Welcome to the triumphant return of Off The Cape! After a few months hiatus, we are bringing it back and better than ever with a whole slew of titles lined up to talk about. Your hosts for this return will be myself and the return of David Harper, who will be alternating weeks with me on the column.
For those unawares, Off The Cape is Multiversity’s column to give a spotlight to books from smaller publishers (i.e. not Marvel or DC) who we feel deserve extra love for the content that they put out. Our basic goal is to show that while superheroes are a huge dominating empire in the world of comic books, there are plenty of great titles that are just as good (if not better) that you should be buying. And yes, while this may occasionally include a super-title, we assure you that we are simply trying to point you in the direction of fantastic works of sequential art fiction that you just may not know about for whatever reason.
And what title will we be starting with? Dark Horse and J. P. Kalonji’s 365 Samurai And A Few Bowls Of Rice. Click after the cut for some musings on the title.
Anyone who read my thoughts on 5 Ronin will know that I’m a reasonably big samurai film fan. Perhaps it’s from watching all the movies that Quentin Tarentino has recommended as well as what’s available from the Criterion Collection, but I’d like to imagine that I have a fairly good grasp on what truly makes the various versions of samurai films work – from the serious beauty of an Akira Kurosawa film to the absurdity of the Shogun Assassin Quintology. All of these factors sit in mind when judging any new Samurai story, and 365 Samurai is certainly no exception to my rules. However, since 365 Samurai is currently the star of a column based on recommendations, I think it’s safe to say that – spoiler alert – this is a damn good read.
365 Samurai And A Few Bowls Of Rice is a small and completely unassuming title from writer/artist J. P. Kalonji. It tells the tale of one lone samurai who must travel across the feudal lands and kill 365 different samurai over the course of a year before he is worthy to fight the ultimate master. The story is also told only through single panels, with each page comprising the entire panel as if you’re reading a flip book. The difference between this and your average flip book is that this is comprised of some of the most cinematic panels I’ve ever scene, which in turn leaves the book to essentially be a movie in still frames spread out to around 400 pages. Anyone who has ever seen storyboards to a film certainly knows what I’m talking about, and that’s exactly what 365 Samurai is.
You won’t find a lot of stories like this anywhere in comics. From an artistic perspective, it’s an experiment in the form of graphic novel storytelling. Your average graphic novel will take as much time and space to tell the story that the creator wants, but Kalonji manages to condense it down to the single frame/page format in a unique way that really pushes the story along. On average, you’ll find most books filled with dialogue and exposition, but you’re unlikely to find that here in Kalonji’s story. The story focuses so heavily on the experience our samurai is going through and the metaphor his journey represents that the book essentially rejects the typical and features only brief dialogue during key scenes to help explain the plot. Most of the story can be gleaned without however. As much as this is an experiment, it’s a rather succesful one because it proves how little a creator can use to truly and effectively create an emotionally powerful story, even if it ends up reading as quick as 15 to 30 minutes tops.
Continued belowThe one-panel per page storytelling is one I’ve never seen before outside of perhaps webcomics, and even then it’s rarely done this well. One thing that I’ve learned over time is that the less dialogue there is on a page, the more time should be spent studying the panel (which, honestly, should be an obvious thing – but somehow isn’t). Since the story is spread out through the four seasons, and most of it features our (somewhat anti-)hero battling for his life, Kalonji really takes the extra time to establish the scenery in a somewhat iconic way that really helps to establish what is going on and why without using much dialogue. On top of that, since we’re looking at the comic as if it were a series of storyboards, it really helps to see the action of the samurai battles unfold in a frame by frame line-up, as Kalonji uses a technique almost akin to early Frank Miller to establish through black and white how much violence is going on. Anyone who has seen a film like Kill Bill will recognize the stylistic framing used here, and anyone who has seen the films that influenced Kill Bill will be able to fully appreciate the way that Kalonji has set up the story. It’s truly wonderful to behold, and quite unassuming at first (which in turn makes it that much better).
Seeing as this is Kalonji’s first attempt at an English graphic novel, it’s really quite impressive to see how great it is. Kalonji isn’t a creator I had ever heard of before, but luckily the premise alone was enough to catch my atetntion and make me want to read the title (really, from the title alone). Kalonji hasn’t just written a comic book here; he’s written a script for a film that you watch as you read the story. Creating a good samurai-based story is a lost art on the modern generation, because so many people are insistent on working with stereotypes of the genre as opposed to what made the genre so great in the first place. Kalonji recognizes it and, in around 400 pages or so, creates a short but sweet epic that is as emotionally resonating as books of the same length that are of bigger page sizes or feature more panel and dialogue. Kalonji’s is a fairly unique endeavor, and considering it sits on the border between straight up manga and graphic novel, it creates a nice bridge between the two types of comics.
Suffice it to say, 365 Samurai comes highly recommended. It’s a short read, but it’s an incredibly endearing one. It’s a book that really gives back how much you’re willing to put in, and the longer you allow yourself to relax and study the frame work and the pacing the more you’ll appreciate the story. It’s also a great book to re-read at leisure, and the more you read it, knowing the thematic conclusion, the better the story in turn becomes. Dark Horse has a whole bevvy of hidden gem comics to their name, and 365 Samurai is without question a recent entry into that collection.