Ninja Scroll #1

Writer: J. Torres
Artist: Michael Chang Ting Yu
Colorists: Wildstorm FX
Letters: Nick J. Napolitano


In the continuing adventures of Jubei Kimagami, the hero of the hit anime Ninja Scroll, the wandering ninja comes across an old woman in need of help. After rescuing her, the old woman welcomes Jubei into her home were he finally gets a good night’s rest. But when he awakes the old woman is missing and Jubei is confronted by three enemies he thought long dead.

Like most guys my age, at least those that were into anime, I was nuts for Ninja Scroll when it first hit the U.S. I must have seen it at least a dozen times and still clearly remember being blown away each and every time. But it’s been a while since I dusted it off and popped it in the VCR (yeah, I had it on VHS). I never did catch the Ninja Scroll: The Series that came out a few years ago, though I didn’t hear very good things about it. Then I noticed that Wildstorm was producing a brand-new comic book that followed the original film and my curiosity was piqued. So of course, when I saw the first issue in the stack of preview books, I had to at least check it out.

Nostalgia is a terrible thing. Okay, either the movie was nowhere near as good as I remember or this comic is just very, very bad. Nothing very interesting or exciting happens at all. The dialogue comes straight out of a bad 80’s comic (“The river… my only chance…!”) and the final reveal isn’t really shocking or remarkable. Perhaps I’m just jaded by too many comics and too much anime. Perhaps not.

I’ve read books by J. Torres before and I’ve been pretty impressed, so perhaps he just wasn’t putting a whole lot into this book. One thing I know for sure is that I was completely unimpressed by the artwork in this book. It’s sloppy, hard to follow and in some places, downright ugly. But what really killed the book was that I just didn’t give a crap. There’s no real introduction to Jubei and therefore no real reason to care what’s happening to him at all. I may have seen the movie, but come on, it’s been thirteen years since that film hit. I think we could use a little background, huh?

A pointless comic, don’t waste your time.
 

Special thanks go out to Jeremy Shorr, owner of Titan Comics for allowing us to use his advance preview books for review purposes.

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