I've just posted my review of the first volume Becky Cloonan's TokyoPop OEL project,
East Coast Rising
, over on GraphicNovelReview.com. Excerpt:
More than anything, the story structure reminds me of a videogame -- not the two-dimensional fighting games that inform, say, Sharknife,
nor the coin-collecting platformers that provide the underlying metaphor for Scott Pilgrim,
but rather the lavishly-produced, heavily-scripted, so-called role playing games ("so-called" because the role the player gets to play, unfortunately, is almost always fairly cut and dry) of the Playstation 2 era. Like those games, the widescreen action sequences are separated by a series of quieter, introductory "cut-scenes," wherein our protagonist (the stowaway I mentioned earlier -- name of Archer) explores his new environment, is introduced to the rest of the cast, one or two characters at a time, and figures out what his next objective will be, in incremental stages. You'll even find a couple of "mini-game" sequences, like when Archer goes fishing off the bow of the ship with his soon-to-be love interest, or when he chases "seachix" across the deck, for their eggs, so he can help the galley cook make omelettes for dinner. Like most of those kinds of games, the story itself isn't particularly original. In fact, in this case, it's completely derivative (of Pirates of the Caribbean, of Waterworld, of Robert Louis Stevenson, of a million million other high-seas and/or post-apocalyptic adventures), but not offensively so, in large part because of its sheer, unadulterated charm. Wherever a lesser modern pulp creator might go for the high-pitched insincere squeal of melodrama (in the final monster battle sequence, for example), Cloonan deftly cuts in light, easy sub-scenes, warm and strangely non-urgent personality bits between the characters, while the climax rages around them. "Hey, I found your leg." "Sweet! I was wondering where it went!" These moments live in a sort of calm bubble of time, almost separate from the main storyline, and are often drawn that way, over in the margins, with deliberately scribbly renderings of the characters. The banter between the heroes and the villains, who are obliged to work together to defeat the final "boss," comes off as almost affectionate chiding, more like the fans of rival local bar-bands shouting at each other across an East Village avenue at closing time than like the usual seething cliches of high adventure back-and-forth. "You guys so suck!" "I said we gotta work together!" "Pork forever? Joe, you're not making any sense." In the context of the book itself, that stuff is a lot of fun, and not (I feel compelled to add) lame, or Stan-Lee-like, in the least, though it probably comes across that way, reading it here in prose form. This kind of charm goes a long way toward fending off the dreadfulness of cliche.
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