JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: The series gets...less bizarre?

This blog isn't dead if I publish one or two blogs a year, right?

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Part 3: Stardust Crusaders, Volumes 1-6
By Hirohiko Araki
Published by Viz Media



If the first two parts of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure were ludicrously over the top examples of shonen fighting manga, this third volume seems to be the point at which creator Hirohiko Araki toned things down a bit and settled into a long-running quest storyline. They're still pretty weird, with lots of striking gore, strange fashions, and nonsensical superpowers, but not quite at the level of what he had exhibited previously. Maybe setting the story in the present day somehow made things more restrictive, as if there needed to be at least some semblance to reality?

Whatever the case, there's still plenty of crazy stuff here. This volume introduces us to a new series protagonist, who is Japanese this time around. He's the grandson of Part 2's Joseph Joestar, but his name, Jotaro Kujo, can still be shortened to JoJo, and he's something of a tough guy high school student. However, we get introduced to him when his mother sends for her father, Joseph, who is looking pretty spry and muscular for a guy in his sixties. She reports that Jotaro has been arrested and refuses to leave jail, and when she and Joseph visit him, he claims that he's being haunted by an evil spirit, whose powers get demonstrated in pretty awesome fashion:


 

This is kind of a clever way of introducing the series' latest twist on crazy superpowers. You see, certain people have such powerful life energy that it creates an apparition expressing their inner nature or something. Since these spirit figures stand next to them, they are known as "stands," which I suspect is a case of a Japanese creator using an English word that sounded cool to them but comes off as awkward in translation.

Anyway, only stand users can see each other's stands, and both Jotaro and Joseph have had their stands recently awakened due to the reappearance of an old enemy: Dio! That's right, the villain from part 1 has been awakened after somebody found his body on the bottom of the ocean, and what's worse is, his head (which, you may remember, was all that was left of him after a series of epic battles) is wearing the body of Jonathan, Joseph's grandfather!

So, Joseph and Jotaro set out to go confront Dio, who is currently in Egypt. They are accompanied by a stand-using pal of Joseph's named Mohammed Avdol, who I think is supposed to be African, although I don't know what's going on with his weird hairstyle (which seems to consist of two-inch dreadlocks and a rat-tail) and what are either facial tattoos or some sort of scarring, as well as what looks like a very heavy earring necklace:



They quickly pick up a few allies as well. First up is another Japanese teenager named Noriaki Kikyoin, who attacks Jotaro at school in a creepy fashion by using his stand like a puppeteer to take over the body of the sexy school nurse and make her do some nasty stuff to some other juvenile delinquents:


 
 

However, when Jojo defeats him by having his stand punch him a lot, he drags him back to Joseph and Avdol and learns that he was being controlled by a "flesh bud" inserted into his brain by Dio:



Gross! But after Jotaro removes the flesh bud via awesomeness, Kikyoin is eager to join the gang on their quest. However, they quickly learn that their journey to Egypt won't be so easy when another bad guy attacks their plane and causes them to crash. In order to avoid endangering innocent bystanders in future attacks (and to provide a reason for a road-trip narrative), they decide to take a more roundabout route, traveling by sea and land throughout southern Asia. They do manage to fill out their ranks a bit more after encountering a Frenchman named Jean Pierre Polnareff in Hong Kong. As with Kikyoin, he attacks them because he's being controlled by Dio, but his sense of honor fights through his evil programming as he accepts a noble death by fire at the hands of Avdol's flame-controlling stand, which makes them decide to spare his life and let him join the team.

So, it's a long, eventful journey that's full of geographical and cultural details that may or may not be based on actual research; there are lots of wacky culture-shock misunderstandings while the gang is traveling through India, and plenty of other nonsense, like this strange aside involving some ascetics sighted by the side of the road:



That might just be Araki inserting some of his general oddball sensibility into the story, which he does take the opportunity to do whenever he gets the chance, although if anything, he seems to have toned things down a bit. This turns out to be a fairly conventional shonen narrative involving a group of awesomely-powered pals (some of whom started out as bad guys) traveling together and occasionally fighting evil on their way to confront the ultimate villain. The sheer level of anything-can-happen strangeness is not as prevalent here as it was in previous volumes, with villains mostly being defeated after being overpowered (Jotaro's main attack seems to be a flurry of punches) or occasionally outsmarted through teamwork. It's kind of disappointing; there's not much of the one-upmanship that I enjoyed so much in previous parts, with combatants countering their opponents moves through secret techniques only to fall prey to counter-counter moves, which are countered themselves in increasingly awesome and unlikely ways.

But maybe that sort of storytelling isn't sustainable; if every encounter is more awesome than the last, you eventually reach a point in which you can't get any more awesome (although I could think of a few rebuttals to that idea, such as the Dragon Ball manga or the anime Gurren Lagann). For a longer-running series, shorter encounters with secondary bad guys makes for an easier hook, and maybe Araki can pull out all the stops when the gang finally gets to Dio himself. And who knows, after that the sky's the limit.

But for what actually does occur here, there's plenty of strangeness, imagination, and lots of the series' trademark gore. Also, Araki has given himself an interesting foundation to build the series on by basing everyone's stand on cards from the Tarot deck. They start out by pairing cards with a color; Avdol's stand is named Magician's Red, Joseph's is Hermit Purple, Kikyoin's is Hierophant Green, Jonathan's is Star Platinum, and so on. Later, Araki drops the colors and just names stands after the cards, so they encounter Emperor, Hanged Man, The Lovers, Justice, The High Priestess, etc. It sort of makes sense, at least early on, with Avdol, a fortune teller, remarking on what the different cards represent and how the stand users' powers fit that theme. But eventually it just seems to be an idea generation machine, with the names of cards giving Araki an excuse to draw whatever seems to fit the theme. And eventually, Araki runs out of Tarot cards, so when the gang gets to Egypt, they start encountering stands based on the Egyptian pantheon of gods (some lip service to consistency is paid when a character claims that Egypt is the origin of the Tarot, which is a notion that seems suspect).

And there are certainly some crazy/cool ideas here, as well as quite a few that don't make a whole lot of sense, but you just kind of have to accept them. Joseph's stand takes the form of thorny vines that come out of his hands, but he mostly uses them to interface with electronic or photographic equipment for remote viewing purposes (including karate chopping and smashing a Polaroid camera in order to generate a picture of Dio). Polnareff's Silver Chariot stand is an armor-wearing swordsman that moves so fast that Avdol's stand's flame powers are useless against him because "My stand can freely slice apart flames and separate them...creating gaps between pockets of air, guiding the fire." Uh...sure, that makes sense, I suppose.

And those are just the main characters. The villains consist of a motley assortment of freaks and weirdos, mostly recognizable by their grotesque appearances. There's a serial killer whose stand attacks people through reflections, a sadomasochistic creep whose stand seems to be inspired by the killer doll from the movie Trilogy of Terror, a womanizing cowboy with a gun stand that fires ghost bullets, a gross old lady who turns people into zombies/puppets after punching holes through their bodies, a guy who shrinks his stand down to microscopic size to attack people from inside their brains, and a baby stand user who attacks people through their dreams. And those are the fairly normal ones!

There are also quite a few instances when Araki sets up rules, only to break them as soon as possible. Characters state early on that only stand users can see each other's stands, but at one point, the gang gets shipwrecked and lost at sea, and they, the crew of their boat, and a girl who decided to tag along as a sometime-sidekick end up on what appears to be a drifting, deserted ship. But wouldn't you know it, the whole ship is a stand! The stand user, by the way, turns out to be an ape that does not appear to be based on anything actually found in the animal kingdom:



This phenomenon of "normal people" being able to see and interact with stands happens more than once, and it usually gets hand-waved away. There's another guy whose stand is an amorphous, shape-shifting blob which he uses to disguise himself as other people, and apparently his stand is able to take physical form because that was what the plot called for. Later, the crew fights against a stand that takes the form of a sword that possesses anyone who unsheathes it, which kind of upends the whole basis of the series' mythology. Ah well, you can't really take points off a series like this for being unrealistic.

One thing I did sort of take points off for, though, is Araki not coming up with as many crazy poses, strange anatomical irregularities, or weird costume choices. There are certainly some regrettable hairstyles, like Polnareff's super-high flattop/mullet combo (Araki sometimes gives him a hairline that makes it look like his head is cylindrical):



Or the wad of hair that seems to be hanging off the front or side of Kikyoin's head:



And I'm not sure what is going on with Jotaro's hat, which seems to either have his hair sticking up through the top or only covers the front of his head:



But other than that, people seem almost normal, with few expressionistic fashion flourishes (Polnareff's weird tube-top/one-shoulder tanktop is particularly goofy), and aside from an occasional bit of anatomical oddness, action poses that are fairly standard. Instead, Araki seems to be saving up his excessiveness for the ever-present gore. Blood flows in this series like few others, and villains are usually dispatched in incredibly nasty fashion. People's heads explode, limbs are severed, guys are stabbed full of holes or cut in half, and all manner of nastiness occurs. In one especially brutal moment, even a dog gets killed in gory fashion:



It's pretty horrific stuff, but it's certainly memorable. It also serves to make the good guys willingness to straight up murder their enemies somewhat more palatable, since the bad guys are likely to viciously dismember anyone and everyone they encounter. This usually makes their comeuppance pretty satisfying, whether they're getting stabbed to death by Polnareff:



Or pummeled by Jotaro:



So, overall, this is still a pretty enjoyable series, even if it has lost some of the batshit craziness of earlier volumes. I'm definitely curious to see what other types of superpowers and gore that Araki can come up with, and who knows, maybe he'll pull out some sort of insane battle that tops everything he's done so far. Here's hoping for as much nonsense and, yes, bizarreness as possible.

One Punch Man: When you start out big, where do you go next?

One Punch Man, Volume 5-6
Story by One
Art by Yusuke Marata
Published by Viz Media



One thing I enjoy about shonen manga is its sense of growing scale. Stories often start out following one character or group as they seek to become the best fighter/ninja/pirate/whatever in the world, and they slowly get better and better as the series progresses, gathering allies and gaining strength until they're ready for a massive final confrontation with the forces of evil. It's a great formula, one that makes following a lengthy narrative over the course of multiple volumes really satisfying.

But as with any formula, it can be fun to subvert it and play against expectations. That's what this manga does, with its main character starting off the series as the strongest there is at what he does and then subverting tropes as he easily defeats any threats that he faces. The creators get a lot of mileage out of the comedy that comes from a guy who is kind of a schlub being super-awesome, with his struggle being to find a worthy opponent, or just to get through his normal life when he's too good at what he does.

The fact that this is a superhero comic also gives the creators a chance to put their own spin on that genre. And they certainly do so, making this a very manga take on capes-and-tights, with characters competing to attain certain rankings in a superhero system that's strictly controlled by an organizing body. There's also an emphasis on master/student relationships, although the central one, between main character Saitama and his cyborg disciple Genos, regularly gets upended, as the student is the competent one, only following his teacher in an attempt to discover how he reached his off-the-charts strength levels.

So really, this manga is all about comedy, as well as plenty of shonen manga style awesomeness. Saitama is an impossibly strong superhero, able to defeat any enemy in a single punch, but how he got these powers is a mystery (he claims it came from working out so hard that all his hair fell out, he lost all feeling, and he gained incredible strength, but when he describes his workout regimen, it's not exactly back-breaking).



The first few volumes of the series saw Saitama wondering why he was having trouble achieving recognition as a hero, until he realized that he hadn't joined the Hero Association. Once he did that, he then struggled to be able to officially defeat bad guys, and since he was ranked so low, people thought that he had somehow cheated and couldn't possibly be so strong. And lots of other stuff, like rivalries with other heroes, got in the way of his progress. But maybe things are finally starting to look up for him as new threats that require his awesome strength arise.

As volume 5 starts, several other heroes (including an offensively-stereotyped gay-panic-themed weirdo named Puri-Puri Prisoner) are facing a monster named Deep Sea King who has invaded land and begun killing everyone he sees. It takes Saitama most of the volume to even show up for the fight, giving everyone else the chance to defend innocent bystanders and make courageous stands against impossible odds. We get plenty of dynamic spreads in which punches explode off the page:



But when Saitama finally gets there, he ends things pretty quickly, as always. But perhaps this is the moment when the creators decided that that joke can only go so far, so they spend the next volume or so building up an impossibly large threat to the planet in order to give Saitama an opponent who can survive a fight scene longer than a page or two. As seems to be standard for the series by now, it takes an entire volume of build to get to the confrontation (with lots of page time devoted to other heroes fighting over-powered bad guys in awesome manner), so we'll have to wait until volume 7 to see how it finally plays out, but given the series' track record with comic timing, I bet it will be pretty enjoyable.

So, this is a fun manga, full of dynamic action with stakes that are ridiculously high (entire cities are regularly laid to waste during the battles that take place), but an emphasis on comedy that keeps things light and silly while still taking plenty of time for general shonen awesomeness. One area of particular interest (to me, at least) is the way that Saitama himself is depicted. Artist Yusuke Murata uses a visual alien style when drawing him most of the time; where everything else is hyper-detailed and full of speed lines, Saitama himself is usually drawn with simple lines and minimal detail. It's another weird bit of comedy for the series, emphasizing that the main character is something of a blank slate, and someone who doesn't really fit in with what's going on around him.


The series makes for a really enjoyable read, albeit one that goes by quickly, since so many pages consist of characters attacking each other in explosive bursts of power, but I'm happy to spend that time having fun and being entertained by whatever nonsense the creators come up with next. I don't know how long they can sustain things, but I'm definitely planning to see them try.

The Black Dahlia: She's not ready for her close-up

A Treasury of XXth Century Murder: Black Dahlia
By Rick Geary
Published by NBM



True crime seems like a genre that would be perfectly suited to comics, but there don't seem to be too many examples of it, at least not in the English-language comics scene. But maybe that's because Rick Geary has got the market cornered, first with his "Treasury of Victorian Murder" series and now with his ongoing "Treasury of XXth Century Murder" books. Between the two series, that's more than 15 books of impeccably-presented tales of people meeting their gruesome ends, and it covers some of the most famous cases of the past couple centuries, giving readers pretty much all the information they need to know about these examples of human nastiness.

Actually, that might be selling Geary short. His books aren't just basic recitations of facts with competent illustrations; they're detailed examinations of events that cover as much as possible in around 80 pages, examine the relevant personnel, and place these events within the proper perspective, filling in whatever details about the time and setting are needed to understand what captured the public attention and continues to make them intriguing. While some salacious details are provided, Geary makes implication go a long way, keeping most of the gory imagery off the page but still providing a sense of realism. I love the way he gives things a sense of the mundane, making the players seem like everyday people who got caught up in something larger than they ever expected.



This particular case gives him plenty to work with, featuring a young woman's mutilated body found in a vacant lot outside of Los Angeles in January of 1947. Some investigation reveals that her name was Elizabeth Short, but while dozens of men were questioned, the killer was never found, and the horrific nature of the murder (she was beaten and had her face sliced open, and the body was cut in half) almost defies comprehension. Geary brings up several possible explanations, including that she might have had mob connections or that there may have been a serial killer who preyed on several women in the area throughout the 1940s, but none of it is satisfying, which is the nature of many of these true crime tales, and a probable element of why they continue to be so compelling.

But Geary does give as complete a picture as possible, delving into Short's troubled history as a would-be model and actress who bounced between her hometown in Massachusetts, Miami, Chicago, and southern California, developing relationships with a string of men but never able to find the right guy to settle down with and eventually getting involved with some unsavory characters in LA's underworld. Geary makes her into a sad character, someone who is never able to realize her dreams, but she still feels painfully human, undeserving of her awful fate.

And as usual, Geary brings it all to life with fascinating detail. He has a knack for giving people a homely look, the kid of person you would expect to encounter on the street, but they're all individual, unique people, everyday Joes and Janes lost in the sea of humanity, only standing out due to their proximity to events that we're still trying to reckon with.



And he also does his usual great job of filling in the settings, which here consist mostly of the palm-tree-lined streets of Los Angeles, but also include a variety of hotels and nightclubs. I like the way he gives many of these places an art deco feel, evoking the era without being too obvious about it.



So, all in all, it's what you would expect from someone who has gotten to be a real pro at this sort of thing. I don't know if I feel especially enlightened by what I've learned, but that's to be expected. Cases like this are famous due to their incomprehensibility, but they're still intriguing because they involved real people, and Geary is able to capture both the realism and the mystery, tying it all up in one succinct package. If you're looking to immerse yourself in some of the uglier moments of recent human history, you're not likely to find a better guide. Just don't expect to gain much understanding of humanity along the way.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Barreling bizarrely toward the present

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Part 2: Battle Tendency, Volume 4
By Hirohiko Araki
Published by Viz Media



So here's another volume of classic manga craziness, so, since this series has defeated my abilities to offer much in the way of cogent analysis, get ready for another recap of the madness contained within. Let's get started!

The previous volume ended with Jojo and his mentor Lisa Lisa about to confront the evil Wamuu and Kars following the heroic death of their ally Caesar. But they soon discover that the bad guys have created an army of vampires, including this guy:



But even though our heroes are outnumbered, they manage to bluff their way into a pair of one-on-one duels, since they still have the magical gem in their possession that will grant their foes untold power. They agree to meet at a nearby location called Skeleton's Heel, which is a Stonehenge-style stone circle (in Switzerland, because this series' grasp of history and geography is rather tenuous) that also doubled as a chariot-racing arena in Roman times.

In case you're wondering if that means what you think it means, here's what appears as soon as Jojo shows up for his scheduled fight:



Yep, that's right: it's time for a chariot race with vampire horses! That sounds pretty awesome, and it quickly turns into a classic shonen manga battle, with rules about weapons being deployed by being hung on pillars throughout the track. Jojo manages to get an early lead due to some trickery, but the early advantage he gains by obtaining a giant sledgehammer is quickly undone when Wamuu does this:






The fight soon turns into one of those affairs where each guy uses some awesome move against the other, only to find that his opponent has foreseen it and come up with a counterattack, but then the original guy has a counter-counterattack ready, and so on. We seem to reach a turning point when Jojo uses his Hamon super-breathing powers to basically rip Wamuu's arms off:



But Wamuu uses an awesomely dramatic technique to power through the pain:





Sure, why not? Blinding himself apparently also heal's Wamuu's wounds, and he extends a unicorn horn that he can use to sense vibrations, Daredevil style, and keep going. After more fighting involving super-powerful crossbows and meticulous ricochet skills, Jojo seems to have delivered a killing blow, but Wamuu doesn't go down easily:



Yep, even with his body disintegrating, he keeps attacking using awesomely weird moves, including a suicide maneuver in which he sucks large volumes of air into his lungs and shoots it out with a laser focus, threatening to decapitate Jojo. But Jojo manages to come up with a counter that basically explodes Wamuu's body, leaving only his head to finish off. Which Jojo does, in a surprisingly merciful fashion:





Yes, it's all about respect between warriors, that most classic of shonen manga tropes. The other vampires don't see it that way though, and they try to attack, giving Wamuu the chance to make one last awesome attack:




After all this nuttiness, it seems like there's almost no way for the big climactic battle with Kars, the leader of the Pillar Men, to top it, but it ends up being epicly dramatic, involving the revelation of the secret connection between Jojo and Lisa Lisa (spoiler: she's his long-lost mother), the last minute arrival of Nazi cyborg Stroheim to lend some help, Kars becoming the "ultimate being" and gaining the power of all life on earth, and one last final plan by Jojo that involves flying a plane into a volcano. It's pretty amazing stuff.

However, I've shared enough images, so more of my breathless "and then this happens" descriptions can only dull the brain-melting effects of experiencing this manga. Just know that it's crazy and awesome and full of so many bizarre things piling on top of each other that the only possible response is to just hang on for the ride.

Of Hirohiko Araki's various artistic tics, I was disappointed that there weren't very many chances for crazy outfits in this volume, although I did like Wamuu's battle garb, which consists of a bulging, jeweled loincloth, some sort of bicep guards, and a vest pinned to his chest with knives:



There's also this goofy chapter-opening illustration of Jojo wearing what appears to be four hats that have been loosely stitched together:



And I also caught several appearances of one of Araki's weirder anatomical impossibilities that he keeps returning to (I mentioned it all the way back in part 1, volume 1 of the series) in which a character gets hit so hard his legs seem to get shortened:



Note that that page also includes Araki's weird sense of scale, in which it's hard to tell how big characters are actually meant to be. Is Wamuu really supposed to be three times as tall as Jojo? Maybe it's just exaggeration, but it works to make the series feel strange and unearthly, the kind of story where literally anything can happen (and often does).

So, as of the end of this volume, the series seems to finally make its way to the present (that is, the late 80s), and part 3, Stardust Crusaders, kicks off with what is sure to be more awesomely nonsensical fighting. I can't wait to read it.

Fight Club 2: I am Jack's pointless sequel

Fight Club 2
Written by Chuck Palahniuk
Art by Cameron Stewart
Published by Dark Horse Comics



I used to be a huge fan of Fight Club; for a while, I said it was my favorite movie (I still think it's one of the few cases where the movie is better than the book). However, as the years wore on and the passions of youth faded, I realized that it hit me at the perfect time in my life, right when I was in that "idealistic young man" phase and thought that the insights it offered about men being feminized, relegated to meaningless jobs, and pacified with mindless consumerism were profound. I do still think there's some bite to the story, and the movie is so stylishly presented that it makes for a hell of a thrill ride, enough so that it's not just easy to miss the story's secondary moral about the dangers of giving yourself over to a charismatic demagogue, it almost makes the fascism that rises out of this demagoguery seem attractive.

Interestingly, that arguably makes Fight Club as relevant as ever, even though it's very much of its time, reeking of 90s slackerism and pre-9/11 ennui. But while a case could be made for Fight Club as an examination of exactly the sort of white man's fear of irrelevance that has led to the rise of Donald Trump, the comics-format sequel has nothing in the way of relevance to modern times. It's a strange attempt to recapture the magic of the original, but it never offers a reason to revisit these characters, a desire to look at how society has changed in the 20 years since the book's release, or anything more than some noncommittal gestures at new and interesting ideas.

Frankly, I'm kind of baffled as to why this even exists. I'm sure Chuck Palahniuk doesn't need the money, but if he did, he could surely have made more of it by writing a true sequel novel and selling the screenplay rights. Maybe he was so bereft of ideas that no book editor would accept them, so he went with the comics industry, which will instantly bow down before any hint of wider celebrity that deigns to approach its ranks.

So, the story that Palahniuk has apparently been waiting 20 years to spring on us is that Fight Club's narrator, here called Sebastian for some reason, but also sometimes referred to as Running Wolf, has basically gone back to his boring life as a corporate drone, now medicated to keep his alternate personality in check and trapped in a loveless marriage with Marla (they also have a kid who seems to be exhibiting strange tendencies involving an obsession with explosives). But! Marla is bored, so she has been swapping out his pills with a placebo in hopes of reawakening Tyler Durden and finding some passion in her life. Except we also find out that Sebastian's psychiatrist has been regularly hypnotizing him in order to bring Tyler out and let him secretly work on taking over the world.

Based on this opening, maybe Palahniuk had something in mind about the idealism of youth quickly succumbing to the easy complacency of family life. Or, when he reveals that Tyler has been operating a corporation that provides paid military contractors to countries around the world (which is apparently the only societal concern that Palahniuk has picked up on since 1999), one wonders if he's trying to comment on the way American society is happy to spread death and destruction as long as it's happening on the other side of the world. Both of those ideas are a stretch though, and Palahniuk doesn't do anything with either of them. Instead, he sets up a plot involving the kidnapping of Sebastian and Marla's son, Sebastian trying to infiltrate the ranks of Tyler's army (which still operates out of the crappy house they lived in together), and Tyler apparently planning to destroy the world in a nuclear holocaust. There's also a nonsensical subplot about Marla organizing an army of her own through a support group of kids with progeria who get a stand-in for the Make-a-Wish Foundation to parachute them into war zones for some reason, and Robert Paulson (the man with the bitch tits) seems to have also risen from the dead as some sort of zombie minion, I think?.

To tell the truth, I don't really know what was going on, and I found it hard to care. Palahniuk's main objectives here seem to be to wander through a vague plot without much in the way of forward momentum, make a few jokes that fall far short of the thrilling transgressiveness of his early work, and compliment himself on the way Fight Club has become a cultural touchstone. He even has himself show up in the story to advise the characters on what to do when the plot seems to have stalled, but the joke doesn't really work, since there doesn't seem to be any drive to the story either before or after that point.

The whole thing ends up being a mess, one that has nothing of interest to say and no real reason to say it. The one slightly clever idea that Palahniuk comes up with is that Tyler Durden is a self-propagating meme that has existed for thousands of years, but his choice of comics as a medium (and Cameron Stewart as an artist) sort of shoots him in the foot in that respect, since that's the sort of idea that comics writers like Grant Morrison have been tossing off in their sleep for years. Palahniuk seems to recognize his desperation, since he spends the entire final chapter of the story having the characters berate him for coming up with a dumb ending. If only they had let him know about the beginning and the middle as well, not to mention the very conception of this comic, which fails on pretty much every level to justify its existence.

One Piece: A storyline finally ends, in predictably awesome fashion

One Piece, Volume 79
By Eiichiro Oda
Published by Viz Media



This is it; after around 12 volumes, Eiichiro Oda finally hits the big finale of the current One Piece storyline, which has seen the Straw Hat pirates fight in increasingly high stakes battles to liberate the nation of Dressrosa from the tyrannical rule of Don Quixote Doflamingo. In the previous volume, the various battles between characters reached their conclusions, leaving only the big showdown between Luffy and Doflamingo, and it seemed like it was almost over. However, Oda manages to drag it out for a few more chapters, ratcheting up the drama and turning it into an expectedly epic final confrontation that allows the entire nation to contribute to the victory.

That's a great example of how well Oda paces the series; even though this battle has lasted multiple volumes and hundreds of pages, it doesn't feel like it's padded. The stakes build and build, with the fates of thousands of people in the balance, and while the good guys are sure to prevail, they end up doing so not just through determination, but by rallying an entire kingdom.

So how does Oda take a fight that seemed to be drawing to a close at the end of the last volume and drag it out for several more chapters without making it seem tiresome? He has Doflamingo briefly knock Luffy out, meaning that our hero needs about 10 minutes to recover his strength for a final attack. But during that time, the "birdcage" that Doflamingo has placed around the kingdom is contracting, and it's likely to cut everyone to ribbons before that 10 minutes is up. So that gives everyone, from the Straw Hats' remaining allies, to the surviving gladiators and pirates, to the members of the Navy, a chance to struggle as hard as they possibly can to buy Luffy enough time to get back on his feet:



And then, when Luffy is just about ready, the coliseum announcer from the gladiator battles earlier in this storyline makes sure everyone in the kingdom knows exactly what is going on and who the man fighting to take down the tyrant is:







This makes for an incredibly rousing moment, with the entire kingdom cheering for Luffy and lending him their emotional strength. And sure enough, the final confrontation is awesome and epic, about as satisfying a finish to one of these lengthy storylines as the series has ever done. Oda is a master at building emotional stakes and then paying them off in spectacular fashion, and this is just the latest example.

So what's next? With the battle wrapped up, the rest of the volume provides some nice closure, including a look at how Luffy's childhood pal Sabo survived his apparent death and eventually made it back into his life, and it starts setting up what's to come by introducing a new antagonist, a guy so tough that he survives a suicide attempt in which he jumps from a city in the clouds:



That's funny stuff, a great way to show us that this guy is going to be a major threat. I'm sure it will be another dozen volumes or so before Luffy gets around to fighting him, but I'm happy to wait that long, because it's sure to be awesome.