It’s Election Day! Shenanigans. Chicanery. Red. Blue. Purple? Can we vote Purple? It’s been raining here in LA for the past few days, clearly a lot of weather modification is going on so they can dissuade people from going to vote. As Angelenos sit in rainy snail crawling traffic they’ll just go ‘eff it’ and go home. This will allow the evil wackjobs to ignore the will of the people and decide the winner by thumb wrestling naked at 2am in a pool filled with fish scales and rotting street meat tacos while hooded aliens look on. You know that’s what happens.
I had to step away from the intense pick pick me energy of the day and escape to another time, another space another way of life. So I picked up the first issue of Hitomi and flipped it open. Well, it’s definitely not modern Los Angeles although it’s probably quicker to get where you want to go by walking through a snowy forest drunk on sake back then than it is to brave the freeways here. Right off the bat I love the art and the feel of the book. The story? Hmm…
I mean it’s not doing anything special. A kid, this time a young Japanese girl, is spared while her parents and siblings are massacred. I don’t know why they were massacred. Were they election deniers? Did they bang on garbage cans to cheat at Samurai games? Did they say that Akira the Anime Movie was overrated? All valid reasons but we have no idea at this point.
Well, she’s older now and searching for the killer who did it, a dark skinned (described as beet root skin in the book) Samurai who’s now been reduced to some sort of a lackey in a traveling sumo wrestling act where he’s throwing the match. It’s giving off female Conan the Barbarian/Kill Bill movie vibes and a lot of other revenge story vibes. You’re going to root for her by default because she’s a girl in a man’s world. Plus she’s got a mouth on her and an attitude, which I do as well. Hmm, maybe this was me? I mean, I do think I had a past life back in Japan at some point. Did the writer HS Tak do some lucid dreaming and enter my dreamscape to question me on my life as a little obnoxious ornery Asian girl? I wouldn’t put it past him. My question is can I sue for plagiarism?
Your honor, clearly my client’s dreams and past lives are his and his alone. Comic book creators just can’t come in and rip off a story from the timeline of –
Get the hell out of my courtroom. Now.
Your honor, did you have a past life as a Samurai who massacred a –
Jail. You’re going to jail. Like, yesterday.
Anway, the kid falls through the ice of a lake and of course the beet root Samurai dude grabs her arm and saves her; conflict cliffhanger 101. She’s still unconscious, she wakes up and gives us an ornery look, and….scene.
That was quick. Okay. Well, Isabella Manzanti’s art is lovely so I’ll back. I’ve got this Marvel facsimile of Spiderman #1 sitting next to me as well. I think I’m gonna pick that up instead of watching election coverage. If you ask me the entire Marvel Comic Book Universe is a facsimile of a Comic Book Universe. I think what happened is while they were creating all these alternate timeline story lines that one actually worked too well and it bumped our Marvel comic books into another dimension while our dimension got these flimsy wackadoodle stories and cheap paper stock rags. It’s the only explanation I can think of. At any rate, Hitomi is a neat little diversion and Lord knows we need these right now.
Rating: 8.0
Verdict: Pull
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