Broken Frontier

The second issue of Torajiro Kishi’s Devil miniseries has arrived, and it’s a real treat to read. I enjoyed the first issue, but I admire the second. Comic miniseries tend to fail themselves by rushing information along and stuffing a house worth of plot and characters into a closet-sized space. And that’s exactly what Kishi is doing here, but I’ll be damned, he’s very good at it.

This second issue pummels us with a wealth of information on the “Devil” illness that is spreading throughout the world, turning those infected into violent, glowing, vampire-like creatures. Is there any hope? Possibly, but in order to discover it, Devil-killing Officer Takimoto and his by-the-book scientist/partner, Migiwa, must confront one of the creatures masquerading in the body of a 15-year-old girl, a bloodthirsty wolf in a luminescent sheep’s clothing named Mariko.

It appears that Mariko is the perfect Devil, as she retains her sanity and is constantly in a state of evolutionary flux, developing new powers as well as possessing the ability to survive anything, including the most bizarre of surgeries, which appear to happen routinely. She’s also a bit of a firecracker, as she likes to toy with Officer Takimoto as she simultaneously plays with the death-row inmates thrown to her as meals. What exactly do Migiwa and Takimoto hope to get out of the “Goddess of Hope” that Mariko represents? It doesn’t matter—she’s not budging from her childishly obstinate stance.

We are given an insight into the nature of the other sentient Devil on the prowl that popped up in the first issue, a monster with the mortal name of Nishioka. As a refresher, he was the Devil who raped a young woman and successfully impregnated her, if it can be called that. But the victim’s human body couldn’t endure the monstrous seed of the creature, and she died in the most explosive of fashions. The possible motives of Nishioka are revealed to the two detectives by Mariko, and to say that the two investigators are left unsettled by the girl’s information is an understatement.

I enjoy this book because it moves forward at a rapid pace while also communicating its information in a clear and entertaining voice. I’m willing to wager that writer/artist Kishi has assembled enough of this dystopian sci-fi future to fill far more than four issues. It wouldn’t be surprising if this comic had enough juice to run for more than twenty issues. But Kishi has shown great discipline in whittling down his massive premise into the bare-bones necessities to make the book work—all the while assuring that the book works well.

This is one of those comic books that could have been a shallow and forgettable train wreck, but it’s anything but. It’s packed with engaging and exciting information, and though we’ve barely had 50 pages of face time with the two main characters, I feel like I understand their personalities and motives completely. I don’t feel cheated at all, and nor should anyone else be. Check this comic out.