From: rmc@wang.com (R Mark Chilenskas)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.manga
Subject: Sun Comics and Blue Sky Blue "Nestrobber"
Date: 11 Nov 92 16:07:01 GMT
Organization: Wang Labs, Lowell MA, USA

The new Sun Comics and Blue Sky Blue's "Nestrobber" showed up at
Million Year Picnic this weekend.

Raika, by Fujiwara Kamui, story by Terashima Yu, continues to be a good read.
Issues 9-12 contain a long (more than one issue) fight scene, Queen Iyo 
trying to decide whether she should be decisive or wishy-washy, simplification
of the political situation (followed immediately by a new complication) and
more reasons to dislike Chosei, the Ninja Master from the Evil Empire.  (Hmm,
sounds like another "Hidden Fortress" storyline...)  The action takes place
at night, in caves, and indoors, so these are very dark issues ink-wise.  
With the lower quality paper, i worry that it will smudge some in a year or
two.  Iyo's character design seems to be evolving toward a more Miyazaki look;
one panel reminded me distinctly of Nausicaa before her haircut.  This is not
necessarily good, as the other character designs don't use that smooth simple
style.  Fujiwara-san still has a good sense of when to use background detail
to slow down the reader, and when to simplify it to move quickly through an
action scene.  However, i doubt that this story will make it on to anyone's
list of favorites.

I think i now have a better handle on Ragnarok Guy by Okazaki Tsuguo.
Issues 3 and 4 are now out, and its going to be a Western.  Gun
slinger goes to town, rids it of worse bad guys, decides to move on so
he will not endanger his new friends in town.  Actually, it could well
get more complicated than that, depending on what Okazaki-san does
with the folk chasing the Gunslinger.

Okazaki-san is allergic to rectangular panels, which is fine by me.  He
doesn't do panel-in-panel embedding, which i think would improve some of
his larger panels, but so it goes.  The detail in the character designs is
fairly simple, more like anime than a detailed manga design.  There seems
to be a higher percentage of ink line shading to zip shading than i have
seen in other books recently.  Character positions move easily between 
panels;  there are no "how did he do that" gotchas or obvious poses.

A nice book, which i will continue buying.

High School Agent 1 and 2 was also available.  I leafed through 1 at the
store but didn't buy it.  Somehow, there just wasn't anything to grab my
attention, so i passed it by.  I can't remember the last time this 
happened with a Japanes translation.

Nestrobber is by Sakamoto Maya, story by Jo Duffy.  At any rate for the first
half of the book;  the second half is a prose story with 3 or 4 full page
illos by Colleen Doran.  I though it was nice that the inside of the front 
and back covers had pictures of the creative team.

I want to find some other work by Sakamoto-san.  Her lines are very crisp and
clear, and her rendering of snow is superb.  It lies and swirls rather than 
just covers the ground.  The faces have a lot of animation in them, though 
perhaps they look a bit too similar.  I guess i'm getting used to more
obvious caricatures as ways to tell drawn people apart.  The panel layout is
nice and irregular, and familiar enough that i found myself following it 
right-to-left more than once...  The use of panel-in-panel to portray 
simultaneous actions is very well done.

Jo Duffy needs to learn a lot about pacing a story.  The first 3 or 4
pages were nicely done, as we get to find out that the Nestrobbers
team has been together for a while, trained together, all want
families, and are officially supposed to concentrate only on their
work.  We find out that there might be a mole or double agent back at
HQ jeopardizing the Mission.  We don't find out much about the
Mission, but that's ok.  It's a Lovely Angels or James Bond story, so
the spy team will infiltrate something and blow it up.  What they
infiltrate and why isn't really important.  Oh yeah, it's a nuclear
threat.  However, the pacing during the infiltration left me very
confused.  There were real gaps and a sense of "how did they get
there?".  A page and a half just weren't enough to get from the main
gate to the control room.  I guess Jo Duffy felt constrained by 
having to find a stopping point with only half a book for space.

Frank Miller seems to think highly of this story.  At any rate, there
is a blurb by him on the back cover.  I can see liking the art, and
i may very well pick up issue 2 and treat it as a Japanese manga;
look at the pictures and see what you can pick up about the story.

Oh yeah, the other half, the prose thing.  The first three paragraphs
are single sentences, averaging 6 words each.  The fourth paragraph is
a 170 word run-on sentence.  The middle word of the sentence is 
"Fascist", applied to the administration of your high school.  It seems
as if the story was intended to be PC about hunger or something;  i 
don't know.  I tossed it in the "done" stack after the fourth paragraph.
I felt a lot better after looking through half a Maison Ikkoku volume 
and listening to some of the Wings of Honeamaise soundtrack.

R Mark Chilenskas
Chilenskas@Office.wang.com
Newsgroups: rec.arts.manga