Story by Yi DongEun, Art by Yu Chung
Yen Press
Rating: Teen

The Nonblonds are some of the best thieves around, capable of getting just about anything for the right price! Unfortunately, the groups youngest member, Tublerun, tends to act a bit impulsively. It’s this impulsiveness that sends him to the North Pole on his own to take part in a mysterious treasure hunt. A treasure hunt that ties into his own murky origins, the discovery of liquid metal, and a forgotten secret that’s been sealed away for decades.

I found the general plot of Freak to be a bit confusing, but when you come in partway through a series that’s to be expected. While I was able to cotton on to what was going on fairly easily there were still a lot of things that left me scratching my head, not the least of which was why the North Pole looked suspiciously like a snow-covered version of the Giza Pyramid complex. From what I could tell this is a series full of mysteries, the foremost in these two volumes being the unknown connection between the main character, Tublerun, and the mysterious man known as Chroma. On the trip to the North Pole the two find themselves locked in combat with something distinctly inhuman, yet at the same time linked to their own pasts. It’s an event that plays heavily into the series conclusion in volume four.

While the mystery is definitely interesting and does a decent job of hooking the reader, it’s painfully clear that DongEun and Chung where hoping to string it out over a much longer period of time. Half of the fourth and final volume is made up of a tale that has no bearing on the Tublerun/Chroma mystery and in fact features the return of a character from earlier in the series. The story, “Tears of the Mermaid,” is clearly intended as a bit of a light-hearted romp meant to give everyone a breather after the North Pole incident, but it also eats up space and forces the creators to wrap up the various hanging plot threads and mysteries in half a volume. It’s really not enough time and I felt pretty bad for them; I got the impression that they weren’t aware of how soon the end was. Still, they did manage to wrap things up, but in such a way that is less climatic than one might hope, yet oddly haunting at the same time.

Yu Chung’s art is pretty good with some interesting character designs and nice visuals for the liquid metal equipment and armor that several characters use. The fight scenes, particularly in volume three, are fantastic! They’re really well done and fairly easy to follow with only the odd confusing shot here and there. Tublerun and Chroma are acrobatic, fast, and highly skilled, putting on a lengthy battle with inhuman creatures and creations that’s on par with some of the better wire-fu movies out there. Flipping off of walls, quick dodges and more are all clear and nicely drawn. I honestly wasn’t expecting the fight scenes to be this entertaining and was blown away at just how well done they were. The fourth volume takes a slightly different approach to the art as Yu Chung spendsa fair amount of time drawing the typical overreactions and caricatures that one expects from comedic manga and manwha. The action picks up again as the series nears its climax, but Yu Chung sadly doesn’t have enough time to make the climatic fights as impressive as they should be. Still, I’d be very curious to see his future work as I can only imagine him improving over time.

The final two volumes to Freak are a bit of a mixed bag. Jumping in at this point can definitely be a confusing read, but at the same time there’s some nice action and character designs to be found. The ultimate climax to the series is a bit disappointing, but at least most of the questions are answered and the mysteries solved. Long-time fans will be glad to get the answers, but I’d imagine that they may find themselves wishing they hadn’t come quite so soon. In the end it felt like Freak had some interesting ideas and intriguing plots but was canceled before they could really be developed and explored to their full potential.

Volumes three and four of Freak: Legend of the Nonblonds are available now.