I remember reading and enjoying a few issues of Lone Wolf and Cub as a teenager, so I checked out the first volume, The Assassin's Road from Hoopla. A lot of the art and for instance, the stand-off sword-fight scenes look very familiar, because games like Ghost of Tsushima have adopted the art and the tropes and made them look great.
What I was unprepared for was a reminder that the Japanese do not hide behind a rating system for their comics. There's rape, seduction, lots of blood and gore (in black and white) and obviously, there's the incongruity of a Samurai assassin taking on murderous bounty jobs with a 5-year old in tow.
The whole volume (in which the origin story only appears right at the end of the volume) is full of situations where Itto Ogami (the titular Lone Wolf) through craft, guile, and just sheer amazing swordsmanship, dispatches his targets and then walks off into the sunset, baby cart in tow. There are lots of action lines, and the dynamism of the art leaves no question that this is an action comic.
It's enjoyable in small doses. I think I'll space out my reading of the series.
1 comment:
There are also a half dozen movies but the library doesn't seem to have them. (子連れ狼 or "Sword of Vengence").
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