US$ 2.75 IR£ 2.50
Space Empires. Imperial family feuds. Kidnapping. Suicide. Cute furry animals. Science-as-god technology. Betrayal. Oriental-sounding names (I wouldn't know the real thing if it came up and nuzzled me).
Another space opera. This opens with a short introduction to Space Turtles whose shells can be used to build really strong spaceships if they're not too busy ruining the lives of people who live on oxygen-rich planets. It then switches through a few episodes in the lives and deaths of some of the players in the space war we're allegedly concerned with. The good guys are too clever for the assassin and the bad guy's wife gets blown up. The backdrop characters are all aliens, the players are anthropoid earth-like animals (and robots which can talk, but also go "eep" because it's cute). They carry swords (sorry - katana) and use zap guns, granades (sic), tractor beams, cloaking devices. The few female characters tend to hang around with their mouths open and their eyes wide, although one of them asks if she should do something and the bad guy's wife might have done something. But as I said, she gets blown up, so that's alright. All of the animals have topknots: if their ears are too short, tough luck - they'll just have to look silly. So I'm not very positive about the plot, the environment, or the structure.
Artwork. Rabbit looks mean. Rabbit looks casual. Rabbit looks desperate. Rabbit looks thoughtful ("rabbit" is Miyamoto Usagi; I suppose he's the central character in this series). I think I have a problem with anthropoid furry animals. Maybe that's a concept thing. I mean, it's all competently drawn, but not much more than that, and I don't see why Sakai didn't go and draw humans instead. Maybe he can't handle faces. The colouring is bright, but makes an awful lot of use of this fade-from-centre-to-edges effect that doesn't go too well with all of the solid shades they use. Um. No, I'm not too stunned by the artwork either.
Finally it's noteworthy for blowing lots of people up, landing heat- seeking shurikens (they can set their katana to Surge too) in a couple of faces, sticking metal spikes through someone (off-panel), all without showing a single drop of blood. The real problem with it is that it's being reviewed by someone who's at least teetering on the brink of mature readership. I think. And it's a kids' comic book. So maybe the kids would like it, but I'm not competent to stamp things suitable for immature readers.
Caveats: I probably wanted something original anyway. And I've only seen this one episode. It may not be representative. It better not be representative.
Conrad <chughes@maths.tcd.ie> And no, I don't believe in that web thing either. It's not that I have a problem with spiders, I just have a problem with effort and time and anything else you care to name (except spiders). So no home page.
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