Black Lagoon 6
June 2, 2009
All right, this volume was better than the last one, but it’s still safe to say that action series with global reach like this one aren’t really my thing. There were two stories in this volume, the first one was a pretty straightforward one involving some underhanded trickery to get paid for a counterfeit printing plate, and the second one was the beginning of a longer story involving a maid in the house of a Venezuelan politician that was killed. The maid takes revenge. Yeah.
The story about the counterfeit currency was pretty entertaining. It was still a little hard to follow (I wasn’t all that clear on what went wrong with the counterfeiting job that had the men after the girl with the plates), but I was entertained enough by the action that I didn’t let the details bother me too much. The first fight in the book, with Revy and some nuns at a church, was worth the price of admission. The fights took place in a church, a hotel, a warehouse that was on fire and collapsing, and on the Black Lagoon. Cowboys, nuns, priests, Mother Superiors, gothic lolita girls with chainsaws, and computer hackers may or may not have been involved. Weapons included flamethrowers, rocket launchers, grenades, metal bars, guns… you know. I wouldn’t mind a lot more of this sort of thing.
The story with the maid just got underway before the volume ended. South American politics looked like they were going to play a role, but then, for some reason, the maid seeking vengeance fled to the Thai city that the Black Lagoon docks in. It’s still not entirely clear why that is, but apparently, all the bad guys that live in the city are afraid of the maid.
There are two fairly serious issues working against this series. One is that the action scenes are really… not good. Again, the huge sound effects aren’t doing this series any favors, but there’s a lot more than that wrong. Lots of small panels, cropping, speed lines, not enough foreground-midground-background separation, bad composition, and generally just a bunch of confusing jumping around so you can’t tell where anyone is or what they are doing. There’s also a specific name for cutting 180 degrees around a subject that I can’t remember right now, it’s more of a film composition rule, but it seems to apply to comics as well since it’s clear that it shouldn’t be going on when you see it here. It makes things really confusing and disorienting. Aside from the fact that guns are fired and people are jumping around, I have literally no idea what is going on in these scenes. As I said last time, the art is neither simple enough to read cleanly nor detailed enough to get away with these crimes. It takes a lot to set me off when it comes to artwork, but things like this are a pet peeve of mine.
The other issue is that the stories are also kind of confusing. Now, I passed this off last time as my fault for not reading earlier volumes, but it’s clear at the beginning of the counterfeiting story that some things just aren’t explained all that well, since the characters and events in that story don’t seem to have much to do with the Black Lagoon. Unless they do, and their stories were explained in previous volumes. It would be kind of awesome if the story knit together like that actually, but I kinda doubt that’s the case. Again, the details aren’t really the point of this series, but still.
Also, the cowboy is clearly American, and complains about wanting to go back to Florida. They use lots of cowboy analogies around him. I don’t live in Florida, but I’ve been there a few times and I’m pretty sure there are no cowboys. But maybe this man is an individual and always wanted to be a cowboy. Who am I to criticize?
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
June 2, 2009 at 9:58 am
“I don’t live in Florida, but I’ve been there a few times and I’m pretty sure there are no cowboys.”
But Florida does have cattle. I am very aware of this fact, because I came close to being killed by a bull in Florida. And technically, cowboys are male people who take care of cattle.
But Florida sure isn’t the Wild West.
June 3, 2009 at 5:11 am
Ah, and here I thought it was all about the oranges down there. It was definitely a wild west vibe this guy was giving off. But perhaps he kept cattle in Florida and just felt like looking and acting the part.
June 3, 2009 at 6:42 am
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