I’ve got a big pile of comics I plan to write about, and many of them are much better than the second volume of Miyuki Eto’s Hell Girl (Del Rey). But it’s a marked improvement over the first, and I find myself a little fixated on the book’s weird morality.
For those who aren’t familiar with the book’s premise (originally developed by The Jigoku Shoujo Project), characters in distress can log onto a web site and consign their tormentors to hell. The cost for this service is rather high, as the consigners agree to spend eternity in that insalubrious locale as well. (What if they end up in the same part of hell as their victims? Awkward.)
In the first volume, there wasn’t a long-term thinker in sight. Otherwise decent people, pushed to the point of desperation, decided without hesitation that their own damnation was worth it if they could punish their enemies. If the book had been about the pitfalls of immediate gratification and the fruitlessness of revenge that would be one thing, but those subjects never came up in the first installment.
Eto is a little more nuanced this time around. There’s a charmingly nasty story about a conniving ice skater who’s trying to use the urban legend to her advantage without suffering the consequences of the bargain. Two other chapters present Hell Girl as a means of protecting the innocent from a malignant influence rather than avenging innocents after the fact. Best of all, Eto picks up a waiting-period aspect from the anime, giving clients time to do a costs-benefits analysis before committing themselves.
Hell Girl still isn’t brilliant by any means, but the added uncertainty does elevate it from being just a bizarre curiosity. And it’s still enough of a bizarre curiosity to maintain that kind of morbid interest.
(Review based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.)
Upcoming 3/26/2008
Some picks from the ComicList for Wednesday, March 26, 2008:
Do you need anyone else to tell you that Hiro Mashima’s Fairy Tail (Del Rey) is a very entertaining fantasy adventure? Probably not, but I’ll chime in with my agreement anyways. Mashima isn’t aiming exceptionally high here, offering unapologetically mainstream entertainment about quirky wizards and their comic quests. It’s a very good example of an increasingly crowded field of comics that offer storytelling that’s as amiable as it is accomplished. The characters are lively, the art is eye-catching, and the stories are fast-paced and varied.
I think it’s smart of Del Rey to introduce the series by releasing two volumes at once. Endearing as it is, it’s also fairly lightweight, so doubling the quantity available should help to cement it in readers’ affections to a degree that a single volume couldn’t, at the same time drawing more critical interest than the series might have enjoyed otherwise. As I said, there’s a lot of competition in the field of amiable, accomplished, mainstream entertainment, especially on the manga shelves.
So yes, there’s nothing wrong with a comic that only wants to entertain. Allow me to contradict that assertion by wondering if Eiji Otsuka and Sho-u Tajima’s MPD-Psycho (Dark Horse) has enough on its mind. Part of the reason I’m so fond of Otsuka’s The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service is the writer’s ability to fold deeper issues into superficially engaging stories. Imaginative gore and varied psychoses aside, MPD-Psycho seems to be vamping along, and I’ve got the feeling that it’s really going to need some larger purpose to keep me from losing patience. Up to this point, it’s read like a collection of creepy grace notes (like barcodes on people’s eyeballs) in place of a driving, meaningful narrative.
Along with Charles Berberian, Philippe Dupuy has created the wonderfully entertaining Mr. Jean, star of Get a Life (Drawn & Quarterly), and Maybe Later, a nicely modulated look at their creative process. Drawn & Quarterly offers a solo work from Dupuy, Haunted, which sounds a lot less down-to-earth but very intriguing.
Villard offers a handsome paperback collection of David Petersen’s first Mouse Guard mini-series. In addition to the beautifully rendered, smartly told story of courageous rodents, there are plenty of extras that make the $17.95 price tag very reasonable.