By Rei Hiroe
Viz, 216 pp.
Rating: Mature

For lack of better comparison, Rei Hiroe’s Black Lagoon reminds me intensely of Kohta Hirano’s Hellsing. Sure the former is about psychotic badass couriers, and the latter is about psychotic badass vampires who slay zombies, but they have essential qualities in common. First, they prominently feature psychotic badasses. Second, they’re all about the fanservice. Third, they shamelessly fetishize violence along with just about any other vice on the planet. In short, neither manga has any redeeming qualities whatsoever. But both make up for it in sheer cool. And the bonus of selecting Black Lagoon as your stupid seinen manga du jour? Great art.

Black Lagoon follows our hapless hero “Rock,” a Japanese salaryman, and his insane kidnappers; the guntoting “Two Hands” Revy, the ever-calm Dutch “The Boss,” and Benny the Mechanic. Rock is on an “innocent” mission to deliver a data disk to his company’s Borneo branch when he and his crew are kidnapped by insane freelancers. They let his entire crew go, but hold Rock hostage. The story unfolds from there, with Rock getting involved with the crew’s crazy hijinks, and manages to befriend the crew while struggling to survive.

To give you an idea of how absurd Black Lagoon is, the book’s first panel features our terrified protagonist getting punched in the face by a gun-toting woman with enormous breasts. That’s about the summation of the story right there. The action is insane, impossible, and drips with overwhelming amounts of cool. Psychotic big-breasted maids, psychotic big-breasted women with gigantic guns, and huge explosions set off by psychotic female mob bosses are part of the page-by-page fare of this manga. I hope by now you sense a theme here.

Fortunately, the art serves it well. It seems almost made for anime, which, interestingly, is part of its appeal. The Black Lagoon anime has already seen stateside release, and this book obviously hopes to benefit from that. Thankfully, it lives up to über-violent promise of the anime. Reason and logic never dictate the actions of Black Lagoon’s characters: only badassery.

Part of what makes Black Lagoon so fun is it never tries to be something it isn’t. Too often series featuring badass action and fanservice attempt to be deep and psychological. This often results in disappointment and boredom. Series like Black Lagoon forget the pedestrian aspects of comics like plotting and character development. The result is like drinking a Jolt cola: you’ll be too hopped up on caffeine and sugar to remember much, but hell if it isn’t adrenaline-spiked nonstop fun.

Volumes one and two of Black Lagoon are available now.