Broken Frontier

Jenna is at the ripe tender age to discover her true heritage but will she be able to understand the malign nature behind it before it is too late?

I can’t say I’m terribly interested in manga comics, but I won’t deny the cultural impact they have had on the American comics scene. So with that being said, Narwain Publishing has jumped into the ring with their manga-inspired entry simply known as Jenna.

It starts out with 16 year old Jenna riding around on a sport bike sniffing for clues. She’s known to be smart, wide eyed and very curious about the world around her, and if that’s not enough, she has to contend with her boyfriend’s sexual advances. She invites Hall over to study, but all he can think about is having sex with her. Jenna casually laughs it off and decides to play it as cool as ever. She tells Hall to go home and then hops onto her motorcycle to take a drive into the city.

While motoring around the city she accidentally witnesses an assassin beheading a man over control of a video tape. Worse yet, she is horrified to see her father involved in the melee since the tape is then handed over to him. Jenna panics and takes off to figure it out and after employing a little detective work, she uncovers a diabolical plot involving her father and a group of occultists. What this all means is unknown to her, but when she returns home she watches on in horror as her house is burning down to the ground. Something sinister is lurking about and Jenna is determined more than ever to figure it out.

The story of Jenna seems simple enough. In fact it starts out so innocently that when the harsher moments of the story come to fruition they have immediate impact. It certainly wasn’t a bad read, but I have seen this kind of story before in books like Leave it to Chance or in a TV series like Buffy. Again, the issue is still a quality comic and writer Philip Osbourne did an admirable job of crafting the story. I am sure subsequent issues will illuminate the story in ways that will make it satisfying to all readers of this series.

The art on the other hand was decent enough if you consider this a manga comic. Surely, Jenna has the look and feel of most manga produced books and it took two veterans in the field to bring this title to life. Artists Jim Fern and Joe Rubinstein have been working steadily in American comics for more than two decades, and the quality of their work shows here. It’s decent enough for my tastes, although I seriously wonder if manga purists will feel the same way.

Overall, Jenna is a decent title from Narwain. Perhaps they have the intention of appealing to a younger audience and hopefully they are able to reach those targets. So give this issue a try and see why Narwain continues to diversify in the comics industry.