By Dan Hipp
Tokyopop, 184 pp.
Rating: 16+

After reading Dan Hipp’s visually arresting yet tin-eared revenge drama Gyakushu!, I’m not sure how to describe it. The unholy love child of Moby Dick and Kill Bill? John Woo Presents: The Man in the Iron Mask? Grindhouse on ice? Or simply a splendid-looking mess? Let’s examine the evidence.

Strike one: the story itself is nothing special. Gyakushu! exemplifies what artist Catherine Leamy has deemed the You Touched My Stuff genre, in which a man sets out to avenge the death/rape/mutilation of his wife or girlfriend. We, the audience, never learn much about the victim—except, perhaps, that she was exceptionally beautiful or saintly—but her violation is enough to push the hero over the edge and set him on a dark, bloody path. Such stories are little more than a pretext for a man to blow stuff up, torture a few bad guys, and utter terse one-liners that reveal the depth of his commitment. Gyakushu! is no exception. Our nameless protagonist prowls a frozen wasteland in search of the men who brutally butchered and ate his wife. Yes—you read that right. Apparently, whale blubber makes an adequate substitute for fava beans and a nice chianti. Ugh and double ugh.

Strike two: the narrative structure is needlessly complex. In the first few pages of Gyakushu!, we see a happy time in the hero’s life. (See reference to You Touched My Stuff.) We learn that he had a beautiful wife, Demi, and an adorable son, Spencer. We also learn that our hero pissed off someone powerful. We then jump ahead fifteen years. The hero is now badly disfigured, clad in bandages, and alone on an ice floe with Wretchik—one of the agents of his downfall—and Linus, a little boy who bears an uncanny resemblance to Spencer. But just as we think, “Ah, now the story is getting started,” the scene is interrupted by the introduction of Butch, a chatty, call-me-Ishmael narrator who proceeds to tell us the hero’s personal history: how the hero met his wife, angered the powerful Lord Viktor, suffered at Viktor and Wretchik’s hands, and eventually found himself rescuing a Spencer surrogate from Wretchik. By that point, however, I felt mildly seasick from all the narrative back-and-forth and, frankly, a little peeved. Yes, I get it—revenge is cyclical! The narrative is cyclical! Hand me the Dramamine.

Strike three: the dialogue is clunky. The narrator’s tone sits uncomfortably between Herman Melville and Emily Bronte, with frequent “gentle reader” style apologies for the narrative’s deficiencies and sentences that float like lead balloons. The dialogue, too, tacks between hard-boiled sentiment (”The devil’s waited long enough for me to make you his bitch”) and Walter Scott stiffness (”By the hour our business is through, my name will be all but discernable when dancing across your lips”). The result feels like Ivanhoe as scripted by Jerry Bruckheimer.

But before I sentence Gyakushu! to the reject pile, I must confess that it is one of the best-looking manga I’ve read in ages. Hipp’s characters are flat-out gorgeous with huge, soulful eyes that speak volumes about the pain they’ve suffered and the hopes they cherish. Another arresting element of Hipp’s artwork is his skillful use of tone; Gyakushu!’s minimalist palette is Technicolor-vivid. One of Hipp’s most effective decisions is to use bold, black lines for action scenes and soft, gray lines for flashbacks. It’s a simple device, but a more evocative and powerful tool in his storytelling arsenal than either the dialogue or the voice-over. And I can’t neglect the marvelous arctic creatures that inhabit Hipp’s landscapes. They’re used sparingly, but these whales and gophers (pikas? tundra dogs?) add considerable visual appeal, bringing the barren setting to life.

The bottom line: the first volume of Gyakushu! is a mixed bowl of nuts, with some stunning artwork and stunningly awful dialogue. I’d recommend it—if you could just mute the narrator and enjoy the pictures.