By EVELYN SHIH
STAFF WRITER
# THE DARK GOODBYE: Volume 1, by Frank Marraffino and Drew Rausch; Tokyopop, 192 pages, $9.99.
# KING CITY: Volume 1, by Brandon Graham; Tokyopop, 192 pages, $9.99.
Manga may be a Japanese word, but the genre is no longer the sole providence of the Land of the Rising Sun. Tokyopop's new "global manga" push has resulted in a new crop of mangas that are made in the U.S.A.
"The Dark Goodbye" and "King City" are both American mangas rated for older teens.
The sci-fi "King City" transports us to a dystopian world with a style that combines the rounded touch of Japanese manga with American alternative comic quirkiness, bringing a dark edge.
Its main character, Joe the cat-master, goes on missions impossible for underground bosses by using his cat as a weapon and tool. The cat, when injected with "cat juice," morphs its parts into usable objects and copies keys in its gut.
Conspiracies threaten to destroy the world with evil magical forces, but Joe isn't trying to save it. Returning to his native King City, something of a ghost town, he's more concerned about his former flame Anna, who is in a relationship with a war veteran. "That girl used to put glue in her hair and jump on the bed and taste like grape candy. And how do you get over that?" muses Joe, staring at his own skater boy image in a bathroom mirror. In the end, it is what he will do to save her that makes him pull out the heroics -- and the cat's secret weapon.
"The Dark Goodbye," a noir horror manga, has a clearer hero in the chronically hung-over gumshoe Max Mason. Think "The Nightmare Before Christmas" meets "Dick Tracy" meets Japanese fantasy manga.
And that's before we meet the man-eating Venus flytraps, squid creatures 20,000 leagues above where they should be and a man whose body is composed of carnivorous insects. Why the monster menagerie? The city is "Los Allende," short for "Puerta a los Allende" -- "gateway to the other side."
Volume 1 is a contained episode in chapters, telling the story of the twins Lavinia and Mary Tillinghast (which is which?) and a powerful corporate family fighting an underground mob in a battle between good and evil (again: which is which?).
Now that's a question with global appeal.
Copyright © 2007 North Jersey Media Group Inc.
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