally unstable, and their extrasensory abilities frighten garden-variety humanity. In spite of humanity�s attempts to identify and remove them from the mainstream, a group of Mu have survived and gone into hiding. They hope to claim their inalienable rights as humans and return to Earth.

The Mu leadership have pinned their hopes on Jomy Marcus Shin, a young human on the cusp of full citizenship. Superior Domination�s monitoring systems have failed to uncover Jomy�s latent telepathic abilities, and the Mu are determined to rescue him before his inevitable destruction. Jomy is torn between years of anti-Mu propaganda and his iconoclastic strength of character, which had always put him at odds with Superior Domination�s desire for order and tranquility. Jomy is a bridge between human and Mu, possessing the strengths of both, but he�s believably ambivalent and wonders if he fully belongs to neither group.

Takemiya builds her world with a combination of delicacy and ruthlessness. She articulates the emotional consequences of a soulless society with nuance and detail, but she doesn�t shy away from the brutality that kind of society would undertake to achieve its aims. For me, the success of science fiction or fantasy hinges on just that kind of credible world building.

Vertical has demonstrated a great instinct for balancing an emphasis on classic manga that still feels vibrantly alive and urgent. To Terra� promises to expand on that trend and push it in new directions.