Samurai Executioner, Vol. 3: The Hell Stick
Koike and Kojima's 1990s manga, Samurai Executioner, finally emerging in English, is essentially a police procedural series set in the Edo period in Japan (1603-1867) and revolving around the title character,  Asaemon, whose background was explored in the first story in When the Demon Knife Weeps (2004).  Two of the three stories in  this book focus on Asaemon, and in the other, he is more involved than in all but the first Demon Knife story. A pyromaniac arsonist, the rapist-murderer son of a brewer for the shogunate court, and a freelance policeman who framed a man Asaemon beheaded are the culprits. Slashing violence, convincingly rendered gore, nudity (nonfrontal), and sex (gritty but not pornographic) occur in every story, but what distinguishes all is the dazzling plenitude of angles of vision, the masterly use of shading, and the tremendous energy in Kojima's strictly black-and-white artwork. Koike's dialogue, in which the diction reflects the character's personality and status, burnishes each story's noirish sheen.Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved