Author: Ryan

Vertigo gets a lot of credit for putting comic books in bookstores and making the medium respectable. Much of the shift towards collected editions can be traced to Vertigo creating perennial sellers like Sandman, Preacher, and Transmetropolitan (and, obviously, books like Watchmen and Dark Knight). That shift in format has led, to some extent, to a shift in style as writers, editors, and artists construct their stories with the inevitable collection in mind. This, in turn, has led to a fair amount of backlash against “writing for the trade”, based on the fairly logical premise that what works well as chapter two of a novel might not stand on its own terribly well as a 22-page periodical. While Vertigo’s publishing model is certainly attractive to many publishers, it’s easy to forget one important factor: While Vertigo may have a history of telling epic long-term stories, its best books have never lost sight of the single issue.

Sandman was full of great one-issue stories like Midsummer Night’s Dream, Calliope, and Three Septembers and a January. Mike Carey followed Neil Gaiman’s lead when writing Lucifer, mixing in some great single-issue stories amidst his biblical epic. Brian K. Vaughan writes some of the best cliffhangers in the industry and knows how to keep the audience coming back every month.

All of which brings us to Scalped. Jason Aaron’s story of crime, corruption, and conspiracy on an Indian reservation is growing increasingly complex, and Aaron has chosen an ambitious structure for the second story arc (technically, this is the third, but I don’t really count the 2-issue story of #4-5): Each issue chronicles the events of the same day from the perspective of a different character. Taken individually, there are several fine stories, and together it’s an impressive accomplishment.

There are two important events to the time period: The first, and most obvious, is the grand opening of the new casino. Chief Red Crow wants everything running smoothly, which means Dash Bad Horse is tasked with rounding up troublemakers like Diesel, the wannabe-indian who’s second in command to Gina Bad Horse in the casino protest movement. Dash can’t do everything, though, so Red Crow has to deal with both Diesel and the mysterious Catcher, who shares a history with Red Crow and Gina and may not be entirely sane. While all this is going on, Gina leaves town to visit an old comrade and try to come to terms with her past, while teenage Dino Poor Bear dreams of a future away from the reservation until his job mopping floors in the casino brings him into contact with some tempting reasons to stay.

It sounds complex – and it is – but Aaron has effectively broken the story into digestible chunks. It’s one big story, but functions quite well as six individual ones, stories that are at least pretty good – and in a couple cases fantastic – when taken on their own, and become even more impressive when their place in the bigger picture is revealed. To be honest, I didn’t even realize what Aaron was doing for the first couple issues, until I had one too many déjà vu moments.

In many ways, this story – or something very similar – should have opened the series, as it does a great job of introducing the characters in depth and the issues that are central to the book. Unfortunately, Aaron repeats an early mistake: He still seems to believe that Dash Bad Horse can be the star of Scalped.

Bad Horse simply isn’t that interesting. It’s no coincidence that my interest in the series picked up after the first three issues, when Dash was relegated to the background where he belongs. In addition to being something of a generic angry young rebel, Dash is pretty clueless: As the other stories in Casino Boogie reveal, Dash probably has the least idea of what’s really going on at the rez, either in terms of history or who’s working for who. At this point in the series, Dash is really only good for hitting people – and the really good fight comes a couple issues later.

Thankfully, Bad Horse is quickly put in his place as Aaron moves on to the biggest fish in the pond: Chief Red Crow. In what is easily the strongest issue of the series so far, and a strong runner for best single issue of the year, Aaron explores the character of the man who runs just about everything on the reservation, legal or otherwise. In the course of keeping the casino running smoothly on opening night, Red Crow deals with thugs, corrupt bureaucrats, and an old friend, and ends up considerably more introspective than usual thanks to a gun in his face and an unpleasant bit of payback.

Aaron doesn’t sugar coat the chief: Red Crow is a vicious, brutal thug who has killed, lied, and manipulated his way to the top. But somehow, Aaron manages to make him sympathetic. Not likeable, not by a longshot, but certainly human and beautifully defined. Red Crow knows what he is and what he’s done, and he’s not necessarily proud of it, but he also sees it as the only way to get ahead for himself and protect his people. He’s not altruistic or noble by any means, but utilitarian: He saw what he thought needed to be done and did it, and hasn’t strayed from the path no matter the consequences. Red Crow is a monster, but he understands why, and hopes that some day he might be able to stop.

Aaron’s not all about introspection, though, as he devotes most of the next issue to Diesel and Bad Horse kicking the crap out of each other. Though he does explore some of Diesel’s past and attempt to explain why the white boy is making a pest of himself on the Indian reservation – one reason has to do with his past, the other with his present – it’s all about fighting. After spending a couple issues glowering at each other, Diesel and Bad Horse finally get some of their aggression out: With fists, nunchuks, knives, a horse, a bus, and a bull. It’s a great sequence, and it’s at this point you really start to notice that artist R.M. Guera is pretty darn good.
I’ve been increasingly impressed by his work on the series – after a so-so start, he really seems to be in synch with Aaron (and vice versa), and he’s got a great handle on the ugly world and characters of Scalped. But while mood is one thing, action is another, and many artists – particularly those employed by Vertigo, it seems – have a hard time switching from mood to movement. Guera may not be the best action artist around, but his stylized attention to detail – particularly facial expressions and backgrounds – make everything worth watching.

Guera gets to switch gears with the next story, focusing on the mysterious Catcher. Catcher has been hanging around the periphery of Scalped so far: He’s involved with Red Crow and Gina, and he may know more a
bout what’s going on on the rez better than anyone. He seems to have put his shady past behind him – he’s trying to, anyway – but there’s just one problem: He might not be entirely sane. Unless he really is possessed by visions from the spirits. At any rate, it makes for an interesting, if not terribly coherent, story, as Catcher has a conversation with an old lady, confronts Red Crow, and tries to track down Gina Bad Horse. It’s an interesting story that definitely require some follow-up, and Guera adapts to the tone nicely, integrating Catcher’s visions and/or hallucinations without abandoning the overall style of the book.

The next story opens with a vision of another kind, as Dino Poor Bear dreams of getting away from the rez he’s known for his entire life. Guera impresses yet again here, though it’s not quite as obvious as drawing a 10-page fight sequence or a series of mystic visions. Poor Bear’s dream sequence is just a little prettier than Guera’s usual art, and his harsh return to reality is just a little extra uglier. It’s a great touch for the story, which mostly features Dino’s boring life on the rez he so badly wants to escape. Dino’s not particularly interesting on his own – he’s a bit of a cliché in many respects, the idealistic teenager who wants to get away from his squalid roots – but he’s an effective vehicle for exploring the state of affairs on the reservation. It also ties in to Red Crow’s story, as Poor Bear’s janitorial job brings him into the casino’s opening night chaos and a face-to-face meeting with Red Crow himself. Dino is the face Red Crow can put on his idealism, the poor young Indian who dreams of a better life.

Finally, in a roundabout fashion, Aaron comes back to Gina Bad Horse, who in many ways is at the centre of Scalped: Dash’s mother, Red Crow and Catcher’s old comrade, Diesel’s fellow protestor. Interestingly, Gina isn’t around for the grand opening of the casino. Instead, she’s in Kansas City visiting Lawrence Belcourt, an old friend who’s waiting on death row for a crime Gina knows more about than she’s told. This issue brings us back to one of the central issues of Scalped: The murder of two FBI agents 31 years ago. In many ways, Scalped is about escaping the past, or at least coming to terms with it, even though it’s not letting go. At the same time, this issue is obviously the starting point for future stories to come, ending as it does with a fairly significant event and a fair bit of mystery.

Casino Boogie is an impressive achievement for both Aaron and Guera. It’s ambitious and complex, but easily digestible and structured in a way that doesn’t draw attention to its scope. Each issue is part of a bigger picture, but stands alone well enough to be enjoyed by a complete newcomer to the series. (If you were to sample just one issue, I’d recommend #7, the story of Red Crow) It develops characters, displays some serious violence, answers some mysteries and raises others. After a slightly shaky start, Scalped is quickly becoming one of my favourite books, and nearly every issue shows off why.

(The trade of Casino Boogie is scheduled for February.)

Despite my initial misgivings, I gave in and bought the first issue of Angel: After the Fall, the official continuation of one of my favourite TV shows that ended in one of the greatest cliffhangers known to man. (Which, obviously, I’m going to have to touch on here, so if you’re watching Angel but haven’t finished it yet, you should stop reading now.)

As I said when reviewing Buffy Season Eight, this is one of those comics that’s going to cause me to abandon some objectivity. But then, if you care about what is essentially Angel Season Six or my review thereof, you’re probably already a fan of the franchise to begin with and may share my concerns. (As a side note, I don’t understand people who complain about Buffy Season Eight being inaccessible. It’s Season Eight. It says so right on the cover. What are you expecting?)

The series, co-plotted by Joss Whedon but scripted by Brian Lynch, picks up after Not Fade Away, but not immediately: Time has passed since the fight in the alley, and Wolfram & Hart somehow sent the entire city of Los Angeles to Hell. Naturally, Angel and his gang, such as it is, spend their time trying to protect the human population.

In a weird way, this book reminds me of DC’s One Year Later stunt, where a period of time was skipped over and the reader was left wondering why their favourite characters were maimed, missing, or replaced. After the Fall seems unlikely to make us wait too long to figure out what happened – some questions are answered fairly quickly, others have obvious answers – but It’s an interesting attempt at trying to answer the obvious questions left by Not Fade Away without giving everything away up front.

Regardless of the order in which things are explained, though, I can’t say I’m hugely happy with the state of affairs. One of my fears was that Whedon would give in to his tendencies to undo big events, and those fears are realized on page eight. The star of the greatest death scene in all of Buffy and Angel wastes little time in making an appearance, and I’m not sure there’s any real justification for it. Wolfram & Hart’s general, evil power makes it possible, but in many ways it just feels like a rehash of Lilah’s appearance in season four’s finale, without particularly making sense.

On the other hand, there are some very nice touches. Lynch wastes little time in following up Not Fade Away‘s final line of dialogue, and he introduces some nice demons, including a telepathic fish creature. The dialogue isn’t quite up to Whedon’s standards, but it’s a close enough facsimile that I’m fairly happy with it.

The biggest problem comes with Franco Urru’s art. Drawing a licensed book is a tricky balancing act, since you’re working with very specific and well-known characters; it can be hard to be realistic without looking like you’re just tracing photos. Buffy‘s Georges Jeanty does his best work when he’s being representational as opposed to realistic; we can easily recognize Buffy or Willow without worrying why they don’t look exactly like Sarah Michelle Gellar and Allyson Hannigan. But Urru doesn’t have either the specifics or the personalities down, and there’s a real lack of emotion in his characters – you can count Angel’s facial expressions on one hand. Possibly while wearing mittens. I’m also not sure why Nina the werewolf is suddenly dressing like an aerobics instructor. On the up side, Urru is pretty good at the big picture – there’s a nice opening splash page, and some of the demons are creatively designed.

Ilaria Traversi’s colours don’t help, either. Much of the book feels muddy and indistinct, something that’s even more noticeable given the glossy paper; I’m not sure what the point is of upping the presentation values when it really doesn’t benefit the art within. If you can produce a perfectly nice Buffy comic for $2.99, I’m not sure why Angel needs to be $3.99. I’m not opposed to paying for IDW’s high production values when the book merits it, like Ben Templesmith’s awesome Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, but there’s simply no reason for it here.

After The Fall is something of a mixed bag. It clearly doesn’t live up to the standards of Not Fade Away, but if you accept that it never could, then it’s not that bad. I don’t like some of Whedon and Lynch’s decisions, but it’s possible they can redeem themselves; the story itself has some interesting ideas, and Lynch has a good sense of the characters and dialogue. I’m less optimistic of the art, unfortunately, as it’s a particularly poor match for the character-centered stories that made Buffy and Angel so good. It’s an interesting start, though it has a ways to go before it can live up to either its television predecessor or Dark Horse’s excellent Buffy comic.

Sometimes I wonder how Vertigo decides what to publish in single issues and what to publish as an original graphic novel. One might think that the OGN format would be reserved for established creative teams who can draw an audience and convince them to look past the $20 or so investment, while single issues are cheaper and more conducive to sampling a new work from an unknown creator. But while Vertigo has recently published OGNs by Brian Vaughn, Mike Carey, and Bill Willingham, Cairo seems to be a different beast entirely. Writer G. Willow Wilson has never written a comic before this, and doesn’t even seem to have written much fiction. Artist M.K. Perker is similarly low profile; most of his work seems to be in illustration.

So is Vertigo insane for expecting people to buy a $25 hardcover graphic novel by creators with little-to-no fan following? Maybe. Of course, they haven’t exactly had a lot of success launching monthly series, or even miniseries – sales on Faker have been pretty poor for a book by relatively big names. So if the bookstore is the end target, why not give it some pretty packaging? (It’s interesting to note that there are no previews of the book at all on Vertigo’s website. This is kind of baffling, since Vertigo is normally very good at providing samples – they’ve got entire issues available for free.)

All of this is kind of irrelevant to the main point: Is it any good? And the answer is “Yeah, kind of.” Cairo has its strengths and weaknesses, but there are worse candidates for a hardcover OGN.

The basic concept behind the story is simple enough: A diverse cast of characters are brought together by the search for and fight over a magical item. Actually, that might be where the problems start: The cast of Cairo seems too diverse. It seems as though Wilson wanted to include as many political, racial, religious, and gender elements as possible, and the book occasionally feels like a parable about how all the people of the world can come together in the name of a good cause. Which is certainly a nice idea, but it leaves the character interactions feeling a bit forced at times.

Taken individually, though, most of the characters work pretty well. Ashraf is nominally the lead, a drug dealer and smuggler (though only a little fish, so he can still be a good guy) who comes across a magic hookah. He’s a fairly typical rogue with the pretense of looking out for himself. His sister is dating Ali, a journalist who crusades for the rights of the poor and downtrodden. Ali meets Katie, an idealistic American student, when she wanders into a bar looking for directions. Katie was on the same flight into Cairo as Shaheed, another American visiting Cairo for reasons of his own.

Oh, and there’s a female Israeli soldier stranded in Egypt who forcibly enlists Ashraf’s help in getting home. She’s the least organic component of the cast, and the most obvious example of the book’s forced theme of “Can’t we all just get along.” She’s also the least engaging character in the book.

Wilson moves the plot around nicely, though. Ashraf pawns the magical hookah off on the unknowing Shaheed. The hookah’s original owner, a mobster/magician named Nar, kidnaps Ali and his accidental companion, Katie, as motivation for Shaheed to get it back. But tracking down Shaheed becomes more difficult when he finds out why everyone wants the hookah in the first place.

The middle of Cairo is easily the most satisfying, as Wilson and Perker mix the supernatural and mystic with some nice character interaction. There’s an almost Gaiman-esque quality in the way the mortals find themselves wrapped up in bigger, magical matters; it’s obviously bizarre and outlandish, yet everyone adapts to their situations fairly quickly, while the mystical beings seem to have adjusted to modern life as well. There are some wonderful concepts, like the Under Nile, and a nice assortment of demons.

The book loses its uniqueness towards the end, with the aforementioned “Everyone must work together to save the day” cliché coming on rather strong, and the surreal fantasy elements taking a back seat to a fairly standard action movie. The finale doesn’t work to Perker’s strengths, either: Perhaps unsurprisingly for an artist with more of a background in illustration, he doesn’t handle action particularly well.

Perker’s work is otherwise quite nice. It’s generally realistic and simple, though it veers into more cartoonish exaggeration when required, whether for mystical creepiness or just a bit of added character. He has a good grasp of character and expression, though Katie feels bit inconsistent at times.

Cairo may be an odd choice to publish as a hardcover OGN, but it’s a pretty good one, all things considered. At the very least, I like the idea of Vertigo trying something new, both in format and creators, and I don’t mind supporting that. And while it’s a flawed book, it also shows a lot of promise for both Wilson and Perker; hopefully Cairo is a sign of greater things to come.

If you were a fan of the brilliant run on X-Force & X-Statix by Peter Milligan and Mike Allred, you may remember that Marvel released three different cover images for X-Statix #1, each presuming that a different character died in the final issue of X-Force.

The “dead” characters from X-Force were replaced with new characters, and the ones featured on the fake covers never appeared. Until now:

With few minor colour scheme alterations, two of the fake X-Statix have joined the Atomics. Horn is right there on the cover, and the weird, stripey one is featured inside.

It’s pretty neat, since they were interesting character designs (then again, how many Allred characters don’t look cool?) I’m kind of surprised to find out Allred got to keep the rights to the characters, though – how many times has a character debuted in a Marvel X-Book (even a fake one), and then wound up on a creator-owned book? Not many, I’d guess.

I discovered this while biking in Nova Scotia over the summer. I thought it was amusing:

(I also saw a small road called “Old School Road”, which I also thought was quite amusing, but didn’t feel like stopping to take a picture. I think it was on the way up a hill.)

Comics by celebrities are not supposed to be very good.

Usually it’s Joe Superstar’s Superhero Comic Book, where the apostrophe indicates that Joe Superstar had nothing to do with the book aside from jotting down a few rough concepts in between work that pays real money. The actual comic would then be produced by some B or C-list comics professional, and be bought by … well, to be honest I’ve never really understood who buys that sort of thing.

So The Umbrella Academy, which is written by a musician – seriously, a musician? Not a novelist or a director, or even an actor? – shouldn’t be anywhere near as good as it is. I admit to knowing very little about Gerard Way or My Chemical Romance, but there aren’t many full-time comic writers who could produce a book this good. He gets some help from the super-talented Gabriel Ba, but it sure looks like one of the most fun and creative superhero books I’ve read in a while is coming from a guy who’s never written one before. (Which, come to think of it, might explain a lot.)

The central theme probably isn’t too original: A cranky old scientist adopts a bunch of kids with unusual abilities and trains them to fight evil. Except in this case, their abilities really are unusual: One can hold his breath forever. One has a rumour-based form of mind control. One travels back and forth in time, occasionally getting stuck in the future. One has monsters growing out of his stomach. One has absolutely nothing special about her at all. An early missions has them fighting a zombie scientist who’s animating the Eiffel tower.    

Fast forward a few years and the cranky professor has died, leaving his “children” alone and utterly dysfunctional. Spaceboy, the one real superhero of the group, has had his head attached to a Gorilla. The Horror is dead. The time traveler disappeared before he could be given a proper superhero name. Vanya, the unspectacular one, is being wooed by a sinister composer who wants to use her musical talent to destroy the world. Everyone resents pretty much everyone else, and the only person keeping the family together is Dr. Pogo, a talking monkey.

The Umbrella Academy reads like Wes Anderson adapting Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol. It’s full of crazy and bizarre ideas mixed with dysfunctional family dynamics coated with an odd gloss of eccentricity. It’s unquestionably silly, but it’s got heart; Way is giving the characters individual identities and motivations. Spaceboy, Vanya, and the nameless time traveler are the most developed thus far, but everyone else has been given at least a spark of life. And he’s mixing his off-the-wall superhero sensibilities with a dark sense of humour – where else will you hear a man tell his adopted daughter “There’s just nothing special about you”?

Gabriel Ba channels Mike Mignola adapting The Incredibles, selling both action and drama. He draws a great atomic wrestling match with a giant cosmic squid, but also does a nice job with Vanya’s sinister audition and the time traveller’s chronal misadventures. And I’ve also got to say that James Jeans’ covers look even nicer than his usual work – they stand out, and tell a bit more story, than is work on Fables.

The Umbrella Academy went from being a book to written by a rock star I’d never heard of to one people were talking about to one that I seriously enjoyed. It’s an entertaining take on the superhero genre that doesn’t read like it was written by a guy who’s been living in superhero comics for the past decade. It has no right to be this good – well, aside from the fact that it’s created by two clearly talented people, but you know what I mean – and it’s enough to make one optimistic about other celebrity-driven comics.

I mean, I’m still not going anywhere near the Nicholas Cage comic, but other than that I’m open to some new ideas.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve only recently started to get into manga. It’s kind of overwhelming – there’s just so much stuff out there. But The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service is something that almost immediately jumped out at me: In part because of its fantastic and distinctive covers, but also because it’s about a bunch of university students who go around finding corpses and helping them resolve any leftover issues. I reviewed the first volume a couple months ago, and while I think it topped out at “pretty good”, the second and third volumes were significant improvements.
After enjoying Kurosagi, the notorious MPD Psycho seemed an obvious followup: It’s by the same writer, Eiji Otsuka, and was adapted for Japanese television by Takashi Miike, one of my favourite filmmakers (though one who, even his most fervent fans must admit, produces a lot of crap.) But I was fairly surprised to find that while Kurosagi has its flaws, MPD Psycho both shares those flaws and lacks the charm and with of Kurosagi. In fact, it’s almost hard to believe they’re written by the same man.
Both books share similar concepts and themes: They’re both mystery-oriented, with bizarre and often gruesome deaths that need to be either explained or cleaned up. MPD Psycho is about a detective with multiple personalities who solves bizarre crimes, while Kurosagi is about a group of students who help out the dead. Otsuka certainly has a knack for inventive deaths, both in setup and execution. And both his artists, Sho-u Tajima on Psycho and Housui Yamazaki on Kurosagi, are skilled at bringing it to life (so to speak).

Things start to diverge significantly after that. MPD Psycho is nominally a police/detective story, though there seems to be limited detective work (we’ll get to that in a bit). Detective Kazuhiko Amamiya, along with all the other people in his head, is unquestionably the star, with other characters generally filling the roles of either plot advancement or bystander who notes how crazy and creepy Amamiya is. Kurosagi, on the other hand, is more of an ensemble story, less police procedural than Scooby Doo with more corpses. Karatsu is the most important character, but just about everyone pitches in to help solve one mystery or another; everyone but Makino, the American-educated mortician, gets some character development. (Even Yata’s puppet is more interesting than Makino.)
It’s worth noting that neither series starts out particularly strongly: The first volumes of each series are a bit too in-your-face grisly, and try too hard to show off how dark and fucked up things are. Even Kurosagi doesn’t have much character development in it; it’s just setup, introduction, and a general exploration of the concept. Both books are rather fixated on sexualized violence: There are two attractive and naked female corpses in the first volume of Kurosagi, and several female victims are either naked or in bondage gear in MPD Psycho. It’s the sort of thing that needs to be used sparingly, but Otsuka overdoes it, at least in the early going, for the sake of shock value.
There’s also a chapter break illustration in the first volume of MPD Psycho featuring a lingeri-clad Detective Machi, who is fully clothed in the rest of the book. It makes one wonder about Otsuka’s feelings towards women. Kurosagi‘s Sasaki is a more fully-developed character, smart, together, and generally in charge of her male co-workers, but the art continues to sex her up in subsequent volumes: she surfs the net in her underwear in volume 2, and seems to stop wearing a bra some time before volume 3 starts. It’s the sort of thing that could very well be editorial direction, an attempt to add some sex appeal to an otherwise grim series, or it could just be the way Otsuka and his artists think. Regardless of which it is, things are sufficiently toned down in subsequent volumes that it’s not too distracting.

Perhaps the most puzzling difference between the two series is that Kurosagi is a far more effective mystery book. Otsuka explores different ways of solving the various problems: Often it’s Karatsu talking to the dead, or inadvertently inciting a corpse to action, but everyone gets their turn: Numata finds the corpses with his dowsing medallion and acts as a sort of sidekick to Karatsu; Yata and his puppet get to discover part of the mystery in the second volume; Sasaki hacks computers and does some more traditional detective work; and Makino… well, she embalms things and looks cute. There’s only one story so far, in the first volume, where she plays a significant role, and the reader probably figures things out long before she does.
MPD Psycho, in comparison, is set in a world of police officers and detectives, so one might expect a little more detecting. And while there is some, most of the cases seem to hinge on one of Amamiya’s personalities having some connection to the case. It’s mysterious, no one can solve it… but then, BAM!, another personality surfaces with some new information. It would be interesting if it only happened once in a while, but it seems to be the theme of the book: Everything is connected to Amamiya, who’s done some really fucked up stuff. Unfortunately, that bit of plot decision puts the book on an only slightly higher level than all those terrible Wolverine stories people have been writing for the past two decades where a villain shows up claiming to have some new information about Wolverine’s dark and oh-so-very-mysterious past. It doesn’t even feel particularly conspiracy-oriented, though Otsuka is clearly moving in that direction – just feels like a bunch of really convenient coincidences, which doesn’t leave the reader particularly impressed with either the characters or the writer.
It should also be pointed out – and this doesn’t quite fit with my other comments – that MPD Psycho has some atrocious lettering. It’s not that it’s bad, but rather that it’s all bold. It feels like everyone is either shouting all the time or carefully emphasizing every single word. And the funny thing is that a book like this, with a character with multiple personalities could put some good, creative lettering to use. I don’t know whether this was Dark Horse’s decision or an attempt to reflect some peculiarities in the original Japanese language edition, but it wasn’t a good choice. (This is, I’m pretty sure, the first time I’ve mentioned lettering in any comic or manga. That’s not a good sign.)
On the whole, MPD Psycho just feels more shock-oriented. It’s probably no more gruesome than Kurosagi, but it feels like Otsuka is trying to outdo himself. There are some great visuals – Tajima does some gorgeous work – but it rarely feels legitimately shocking, mostly because Otsuka doesn’t build to it effectively. In Kurosagi, on the other hand, the occasions when Otsuka and Yamazaki really cut loose will knock your socks off. In part, it may be because Tajima’s art is slicker and more polished, while Yamazaki’s feels more visceral and immediate. But mostly, it’s because you expect the depraved and fucked up shit Otsuka does in MPD Psycho, while it always comes as more of a surprise in Kurosagi. Kurosagi has drama and comedy and slapstick; sometimes the body just talks, and sometimes it gets up and does something nasty in a particularly decomposed or mutilated fashion. The uncertainty of Kurosagi makes its horror more horrific, while you just know that MPD Psycho will always go for the grossest and most disturbing option.

It’s probably fair to point out that Otsuka wrote Kurosagi almost five years after he started MPD Psycho, so it shouldn’t be surprising that the latter is a more polished and effective work. The improvement is staggering: They’re both interesting books, but Kurosagi has superior characters, plotting, and a wider variety of moods and themes. It also has an obscene alien puppet, so that really puts it over the top. I’m curious to keep reading MPD Psycho to see if it improves – there are certainly interesting elements to it – but Kurosagi is the one I’m looking forward to continuing.
(You can see some previews of Kurosagi over at Dark Horse’s website.)
Incidentally, if anyone has any good manga recommendations – particularly along these lines, but not necessarily – I’d love to hear them.