One, Volume 1

From my school library. This appears to be the library's one and only manga volume.

Title: One
Issue: Volume 1
Date: 1998
Publisher: Tokyopop
Writer: Lee Vin
Artist: Lee Vin

This is the opening volume in a somewhat over-the-top KPop drama set in a "Celebrity High School" in Korea, a school attended by several teen pop stars.

This volume introduces quiet but brilliant title character Eumpa One, teen idol Jenny You, crossdressing rap star Jiwon Jin, boy-band leader Ha Rock, and seemingly quiet music fan Young Ju. There's also a whole supporting cast of music teachers, stage managers, and tiger-moms.

With so many characters to introduce, most of this volume is background, although a plotline involving a teacher stealing Eumpa One's compositions in the guise of assignments comes to the forefront by the end.

The characters have a lot of potential, although several of them are not initially likeable, particularly Jenny You, whose petty antics to sabotage Jiwon Jin's career set her up as possibly more of a villain than was intended. Still Jenny does have some sympathetic moments when the story shifts to her point of view.

Some of the language and discussion around gender identity feels dated, and the attempts to describe current pop music fall a bit flat. A discussion of classic punk rock that references real bands works better than most of the music-related sequences in the story.

This had some potential, and the quirkiness of the characters was intriguing enough to hold my interest.

Rating: 6/10

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: The Beginning

 Bought at Foreign Languages Bookstore, Shanghai, China.

Title: Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: The Beginning
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Date: 2018
Writer: Brandon Montclare, Amy Reeder
Artist: Natacha Bustos, Marco Failla
Colorist: Tamra Bonvillain
Letterer: VC's Travis Lanham
Cover: Amy Reeder
Editor: Mark Paniccia, Emily Shaw, Jennifer Grunwald

Reprints issues 1-12 of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.

I loved the original run of Devil Dinosaur as a kid, so this brought back all of the nostalgic vibes, in spite of it bringing Devil Dinosaur out of prehistory and into the modern Marvel Universe continuity. Nine-year-old Lunella Lafayette is a brilliant mind stuck and bored in a New York public school. She is also a carrier of the inhuman gene, and terrified of the transformation that could happen if she is exposed to the terragen mists, which have been activating the powers of other inhumans around New York. Devil Dinosaur is, well, a dinosaur, but he pretty much plays the big slobbering dog role in this story.

Add in a timeshifted tribe of "Killer Folk", a kree boy with big ambitions and some daddy-issues, and guest appearances by Ms. Marvel and (Amadeus Cho) Hulk for a fast-moving story that brings the Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur pairing into the ranks of Marvel's New York based heroes.

That fast pace does hurt things a bit. Interactions between Lunella and her parents come as generic fare, as do a lot of the school scenes. Lunella herself is a nice blend of snarky and clever, but the story doesn't do enough to show how brilliant she is. Devil Dinosaur is wonderfully expressive, but there is not much potential for character development there.

And character development is what this story needs. "Captain Kree" gets a simple, but satisfying story arc, and the interactions with Amadeus Cho and Kamala Khan show good potential, but need more space to grow.

The Killer Folk are not very interesting villains, but are used sparingly, and are mostly absent from the second half of this volume. I can't say that I am particularly eager for their inevitable return.

What I would like to see is more of Lunella Lafayette. She has great potential here, but in twelve issues, we are still seeing only the beginnings of that potential.

Rating: 6.5/10

Tintin: Little Book of Peril

The second item I purchased at the Herge and Tintin exhibition at the Shanghai Power Station of Art. More of an art book than an actual comic.

Title: Tintin: Little Book of Peril
Date: 2016
Publisher: Moulinsart. (Official Tintin site is here)
Writer:Herge
Artist: Herge

Cute collection of "perilous" Tintin panels taken from the various Tintin comics. Each scene includes a brief comment from Snowy.

Some of these work better than others, but all in all it does a nice job of capturing the sense of nostalgic fun that it's going for.

There really isn't much to this, but it's meant to be a pocket-sized curiosity, which it accomplishes well enough. A bit more text would have been nice, and, as always with these tiny art books, the art suffers a bit from the small size of the reproduction.

Rating: 6/10

The Adventures of Tintin: The Shooting Star

I recently went to the Herge and Tintin exhibition at the Shanghai Power Station of Art. I bought a couple of books at their gift shop. This is the first of those.

Title: The Adventures of Tintin: The Shooting Star
Date: 2009
Publisher: Egmont (Official Tintin site is here)
Writer:Herge
Artist: Herge

When a giant meteor approaches the Earth, Tintin thinks that the world may be doomed, and a crazy prophet is blaming him for the impending cataclysm. But when the doomsday turns out to be a false alarm, Tintin joins an expedition to seek out a fragment of the meteor that did strike the Earth, landing in the Arctic and carrying an newly-discovered element.

Tintin, Snowy, Captain Haddock, and a crew of eccentric scientists (and thankfully, one actually-competent seaplane pilot) find themselves in a race with a powerful corporation determined to make a profit off of the new element, and willing to resort to sabotage to achieve their goals.

This was a really fun adventure, loaded with Herge's normal array of twists and turns, on every page. I'm always impressed by how rapidly Herge can introduce new problems, perils, and twists.

With the limited cast, this story doesn't get into some of the issues with stereotypes that I've encountered in other Tintin volumes. The characters are quirky, sometimes to the extreme, and a few of the jokes around Captain Haddock's relationship with whiskey are a bit heavyhanded, but there are some good witty bits as well. The dieselpunk feel of the story provides some fun flavoring, and Herge's artwork makes great use of the small-panel layouts.

Rating: 8/10