Remember reading horror comics as a kid, in flashlight-under-the-covers style?  Well, Del Rey has published a few series that should bring back those feelings, providing a full complement of regressive, but undeniable, chills and thrills…

Alive:  The Final Evolution 1 & 2:  At first the narrative and thematic elements of this series were a bit off-putting.  An inexplicable rash of suicides, with much of the action focused in a secondary school?  That’s territory that’s been covered so much in Asian pop culture that I’m hesitant even to call it “territory” any more—it seems more like a crater whose edges creators would do well to skirt.  But that’s where Tadashi Kawashima starts to prove himself a savvy and original fantasist:  he explores only the edges, using the device of the suicides simply as a jumping off point in a far more vast supernatural/evolutionary saga.  Blending SF, very hard horror and gore, and the typical coming-of-age fixtures of shonen manga, Kawashima performs a superb balancing act.  The art by Adachitoka, while annoyingly uneven, is largely up to the task of bringing this sweeping story to life with style and drama.  It takes a while for his storytelling to settle down into a groove, and to be fair there is a large cast of characters and a lot going on.  The gratuitous pin-up style panels of the protagonist’s fetching older sister tend to slow things down, but it’s hard to know whether Adachitoka should be faulted for this or whether such distractions are, on some level, simply de rigueur.  With each chapter his art seems to grow stronger—except for the occasional backsliding that occurs when his figures suddenly become as stiff as mannequins.

But where the art really shines is in the horror sequences, and this is true when things are relatively quiet and dialogue-driven as well as when we have, well, heads exploding.  The character designs, especially that of the monstrous Takumi Yura, are effective throughout.  And what’s perhaps the least apparent virtue of Adachitoka’s work is its versatility:  wherever the story takes him, he seems prepared to go.  In one memorable sequence a young boy who is one of the evolved “comrades” demonstrates his power of “isolating” people in suffocatingly air-tight metaphysical boxes.  This compelling section is executed with such precision and imagination that one could easily visualize an entire series based upon this single premise.

Bottom line:  are you up for an extremely dark but also extremely well told version of the television series Heroes?  If so, then this is your ticket.  Fast-paced, surprising, and brimming with creativity, Alive:  The Final Evolution is a real winner.

Parasyte 1 and 2:  Let the rave begin.  Yes, the original run was back in the early ‘90s, Japanese publisher Kodansha collected the series in 2003, and this English translation appeared in 2007… but let’s face it, this manga is timeless.  It doesn’t really matter when you catch up with it, I don’t think; although you can date the material pretty easily by noting the absence of cell phones and the like, Hitoshi’s Iwaaki’s achievement here should still impress decades hence.

“What does it mean to be human?  And is empathy a necessary ingredient?”  Because quality science fiction has explored such themes from its inception, I raised an eyebrow when first confronting them here.  Would this manga, with its deceptively simple style and occasional sentimentality, really be able to offer new insights into these areas?

The answer is, in a way, provided by Iwaaki’s sheer talent—by its force alone it makes you forget the previous treatments you may have seen of such themes.

  He has the kind of pure graphic sensibility you find in Will Eisner or Frank Miller at his best—he knows when to provide grim detail, when to be goofy and loose, and, most importantly, when to strike boldly.  As a writer Iwaaki’s instincts are dead-on in terms of timing and pace, layering in specificity as necessary and then pulling back to let us view things from a cold remove.  Silent panels expertly build atmosphere, and then the action sequences hit home with a dreadful savagery.  On the story arc level, Iwaaki also knows what he’s doing, doling out much-needed humor on a regular basis, providing romantic subtexts but not letting the story get mired in them, and generally transcending the schoolyard melodrama that serves as the backdrop.  In short, it’s this kind of modulation, combined with an uncanny skill at taking straightforward ideas and elaborating on them to unpredictable ends, that makes Iwaaki’s work in Parasyte so masterful.

To be sure, a sense of horror permeates everything and is often of the Cronenbergesque “body horror” variety.  You’ll watch in amazement as the alien-controlled humanoid hosts unwrap the their own heads as though peeling oranges before lashing out with the fleshy ribbons.  But what’s most remarkable is the straight-ahead layout, with its rectangular panels and standard rhythms, that all of this visionary mayhem occurs in.  A lesser talent may have been tempted to let the content “bleed” all over the page more, but Iwaaki’s understatement underscores the terror with stunning effectiveness.

L'Chevalier D'Eon 1:  A colleague of mine laughed when I first suggested that this was a horror title, and I can see why.  With this series we get a lot of action/adventure staples, anachronism-filled period intrigue (the cops move like SWAT teams and shout “Freeze!”), and heavy doses of gender-bending flights of fancy of the type with which Japanese culture is infinitely more comfortable than American.

Still, to what genre does a narrative belong that, in its first few lurid pages, features beautiful young women impaled on hooks?  Indeed, the blood flows so thickly in this story, which also appears in the form of a popular anime, that you may consider washing your hands every few pages.  Indeed, as the protagonist(s) tracks down initial the serial-killing madman who’s writing psalms in blood, we’re treated to much decapitation and limb-lopping.  But it’s not really the content that makes this volume so dark, it’s the creepy mannerism of the art.  With figures torturously foreshortened and sporting body parts that all seem as pointy as elbows, L'Chevalier D'Eon revels in a kind of bodice-ripping expressionism.  Artist Kiriko Yumeji’s style, which plays expertly with the  thickness of lines to create effects at once ornate and bold, attacks Tou Ubukata’s tale with such relish that the result is a kind of giddy, neo-baroque horror that recalls some of the Spanish artists who worked for Warren comics in the late 60s and early 70s.  Yes, everything is over-the-top pretty much all the time, but under scrutiny it quickly becomes apparent that this never translates into sloppiness:  the tone, crazed but controlled, matches the overheated sensibility of the story itself.  You aren’t supposed to care for the victims as you do in Alive or contemplate profound themes as in Parasyte, but rather settle in for a Rococo thrill ride that pulls few punches.  If you have trouble imagining the tone of L'Chevalier D'Eon from this description, just picture The Scarlet Pimpernel crossed with, say, a William Lustig movie and you won’t be far wrong.

In any case, Del Rey has already released three volumes in this series, with a fourth and fifth due in April and June, 2008.  So obviously I have a long way to go to catch up and, frankly, I’m not sure if my brain can make it all the way through this epic.