Lazy Wednesday Manga Reading...

Days off from work are just the best aren’t they? I’ve just spent the last hour reading manga books when, on any other day, I would be hiding under my desk waiting for my boss to look in the other direction… Here’s what I thought (it was a strange case of the good, the meh’ and the ‘I thought it was going to be bad but ended up being surprisingly good…)




‘Psy-Comm’ (Volume One): Jason Henderson, Tony Salvaggio, Shane Granger.

This is actually a really hard one to write about as it just left me completely cold. I liked the concept (psychic commandos battle each other for TV ratings in an all out network war) but the ‘top commando starts to question his role’ plot just seemed a little too much like volume one of ‘Phantom’ which I read the other week… The characters didn’t really offer all that much to get interested in either although the promise of the ‘big chase’, starting in volume two, looks like it has some potential… I’ll probably give the next book a go just to see if things pick up.



‘Sgt. Frog’ (Volume One): Mine Yoshizaki

Aliens crash landing on Earth? Seen it before… An alien taking refuge in a nearby house and befriending two young children? Yawn… The alien is a cute looking frog who still plots world domination from a bedroom haunted by a grudge-bearing ghost? Now I’m interested…
I had a great time reading ‘Sgt. Frog’ and have made this a series that I will definitely be reading more of if I get a chance. It’s the first manga book that’s had me laughing out loud and there is a lot to laugh as the treacherous alien frog plots to escape his captors but is easily seduced by sunshine holidays, Gundam models and the prospect of his own room. The fact that Keroro (the frog) is so cute just makes it all the more funny as far as I’m concerned. I’m looking forward to volume two already.



‘Ghostbusters: Ghostbusted’: Various

‘Ghostbusters’ is one of those films that I can just watch over and over again (in fact, why haven’t I made it a retro classic…?) so a book about their further adventures in New York seemed like a great idea for a read this morning. At least it did until I read the first story, ‘The Theater of Pain’, which turned out a slightly anti-climatic tale of reconciliation that didn’t really gel with what I remembered of the films at all. And when you can’t tell which Ghostbuster is which then you know there’s a problem with the artwork…
I stuck with it though and was glad that I did as a story arc began to build up which was worth hanging around for. Not too sure about the fashionista ghost story right at the end though…