One Piece Is Awesome, Example #47

As the plot of Eiichiro Oda's One Piece has progressed across nearly 50 volumes, the main subplot of the series looks to involve our heroes standing up against the power-hungry and corrupt, especially the World Government and its sanctioned group of pirates, the Seven Warlords of the Sea. I'm starting to formulate some theories about where the series is going to go as the Straw Hats continue to get stronger and come into more and more conflict with world powers, and I expect that eventually the people are going to start rallying behind them and stand up against their oppressors. We get a taste of that in the big climax of the Thriller Bark storyline in volume 49, as the Straw Hats look like they're going to face defeat against the hugely powerful Gecko Moria (one of the aforementioned Warlords), who has stolen the shadows of four of their number, and also a large number of others on the island. Anyone without a shadow will disintegrate in the sunlight, which is fast approaching over the horizon, but while most of the shadowless unfortunates have the impulse to run, their captain, a strange-looking woman named Lola, decides to stand alongside the Straw Hats and face the enemy:




It's not a huge moment, but it's a powerful one, a sign that people are starting to gain confidence in the ability of Luffy and his friends to face down the massively powerful oppressors of this world and refuse to cower under their thumbs any longer. I can't wait to see how this continues into future volumes; as ever, Oda definitely has a long-term plan for the series, and it's fascinating to see it play out.

The Neverending Fray: Ha ha, Arcadio is lame

Groo the Wanderer #68
By Sergio Aragones, Mark Evanier, Stan Sakai (lettering), and Janice Cohen (coloring)
Published by Epic Comics, 1990



A lot of the stories in Groo work as one-off tales, wrapping up their plots in a single issue without any need for a follow-up, but there are occasional "sequels" that work surprisingly well. This issue is one of those, following the events of the previous issue, in which Groo tried to replace a dragon that he had killed. However, this one doesn't just pick up where the previous story left off; it's actually presented as a story told by the Minstrel, after he wanders into a town who reveres Arcadio for slaying a dragon, and tells them the real story of what happened. It makes for an interesting theme of the way legends can often completely distort the reality of what happened, and it's also quite funny.

Minstrel's story tells about how Groo was trying to get rid of the "sissy" dragon that he was stuck with after the events of issue #67, but when he takes it to a town to try to sell it, the people panic and send for Arcadio to slay the beast. And thus begins what is probably my favorite Arcadio appearance in the series, since it's all about making a complete fool out of him. He's a character that I don't often enjoy, since he gets treated as a hero simply because he's handsome, and he usually ends up making Groo do all the work while taking all the credit for himself. Here, however, he's presented as vain and self-centered, and every attempt he makes to slay the dragon just makes him look like an idiot:




He tries to get help from Arba and Dakarba, asking them to make the dragon savage, but they mostly just laugh at him, make him look like even more of a fool, and force him to become romantically involved with Dakarba, the uglier of the two witches:



He eventually defeats the dragon (by accident), allowing for his reputation as a hero to be redeemed over time, but it's nice to see him get what he deserves for once. It ends up being a very satisfying issue, with the Minstrel providing a nice framing sequence that deflates the idea of heroism and legends. I really dig it.

Plus, there are some great moments, like this scene in which Groo tries to sell his dragon, resulting in one of those scenes of total chaos that Sergio does so well:



And I really like the title page, which has a nice poem by the Minstrel about why he tells the stories he does, in the middle of a great example of the amazing detail-packed scenes of people living their lives:



I love examining pages like that, discovering all the moments of domesticity that Sergio fits into his scenes and reveling in the way the world gets fleshed out so beautifully. The amount of work that goes into what could just be a shallow, silly barbarian comic continues to stagger me, even after I've read over 100 issues. I'll say it again: this series is something special, and each new issue reveals new depths. I'll be sad when I've got no more issues left to read.

Next: We're finally getting back to issue #101, "A New Land".

-----
This issue's stats:
Recurring characters: Minstrel, Arba and Dakarba, and Arcadio.
Moral: None.

Spanish words: The town of Lerolero is named after a sort of children's taunt, similar to "nyah nyah". Another town, Gafas, is named for the word for "glasses". Some books in Arba and Dakarba's lair bear the titles Brujas ("witches") and El Diablo ("the devil").
Hidden message(s): This jar says "this is not the hidden message":



The real hidden message comes later, with the writing on these books reading "This hidden message is to say farewell and thanks to Margaret Clark from Mark and Sergio":



Running jokes: In a callback to the old gags about Groo considering eating Rufferto, the dog gets jealous when he mistakes Groo's hungry look at a dragon with a look of love. People comment on the size of Arcadio's chin. Rufferto gets upset when Arcadio calls Groo his lackey. Somebody calls Groo a mendicant.
Mark Evanier's job(s): Reptile Choreographer
Letter column jokes: Joe Fonte says he has been reading Groo to his five-week-old son, and the child has yet to speak, so they will be hearing from his lawyer. Jim True complains that Mark has never printed any of his letters, so he's following his friend's ridiculous suggestion to place the letter in a paper pocket called an envelope, affix a sticky piece of paper in the corner, and deposit the letter in a blue box bolted to the sidewalk, even though he thinks the whole enterprise is rather silly. Mark responds by asking if his father read Groo to him when he was five weeks old. Joel Pierce writes a weird letter claiming he was captured by Iranian terrorists and forced to write a letter, but it was funny, and he doesn't think anything funny has ever appeared in Groo. In a P.S., he asks Mark to print the letter twice, so Mark does, although he says that he doesn't think it made it any funnier. Greg Bigoni contributes the issue's Grooism, in which a friend's little brother stuck a Reese's Pieces up his nose and had to wait for it to melt to get it out, which is something he thinks Groo would do. Mark replies that he doesn't think Groo would stick a Reese's Pieces up his nose, but he could probably fit a Whitman Sampler up there.
Miscellaneous: I like the newspaper headlines in this ad for the games Snake's Revenge and Super C:



The Neverending Fray index

One Piece Is Awesome, Example #46

In One Piece, Eiichiro Oda is such a strong stylist, he puts his own stamp on the standards of manga cartooning. I don't know if it was at all intentional, but I thought this scene from volume 48, in which Luffy is fighting the shadow-controlling Gecko Moria, was neat, since it looks like he's battling a swarm of Kirby dots:




I have no idea of Oda knows who Jack Kirby is, but it's a neat juxtaposition of artistic styles, even if it's an accident. That's two great tastes that taste great together.

The Neverending Fray: Groo vs. breakables

Groo the Wanderer #40
By Sergio Aragones, Mark Evanier, Stan Sakai (lettering), and Tom Luth (coloring)
Published by Epic Comics, 1988



Going back to older issues that I had previously missed can make for a slightly jarring experience, since the tone of the series has shifted subtly over the dozens of issues that took place in the interim. Or maybe this is just a so-so issue, featuring a few laughs, but nothing especially memorable, aside from a demonstration of Groo's single-mindedness when he sets out to achieve a certain goal. That's the story here, with our favorite mendicant looking for a job, but souring relations with a potential employers when he accidentally breaks a glass carafe. He pledges to replace the carafe, and sets out to find a new one, in a quest that ends up taking months, as he searches far and wide for the object, succeeding in obtaining several of them, but always managing to break them before he can get them back to his goal. And when he finally succeeds, it turns out to have been a pointless quest, since the original job would have been at, wait for it, a glass-blowing factory. Hey-o!

It's not a terrible premise or anything, but it gets a bit monotonous, with Groo repeatedly finding carafes and then immediately breaking them. There's one bit in which his stupidity gets kind of frustrating (yet still amusing), when he storms the castle of a king who owns a carafe, and he gets offered a bunch of gold, which would have precluded his need to get the job he's working toward, but he ignores it in favor of the object of his obsession. There are other decent gags here and there, but nothing hysterical enough to make this issue a classic.

I did like this scene of Groo searching far and wide for his carafe:



And this moment, in which Groo pointlessly demonstrates his prowess with his swords, was amusing, if a bit more show-offy than the character usually is:



There's always something to enjoy, but having read so many of these stories, I'm starting to feel like I need them to be really good to stand out. I hope I'm not burning out on the series, but I expect I'll quickly be laughing along with the next story I read, any rough spots immediately forgotten.

Next: Another issue which I had previously missed, #68, "The Hero of Lerolero",

-----
This issue's stats:
Recurring characters: None in the story, but the Groo Crew is featured in the Groo-Grams banner:



Moral: "A little work with your brain can save you a lot of work with your body."

Spanish words: None.
Hidden message(s): There's one in the flowery decorations surrounding the story's title:



And another one on the papers in this panel:



Running jokes: Groo errs. He also manages to sink a boat without even boarding it, and he does some mulching.
Mark Evanier's job(s): Factotum
Letter column jokes: Kuasa Ali hypnotizes Mark and commands him to shave off half of Sergio's moustache, which gives Mark a joke for the rest of the column, interrupting his answers to the rest of the letters to laugh about how ridiculous Sergio looks. This precludes most of the rest of the jokes for the column, although Chris Blunt has a good gag when he asks if when Groo sent Sage to the top of the world, that made him the Ice Sage. Puns!

The Neverending Fray index

One Piece Is (Mostly) Awesome, Example #45

The Thriller Bark storyline of Eiichiro Oda's One Piece seems to be a chance to throw in all sorts of spooky stuff, like zombies, ghosts, bats, and haunted houses. Oda has a lot of fun with it, coming up with all sorts of crazy character designs consisting of different types of people and animals stitched together in Frankensteinian manner. But he's not going for straight-up horror; he'd rather make funny jokes, like this moment from volume 46 when a zombie comes up out of the ground to attack Luffy:



Or Luffy's reaction to another apparently undead fellow:



There are some horrific elements to the story, with members of the crew having their shadows (i.e. souls) stolen and used to reanimate zombies, but everything is mostly just played for laughs or the usual type of obstacle to be defeated. There was one legitimately disturbing scene though, but whether it was included as a common horror-movie trope or as the sort of thing that happens in a shonen manga, it's one of the few cases so far for which I've got to give demerits to the series. In the scene in question, Nami is taking a bath when an invisible enemy enters and assaults her:




That's just not cool; there's no need for what is basically a rape threat in a kids' manga, and it's especially annoying that it reduces a strong, capable character like Nami to a damsel in distress for much of the rest of the storyline. I guess the series can't be absolutely perfect, but seeing Oda stoop to something like this is a real disappointment. Luckily, he doesn't go very far with the assault itself, and while Nami gets stuck as an unconscious, unwilling bride for too long, once she wakes up, she gets to join the action and take her place as an essential member of the crew. As long as Oda can respect his characters, he'll have me cheering for him, so hopefully this is the last time I'll have reason to complain.

One Piece Is Awesome, Example #44

I love the myriad crazy characters that show up in Eiichiro Oda's One Piece, from the strange villains to the eccentrics that the crew helps out (or vice versa) along their journeys, but there are occasional people that I fall right in love with, for whatever reason. The last one was Mr. 2 Bon Clay, but my new favorite, Brook the living skeleton, shows up in volume 46. He's just so silly, a source of constant puns about bones (mostly clean ones, surprisingly), and an enthusiastic, friendly fellow that has been drifting all alone on a ghost ship for so long that he has trouble figuring out how to relate to people appropriately. Here's his introductory scene:





Luffy immediately invites him to join the crew, of course, because he's funny and weird. Maybe that's a reason that I enjoy this series so much; it's welcoming of strangeness and willing to have a laugh even in the midst of high drama. I'm happy to say that Brook does indeed join the crew following the Thriller Bark storyline, so I should be enjoying his company for some time to come.

C2E2 2013: Some comics which were acquired

Manta Dad #1
By Chad Sell
Self-published



Chad Sell's Manta-Man webcomic is a fun goof on superheroes, starring a guy with the semi-useless power of being able to turn into a flying manta ray, and following his adventures as he gets involved with ninjas, monsters, homophobic closet-case rivals, and his supervillain girlfriend who constantly picks fights with him as a form of foreplay. It seems like a fun lark for Sell, allowing him to throw whatever crazy ideas he has onto the page/screen, but as the series has progressed, he has built up an interesting world full of crazy concepts and well-drawn relationships between the characters. And now, with the spinoff/flashback series Manta Dad, he's developing things further, going back to detail the early years of Manta-Man, as he accompanies his Freddie Mercury-like oceanographer father on a sea voyage that involves as much, er, canoodling with his beefcakey documentary crew as it does actual filming of weird sea life. When the kid's shapeshifting abilities are revealed to his father, the two of them end up bonding in a surprisingly touching manner, although the time Manta Dad spends with his son ends up causing some jealousy issues with the rest of the crew, setting the stage for more conflict in future issues. The extra space that a full issue provides (as opposed to the one-strip-at-a-time pace of a webcomic) lets Sell play out the story at a nice pace, resulting in a wonderful slice of nicely-illustrated character work that also includes plenty of snappy dialogue and cool creatures like shadow sharks and robo-whales. Sell is a fairly new talent on the comics scene, but this comic demonstrates that he's improving his skill at an impressive pace, and I'm excited to watch and see as he continues to create quality work.
-----

Solution Squad #1
Written by Jim McClain
Art by Rose McClain
Self-published



It seems mean to complain about a well-meaning comic like this, which stars a team of superheroes who fight crime using math-based powers with the intent of educating the (presumably youthful) reader, but it's just so darn square. The characters and their designs are incredibly generic, the plot is a goofy bit of fluff involving a villain robbing a museum and capturing the heroes in an easily-escapable death trap, and the story is structured in the least imaginative way possible, with an especially hokey introduction to all the characters via a two-page spread that consists of images of each person surrounded by lengthy captions that explain everyone's names, powers, and relationships (a scene which seems especially superfluous given the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe-style profile pages in the back of the issue that provide every possible detail you would ever need to know about each character). That said, it's hard to fault the comic too much, because whatever its shortcomings, it's really sincere, seeming to meet its goal of providing a reasonably entertaining story that educates about simple mathematical concepts (this issue's being the prime number sieve). The art is clean and crisp, and while the characters are generic, there's still an effort made to create a racially-diverse team made up of people that are more than just names and basic traits (the time-traveling "cool guy" from 1984 is a nice touch, providing catch-phrases and attitude but having a reason for seeming kind of dorky). It's probably not going to set the world on fire, but as a cute educational concept, it might be something that kids could be interested in. That's something, right?
-----

Bird Witch #1
By Kat Leyh
Published by Yeti Press



Well this is just charming. It's an all-ages comic about a young girl witch who, while exploring an enchanted forest, makes friends with a tengu, and the two of them cavort around the woods, racing and exploring and showing off their respective magical powers. Kat Leyh's art is gorgeous, consisting of deceptively simple linework and lush colors that really make the setting come to life. As a first chapter, it's wonderful, an enthralling chance to get to know some cute characters as they begin their friendship, with some ominous hints about the magical dangers they might face providing the impetus to seek out future chapters. It's a lovely little book, enough to make Leyh a talent to watch closely. I'll be sure to pick up the other available issues in the series the first chance I get.
-----

Cat-LE Drivers #1 (Free Edition)
By Kevin D. Bandt
Self-published



Whether you're perusing the selection in a comics convention Artist Alley or clicking randomly through some of the thousands of webcomics, you're bound to come across something like this, a comic that's trying to be offensive and edgy, but isn't really all that different from its peers. Kevin D. Bandt's big inspiration for grossing people out here is to center his comic around the idea of eating cat meat (although it's tempered by said meat coming from genetically-modified felines in a future where beef is scarce), which is probably supposed to be horrifying, but it's just about the only unique aspect of his post-apocalyptic story, and everything that surrounds it is highly generic, from people having to cross a wasteland ruled by bandits and vampires, to "badass" heroes with an attitude, to gross villains who swear a lot (using bleeped-out symbols, of course) and sexually harass treat female underlings. The story itself is put together kind of amateurishly as well, beginning with a caption reading "Yesterday" without ever specifying when "today" is supposed to take place, and having characters state their motivation outright (a character suddenly announcing that she used to have a drub problem is especially egregious). Even the title itself is a tortured bit of wordplay, the term "Cat-LE" meant to be pronounced like "cattle" with the "LE" standing for "Luxury Edition". The black-and-white art in the free version of the comic is a bit muddy, but the color pages which can be seen online do look much better, and while the artwork is nothing special, there are occasional panels with some pretty good character art and expressions. Bandt does seem passionate about what he's doing, including an editorial about how the documentary PressPausePlay inspired him to put out a free version of the comic in order to get his ideas out to people, so it's commendable that he's trying to be creative, but he's got a ways to go before he can rise above the massive cluster of mediocrity that is all to easy to get lost in. Here's hoping he doesn't quit before he gets there.
-----

The VIP Room
Written by Amy Chu
Art by Silvio DB and Cabbral
Published by Alpha Girl Comics



This is an interesting little story about three seemingly-unrelated characters who suddenly appear in a dining room, unsure how they got there or what they are supposed to do next. Is this some version of the afterlife? What is their connection, and is there any way to escape? As they converse, they slowly learn enough details about each other to figure out at least a little bit about what is going on, eventually leading to a Twilight Zone-ish reveal that makes for a fairly satisfying ending. It's kind of slight, but it's a neat little riff on the sort of mysterious, possibly supernatural morality tale that that show made famous, and the moody artwork gives it some nice atmosphere. I could do without the one-page epilogue that goes over the top with the premise, almost turning it into a bit of wish-fulfillment comeuppance highly recognizable villain, but overall, it's not a bad little comic.

One Piece Is Awesome, Example #43

While there's a lot to love about Eiichiro Oda's One Piece, it's still a kid's comic, which means that some of the humor that gets included is of the juvenile sort. Fart jokes and comments about female characters' breasts or panties occasionally make their way into the comic, but one thing I never expected to see appeared in volume 45, when Luffy tries to recruit the speedo-wearing cyborg Franky to his crew, and the method of convincing him to join involves copious male nudity:




A pantsless chase across the town of Water Seven ensues (as does some testicular trauma when he needs some more enticement), with his attempt to make a principled stand being a moment that made me laugh out loud:




The combination of the crashing waves and sun shining through his legs with the crowd's horrified-beyond-belief reaction hits me right in the funny bone. Oda might include the expected types of gags in his series, but he puts his own spin on them, turning them into the kind of thing you won't find anywhere else.