Tuesday, August 18, 2009

CSI: Intern at Your Own Risk

Story by Sekou Hamilton and Art by Steven Cummings
Published by TokyoPop


Slugline: A murder of a Mary Sue

The Las Vegas CSI team has begun a high school intern program and Kiyomi Hudson is glad she managed to squeak into the program despite the lack of pay. But one of her fellow high school students will never get a chance to try again to be part of CSI except as the victim in a murder investigation. The five new CSI interns are allowed to work on the outskirts of the investigation, but they soon find themselves thrust into its center when it becomes clear that one of them is the murderer. Each of them focuses on their own specialty to uncover the evidence that is needed, with the killer's motivation revealed to be among the oldest, jealousy and lust, something which is not in short supply among high school students.

Any credibility this story may have enjoyed was lost the moment they had the interns on the firing range blazing away at targets. No cop in their right minds would let any 15 year old near a gun on a firing range. In a CSI story, where things are grounded in a world where science rules and emotions lead to your destruction, rational behavior defines the characters. So when the interns start shooting, there are no longer part of the world of CSI TV series. This is supposed to be spin-off of the TV series and thus follow the same rules as it, that disconnect makes it hard to the the story seriously. Add to that the new teen characters taking center stage and main characters of the series being shuttled off to the side the resulting story feels like a piece of bad Mary-Sue fan-fiction.



CSI: Intern at Your Own Risk is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Ferdinand

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