World Comic Book Review

29th March 2024

The Undead Hunters of Tokyo

Tokyo Ghoul Vol 1
Shueisha Inc (Japanese original) 2011; Viz Media (English translation) June 2015
Writer: Sui Ishida

Review by DG Stewart, 8 January 2016

“Kodokushi” is the Japanese word for “lonely death”: a common enough phenomenon in Japan where haunting alienation from the community is prevalent as a consequence of, amongst other things, Japan’s extended economic stagnation. Many Japanese people, particularly unemployed and middle-aged men, die alone and unnoticed, and it is such an issue that Tokyo’s Shinjuku ward began a lonely-death awareness campaign.

Mr Ishida’s anime comic is concerned not with elderly men dying a lonely death, but with a young, awkward student named Ken Kaneki. Ken attends the imaginary Kamii University, located in Nerima ward in Tokyo. He is hopeless with girls, and hides in the shadow of his good childhood friend, the extroverted Hide. A pretty young woman named Rize slowly becomes interested in Ken, as a consequence of a mutual interest in a sinister book entitled “Egg of the Black Goat”. The two end up walking together down an alley. Rize leans in, apparently nervous, and then abruptly transforms into a ghoul and takes an enormous bite out of Ken’s shoulder and neck. The alley is otherwise empty: Ken’s version of kodokushi will be more horrific than most, but yet not an unexpected thing in Tokyo.

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Aliens in Mississippi and Cultural Ownership

Strange Fruit 1, 2
BOOM! Studios, July 2015, October 2015
Writers: JG Jones and Mark Waid
Review by DG Stewart, 5 January 2016

Set in the town of Chatterlee, Mississippi in 1927, this comic by JG Jones and Mark Waid reworks the Superman mythos: what if Superman was black and landed in the racist South in the 1920s?

The first two pages consist of dialogue between a group of white men, armed with axe handles, about to enter a “coloured café” so as to coerce black workers to help with a flood-stricken levee. One of the gang tells his son to keep away from the café, with the words, “This ain’t no place I ever want to see you in.” It is quite deliberately not clear whether the man does not want his son to be in a place where black people socialise, or whether he does not want his son to witness blood-letting.

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Thunderbolt

“Thor 1”
Marvel Comics, December 2015
Writer: Jason Aaron
(Review by DG Stewart, 22 December 2015)

In this democratic age we covet privilege but we do not necessarily respect it. Marvel Comics’ character Thor is a prince, born into power and glory, his inheritance granting him title “God of Thunder” and everything that goes with that.

One of the very few treatments of the god Thor by rival publisher DC Comics was in 1991, in the pages of the epic comic Sandman, written by Neil Gaiman. Mr Gaiman paints Thor as an over-sexed buffoon, effortlessly manipulated by his trickster brother Loki. Thor is ill-mannered and at one point utterly drunk. Thor’s hammer is more than merely a phallic symbol in this story: it is not just figuratively a hammerhead penis, sometimes big and sometimes small. To underscore the point Thor’s wife Sif is described as having a birthmark in the shape of an anvil on the inside of her thigh.

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Gestalt Comics and Comicoz: Developments in the Australian Comic Book Scene

“Many Australian comics released on newsagent stands over the past twenty to thirty years have folded after only a few issues. So, it is with some residual anxiety that these words are penned about seven weeks before the release of the First Issue of Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi! Until those sales figures come in, it is difficult to gauge the popularity – or otherwise – of this comic.”

These were the nervous introductory words to the editor’s note in the third issue of Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi!, dated January-March 2015. The website of its publisher, ComicOz, indicates that a fifth edition is pending release, and so the sales figures may not have been so dire after all. But the trepidation is well founded given the precarious history of the Australian domestic comic book industry. Notwithstanding the existence of an annual award to recognise the efforts of the very small number of local comic book creatives and industry players (called The Ledger Awards, most recently held on 10 April 2015), the Australian comic book industry is more notable for the spluttering starts and silent disappearances of both titles and publishers.

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