By Hee Jung Park
Tokyopop, 192 pp.
Rating: Older Teen (16+)

With the exception of a spattering of NETCOMICS titles like the awesome Let Dai and the thoroughly unattractive Boy Princess, I haven’t been exposed to yaoi manhwa, so I went into Martin & John with few expectations. I didn’t know it was a serious genre in Korea! Indeed, this is the first Korean yaoi title to come out of a major publisher. And it’s not even being marketed as such! Tokyopop is publishing it alongside their other Hee Jung Park works like Hotel Africa and Fever, as opposed to running it in their BLU line. And that’s fair enough I suppose: there’s not enough explicit material to stick this title in the “Adults Only” section of your local comic shop. For better or for worse, Martin & John is not about gay or even idealized gay idealism. Martin & John is a philosophical perspective on twisted relationships wherein the protagonists happen to be gay.

To sum up the plot quickly, Martin & John is a series of vignettes about men named Martin and John. Sound like a tenuous link at best? Well, there’s more to it than that. The Martins and Johns are always young men with high romantic tension to say the least. And in typical Hee Jung Park style, the manhwa is extremely tragic and moody, dripping with gloomy psychology and massive introversion. Very little of the manhwa is dedicated to the plot itself. The vast majority is directed inwards at the characters and their personal dramas.

As a male yaoi fan, Martin & John was a breath of fresh air. This is not to say that this manhwa has a realistic portrayal of gay issues. The social stigma of homosexuality in the real world is not visibly present in the world of Martin & John. What was more impressive was the depth of the characters and their relationships. Watching the John of vignette #2 inherit the bastard son of his estranged and recently deceased father was both life-affirming and heart-breaking. The way in which the Johns deal with the women that affect their lives is believable too. In #1, John leaves Martin to marry a woman because he feels that he is trapping him. In a twisted way, it’s a tragic and believable twisting of the concept of love. In vignette #2, the birth mother of John’s newly-aquired foster brother confronts John about the trials of her life and her desire to raise the child on her own. It’s strange to say, but this nominally yaoi manhwa has one of the best portrayals of the trials of teen pregnancy and child abuse that I’ve seen yet. This manhwa is not afraid to push the boundaries, and I respect it for that.

Now it’s time for the critique. The art succeeds in being very attractive and very metaphorical for the world of the men of the stories. But sadly, I feel like I’ve seen the character designs before! If you’ve read any of Hee Jung Parks’s other manhwa, prepare for very similar character designs. Attractive the art may be, but original it is not. Also, screentones get overused and get a bit distracting at points. Furthermore, the introversion and psychological angst go a bit too far at points. The best example is the “prologue” (vignette #0). It makes no sense, is over-the-top in its self importance, and basically represents everything I resent about comics that try far too hard to be deep.

Fortunately though, these critiques are outweighed by the manhwa’s strengths. To be sure, this is Hee Jung Park’s best manhwa stateside to date. If you buy just one of her works, let it be this one.

Volume one of Martin & John is available now.