By JinHo Ko
Yen Press, 192 pp.
Rating: Older Teen

Noh-A Joo is a new arrival at the North District of Amityville Private High School. As such, she’s worried about things like why the guy behind her has such an odd smile, and why she is decapitated within minutes of sitting down at her seat. Clearly nothing is as it seems, and soon poor Noh-A Joo will discover herself at the center of a very old and very violent struggle.

Jack Frost is not a book that’s for everyone. It’s definitely a style over substance piece as the plot is given the barest of lip service between huge, explosive and over the top crazy action pieces. There’s some talk about spirits rejected by the afterlife, karmic retribution and whatnot, but really, all that feels like an excuse for JinHo Ko to draw people kicking the ever-living hell out of each other. Heads go flying, arms are removed, stomachs are run through and more. What little is revealed about the story simply leaves us with more questions than we started off with, like some vague suggestions that Amityville, the name for the world the story is set in, is some kind of purgatory for souls that have been removed from the karmic cycle for one reason or another or that Noh-A might be a mysterious and incredibly powerful and important being known as a “Mirror Image”, though she’s told repeatedly that she’s powerless beyond being immortal. The characters themselves are almost all one-note. Jack Frost is dangerous and cool, Noh-A is weak and ineffectual and really unhappy about that, the nurse Jin is…uh. Well, she’s a nurse. You get the idea.

The artwork is probably the high point of the book. JinHo Ko’s illustrations are slick and stylish and there’s not a single character, aside from poor Noh-A, who does not look cool. Everyone, from the S&M-y Headmistress, to the voluptuous nurse, to the mysterious and badass Jack Frost himself, looks incredibly cool and slick. The fight scenes reflect this trend as they’re incredibly over-the-top and bursting with so much energy that they almost feel constrained by the page and format of the book. Unfortunately, when you stop to think about them or admire them they can also come off as a bit confusing. In several cases there are these beautiful full bleed images of two characters posing dramatically and surrounded by white speed lines, sound effects of clashing weapons, and massive property destruction, but we don’t actually see the moves themselves. Bizarrely enough, it still manages to come across as exciting and cool.

If you’re looking for an incredibly deep and engaging story, this isn’t it. At least not yet. Perhaps in future volumes it will become some incredibly deep work pondering the meaning of death, the afterlife and more, all in between absolutely insane and awesome-looking action sequences. For now, though, Jack Frost is a brutal, over-the-top action fest with beautiful women, lots of glamour shots of said women, and brutal violence.

Volume one of Jack Frost is available now.