Welcome to another Weekly Emanata, the MEGATONik review of comics. As these are a combination of readerly reaction and critical examination, expect spoilers. I’m going to write as if you, the reader, has some passing knowledge of comics, but feel free to post questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer.

This week is International Outreach here at the Emanata. Cinebook sent me three volumes from their line of translated European comics and I read a couple great manga, so enjoy.

Pandora’s Box: Pride
written by Alcante
art by Didier Pagot

The first Cinebook I read, Pride reads like an episode of the original Twilight Zone. One of the good episodes. It’s a short, tight political drama with some sci-fi overtones, but the science is pretty hard and doesn’t intrude. The basic setup draws inspiration from the myth of Narcissus, starting with a man who’s extremely concerned with himself. Regular enough, but the man is America’s president, up for reelection in days, and when the opposing party assigns a journalist to dig up some dirt, things get crazy. What begins as a possible mistress with a possible baby spirals out into the edges of human ethics.

For all the spy-versus-spy tension and scientific mysteries, the real strength of the story lies in the character arcs. The muckraking journalist, the proud politician, and even the ex-con chauffeur end up having more dimensions than I expected, acting like real people when I thought I knew how the story was going to end with stereotypes.

Aldebaran volume 1
by Luiz Eduardo de Oliveira

I’ve heard that European comics are generally more concerned with world-building than American comics, and Aldebaran seems to be an example of this. Set on a planet colonized by Earth but now separated from their colonizers, the story of Aldebaran plays out like a sci-fi picaresque adventure. The young hero’s village is destroyed so he decides to move to the Big City. He meets allies, suffers betrayals, and becomes involved in a background plot that has something to do with the destruction of his hometown.

The plot veers all over the place with the drama cranking up and down, divorced from any sort of singular dramatic arc. The best moments of the book have little to do with the protagonist and everything to do with the aesthetics of the strange mystery surrounding the planet. An undiscovered and unseen sea creature is apparently moving inland, causing other monsters of the depths, such as a weird snake-whale with arms, to beach themselves in escaping. The ocean thickens to jelly and forms geometric structures. The way this thing drives the plot is similar to the way it drove me as a reader. I wanted to know, to see, this thing that was hiding under the surface of the plot and so I look for it the same as the characters do, skipping through the exposition until given something new and weird to look at.

Thorgal volume 4
written by Jean Van Hamme
art by Grzegorz Rosinski

This was my favorite Cinebook, a Viking biography of a guy that is apparently descended from aliens(?), a point that doesn’t really have any importance to what’s going on in this volume. The second half of this book reads like a modern heist movie (which makes sense, since Van Hamme wrote the international crime hit XIII, spawning the sort-of-recent video game that I couldn’t pass the first level of). There’s an interesting setup complicated by at least four factions vying for the same thing; it’s all ratcheted up by unexpected allies, tense violence, and a series of betrayals and backstabs.

Buddha volume 4
by Osamu Tezuka

This is a series I’ve been slowly going through, a book every few months, and I like it more with each new volume I get through. As the title suggests, this is a biography of Siddhartha Gautama, the prince who became Buddha. Eight volumes in all, the book is one of the final productions of Japan’s “god of manga” and Walt Disney equivalent, Dr. Osamu Tezuka (he was actually a non-practicing medical doctor; how cool is that?).

Tezuka’s storytelling choices always keep me on my toes. There’s an amount of humor and playfulness that, initially, I didn’t feel belonged in a book about such serious subject matter. Siddhartha’s progress towards enlightenment is punctuated by occasional non-sequiters, absurd dialogue, gross-out jokes, and even Tezuka himself stepping in to comment on the story. I’m not sure if this sort of thing is cultural in Japan or personal with the author, but as I keep reading his work, I find myself settling into it as part of Buddha’s rhythm.

The art is always the first thing I notice when I get a new volume. The backgrounds are lush and detailed with a definite feeling of life to them; even though I know the images are static, there’s a sense of movement and ecology to all of the scenes, a slow heartbeat beneath it all. The characters, though, are heavily cartooned, bearing expressive faces and exaggerated postures. Scott McCloud states that this method of representation creates believable worlds while allowing a maximum amount of reader identification with the characters, and I’m inclined to agree.

The story itself breathes nice and slow. There’s no mad rush to get to the point where Siddhartha becomes Buddha, no rush to resolve foreshadowing, and so the characters get a chance to talk, to wonder, and to reveal multiple aspects of their personalities.

I feel like I’m having a hard time delineating my feelings and doing this book justice. It’s refreshing and funny and dramatic, and Tezuka deserves a place in America next to Kirby, Eisner, and, well, anyone else.

Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka volume 1
written by Naoki Urasawa & Takashi Nagasaki
art by Naoki Urasawa
based on the works of Osamu Tezuka

In the vein of Wicked or Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Pluto is a modern mangaka’s take on one of Osamu Tezuka’s best-known stories, “The Greatest Robot on Earth.” Tezuka’s original is a well-crafted story about an evil robot going after the seven most powerful robots in the world, including Astro Boy. It’s a pretty simple plot, with the evil robot Pluto taking down one robot after another until its defeat in a final battle with Astro Boy.

Urasawa takes on the story from the point of view of one of the other seven robots, a German private eye named Gesicht. Recasting the straightforward action story as a murder mystery, Gesicht tracks the killer from one victim to another, always two steps behind. It’s an interesting narrative choice; none of the famous battles from the original story are shown, creating an intense focus on the day-to-day life of Gesicht and the people he interviews. One of the saddest scenes I’ve ever read in a comic takes place between the detective and the robot wife of a robot cop after the cop is killed and Gesicht brings her the news. Her immobile face is juxtaposed with Gesicht’s human-like expressions as he breaks it to her, forcing readers to imagine what she is thinking and feeling. I reread it three times.

The Incredibles: Family Matters #1
written by Mark Waid
art by Marcio Takara

I liked The Incredibles when I saw it. I don’t think it’s a beautiful or especially original movie, but it’s graceful and witty and boils down a lot of the weird superhero tropes from the last few decades and resolves them in an orderly way.

I was pretty sure I would like the new comic by veteran superhero writer Waid; it seemed like a perfect match-up. The debut issue, though, lacked the verve and the drama that made the movie engaging. Things felt flat and disordered, just sort of wandering from touchstone to touchstone. Helen wants Bob to make friends with their normal neighbors, Bob thinks he’s losing his powers… and that’s about it. And a poorly-designed robot from the future. The book was only eighteen pages long, too, but cost as much as a regular twenty-two pager. I guess there’s a big marketing push to get these into the hands of the American youth, but I’m not sure I see that happening.

The Muppet Show #1
by Roger Langridge

This was the best single issue I read this week. Any fans of the original Muppet Show will find a lot to enjoy here, and readers with no knowledge of the Muppets will find a lot to enjoy here.

First of all, this comic is dense. In addition to the overarching story of the Muppet crew trying to cheer up Kermit, nearly every page (two at most) contains a full joke or story with a flawless execution of buildup and punchline. Puns, situational comedy, and subtle background art… this comic is full of humor. I can’t wait for the next issue.