There are two universal truths in today’s rapidly changing comics industry. The first is that Dog Man is the defining comic of our era. The second is that more people are reading manga and Webtoons (aka vertical scroll comics) than ever before. Therefore we at The Comics Beat have chosen to embark on a new venture: Beat’s Bizarre Adventure. Every week we’ll have three writers recommend some of their favorite books and series from Japan, Korea and elsewhere. This week we have magical freelancing, a teenage private eye with a unique skill set, and, of course…space!
The Magical Freelancer’s Guild
Writer/Artist: Birdee Blake
Platform: Tapas.io / Webtoon / ComicFury / Itch.io
The Magical Freelancer’s Guild is set in the city-state of Hawkseborough during the 1920’s, following Lana, Luca, and mysterious trickster Monty Birch. Together, they are members of the eponymous Magical Freelancer’s Guild, a guild hall for people with an affinity for magic who also happen to fight supernatural entities and creatures to make ends meet amid the city-state’s ever-changing political landscape.
The first few chapters of the story introduce us to the world as well as the lore surrounding the Magical Freelancer’s Guild and later see the guild’s adventures as they help the local townsfolk. There are also elements of mystery surrounding Monty, such as dialogue hinting at past events that paint him in a very suspicious light, which he playfully brushes aside.
I love the creature designs which contrast the art style used for the characters, and it makes me curious when other creatures will appear and how they will look. Also noteworthy is the coloring and shading used throughout the story, ensuring that a number of the characters fit in well with the backgrounds and scenery.
One aspect that readers might notice is that characters with more cartoony and exaggerated designs tend to look odd with the detailed shading applied to them while at other times, those same characters look great when colored with mostly flats and simple cell shading. As a result, there’s a slight visual inconsistency which stands out to me, but I’m sure the artist Birdee Blake will solve that ultimately minor detail as their comic progresses.
The action throughout the story also makes use of motion blur and effects to add depth when paired with coloring and shading. So far, we have only been given sprinkles of the world and its lore, making me wonder how it will be addressed as it goes on, since The Magical Freelancer’s Guild is just getting started with four chapters composed of multiple pages and panels in between.
The Magical Freelancer’s Guild is available on Tapas, Webtoon, Comicfury, and even on Itch.io. You can also become one of Birdee’s patrons on Patreon. For me, the series captures what I love so much about webcomics: the freedom to tell a story regardless of execution, made with love and care to share with the rest of the world. I look forward to where the series might go next. — Justin Guerrero
Sexy Voice and Robo
Writer/Artist: Iou Kuroda
English Adaptation: Kelly Sue DeConnick
Translation: Yuji Oniki
Touch-up Art and Lettering: Freeman Wong
Publisher: VIZ
She’s a teenage girl who uses her considerable vocal skills working at a telephone dating service. He’s a grown man with an insatiable appetite for giant robot toys. Together they’re Sexy Voice and Robo.
Written and drawn by Iou Kuroda, Sexy Voice and Robo sounds like it should be wackier than it is. High schooler Nico Hayashi meets a senior gentleman who sends her off to solve problems for him. Most of the time she ropes in Iichiro Sudo, a slightly older man who often calls the telephone dating service she works for.
Sexy Voice and Robo could be a creepy, exploitative manga in other hands. Instead, Kuroda makes Nico a teenage crime solver in the same league as Nancy Drew or Encyclopedia Brown. She is smart, level-headed and knows just how to press the buttons of a helpless rube like Ichiro. Her ability to determine what a person sounds like by the sound of their voice also proves useful throughout the series. As inspired by the stories of a friend of Kuroda, Nico is one of the most engaging and complex characters to grace the pages of manga.
Where other manga artists favor nibs and tech pens, Kuroda uses thick, fluid brushstrokes. He renders Tokyo and its inhabitants in thick lines and heavy shadows. Kuroda is less interested in realism and more intrigued by the expressive qualities his line can provide. His figures can be crude, but they convey exactly what he needs them to at that moment. It’s a unique look for a unique manga. — D. Morris
To Terra…
Writer/Artist: Keiko Takemiya
Translator: Dawn T. Laabs
Production: Hiroko Mizuno, Shinobu Sato
Publisher: Vertical
In the far future, humanity is guided by machines. Yet there are those that the machines cannot predict or prepare for. Jowy Marcus Shin is one such boy. Saved from compulsory brainwashing by the mysterious Soldier Blue, Jowy learns that he is Mu: a psychic variant of humanity that humanity will not acknowledge or tolerate. He grows over many decades from a hapless teenager to the Mu’s greatest leader. All to fulfill Soldier Blue’s dream of a return to Terra, the planet where humanity was first born and where no Mu may ever go.
To Terra… is the work of Keiko Takemiya, a member of the Year 24 Group of female comics artists that transformed manga in the 1970s. Takemiya came to prominence with steamy tales of doomed romance like The Door Into Summer and her epic Song of Wind and Trees. To Terra… relegates romance to subtext in favor of grand scale space opera. At a mere five volumes (three in the English release,) Takemiya fits in enough drama, tragedy and life-or-death space battles to fuel a series two or three times the length.
To Terra… hits the sweet spot between science fictional detail and shojo manga sweep. The ship designs and costumes are right out of Star Trek or Logan’s Run. But the characters and their feelings are expressed via panel compositions that literalize joy or despair. It’s a fantastic fit for a story about psychics, whose empathic powers infect the pages around them. The machines, as well, are made that much stranger and more sinister by Takemiya’s abstract presentation.
Just in case you thought Takemiya stacked the deck too far in favor of the Mu, she lavishes the most care and attention on one of the humans. We first meet Keith Anyan as a young adult training to be a member of the Members Elite. He comes to believe that humanity must be disciplined for its continued survival, to which the Mu pose an existential threat. Yet he also learns that the machines he once trusted, and the society they birthed, are inherently flawed. If Jowy is the stalwart idealistic hero, Keith makes for a fantastic foil: a self-hating and contradictory tactical genius who might as easily destroy as save humanity. — Adam Wescott
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