Dogs 3

Shirow Miwa – Viz – 2010 – 5+ volumes

Okay. While Black Lagoon is a whole lot more over-the-top and ludicrous (nothing will beat that scene in volume one where Revy was hopping from boat to boat with handguns, blowing things up while singing a Rob Zombie song), I do think I prefer Dogs. Black Lagoon has a more interesting story, with its setting and the fact the group are smugglers that interact with a whole lot of other people, but the strange crime-ridden dystopia in Dogs is a little more to my taste. I also really like the high contrast art, which is surprisingly easy to read during action scenes.

Badou makes Heine sit down and talk about his past, so we get a flashback to what little Heine remembers of it. We also get a brief look into Badou’s past, though not much of one since he’s apparently already told Heine about this. The major action of the volume takes place away from the main three characters, and focuses on the fourth, in the underground subway tunnels and an unprovoked train ambush. We are led to believe the goons used during the ambush are “a pack of dogs,” or genetically engineered humans similar to Heine, and interesting information comes out of the ambush.

There’s a few great characters here that really carry the day. The light touch of Badou and the Bishop are desperately needed in a series with so many sullen, serious people, and they are genuinely funny, which breaks up a lot of the dark action. Heine’s flashback was intense, but a little underwhelming and a slight cop-out due to his “memory issues.” The subway scene was also a little underwhelming, since it was just a bunch of cloaked goons fighting Mihai in the dark, but got significantly more interesting at the very end when another character showed up to diffuse the situation. Said character also ends the volume with an interesting cliffhanger that promises more information about the “dogs” program, so I am looking forward to seeing how they all connect.

It lacks a little punchiness, and isn’t the greatest action series out there, but a few great characters really carry the day, and I think the art makes it a little more interesting in my eyes. The fact it’s a little bland probably means I shouldn’t read volume four right away, since it will probably lower my opinion of the series a little (I’m already starting to second guess what I said about liking it better than Black Lagoon earlier), but I do want to see how it holds up when I’m not reading volumes months apart.