No Man's Land, v. 2

by Jason DeAngelis & Jennyson Rosero
Published by Seven Seas



Slugline: A Civil War vet hunts demons in the wild, wild west. And yes, it's partly his fault that they're there.

Pick up volume 1 of this OEL so you know that we're in the middle of a showdown with one of the bad guys. After the fight -- which is just as over-the-top as any manga -- the story pauses a bit to fill in some background.

This being a horror title, No Man's got a dark past, linked to both Lincoln's assassination and the disastrous spell that unleashed demons into the world. The incident cost him his wife and son, as one might expect.

These are story elements we've all seen before, so here's what sets No Man's Land apart from other demon-hunting stories: it's a well done "weird west," which I have a soft spot for, (doesn't everybody?) and it doesn't have the cultural misperceptions that crop up in Japanese manga. For example, the Quakers are correctly portrayed as pacifists.

(I would never hold it against a Japanese title for getting American cultural details wrong, but when Catholic nuns start waving magic wands topped with the star of David, it gets really distracting.)

IMO, Seven Seas is a publisher to watch. Everything they publish is OEL and quite faithful to the manga style, right down to the reverse-reading. I'm looking forward to watching Western and Eastern graphic literature hybridize and develop its own style.



- Miranda