Golgo 13 9
Posted: April 3, 2009 Filed under: Golgo 13 1 Comment »These two are both older stories from the 70s, which is a little unusual since most of the stories so far have come from the 80s, with one or two from the 90s and 70s slipped in. Or maybe my memory is just bad. Either way, it’s unusual for both the stories to be older. They both have rad title pages.
The first story is unusual because it starts with a misfire. Once again, Golgo 13′s reaction to something like that is pretty extreme and entertaining, though not as full-blown as the reaction when he missed. Misfires aren’t his fault, but when it happened, he discarded the mission and asked for more time. He hadn’t provided the bullets himself, so he began to wonder whether the misfired round had been a plant. Apparently, before every mission, he selects a lot of 100 bullets and fires 80 of them, and if even one misfires, he discards the lot and selects 100 more bullets and fires 80 until he’s satisfied. The mission this time is a disagreement between the Israelis and the Egyptians. Many bad guys go after Duke Togo and meet their end, there is a bomb lighter involved at one point, they kill the woman he has sex with, et cetera. It’s not the best story, but it’s pretty hard-boiled still, and is more about Duke Togo than politics, which are the types of stories I like.
The second story was this whole thing about a secret private intelligence agency trading in countries and surveilance. When one man snooping around them finds out, he dies and his… foster father? avenges him. Golgo 13 is called in. I liked this one too, because I like the revenge stories as well, but I think I preferred the first, which had a lot more action.
The Golgo 13 file in the back was an analysis by Makoto Tezuka, last seen in the back of that volume of Pluto I just read. He goes through and analyzes Golgo 13 from a filmmaker’s perspective, and a lot of the comparisons he draws are pretty accurate, like how the panels read more like a storyboard for a movie, how the series really hasn’t changed over the past 40 years, unlike any other series like it, things like that. It was interesting stuff.
[...] (Comics Should Be Good) Sesho on vol. 9 of Eden (Sesho’s Anime and Manga Reviews) Connie on vol. 9 of Golgo 13 (Slightly Biased Manga) Michelle Smith on vol. 1 of Goong (Comics Should Be Good) Connie on vol. 2 [...]