“The Legend of Korra” continues in comic form from Dark Horse Comics. The transition from TV to comic is especially smooth here, thanks to co-creator Michael Dante DiMartino on writing duties and artist Irene Koh’s exceptional grasp on the characters.
Created by Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartinoCover by Heather Campbell
with Jane Bak
Written by Michael Dante DiMartino
Illustrated by Irene Koh
Colored by Vivian Ng
Lettered by Nate PiekosRelishing their new relationship, Korra and Asami leave the spirit world… but find nothing in Republic City but political high jinks and human vs. spirit conflict!
A pompous developer plans to turn the new spirit portal into an amusement park, potentially severing an already tumultuous connection with the spirits. What’s more, the triads have realigned and are in a brutal all-out brawl at the city’s borders where hundreds of evacuees have relocated!
Written by series co-creator Michael Dante DiMartino and drawn by Irene Koh (Secret Origins: Batgirl, Afrina and the Glass Coffin), with consultation by Bryan Konietzko, this is the official continuation of The Legend of Korra!
Mark Tweedale: So, “The Legend of Korra” is a comic series now. However, before we talk about that, I want to quickly talk about The Legend of Korra TV series, specifically what that ending means to us—specifically the Korra and Asami relationship. Going into the final episode, I was a fan of the Korrasami ship, but because we were watching a children’s TV show, it never crossed my mind that it could actually happen.
And then it happened.
Tears of joy were shed. (I still can’t even listen to the music without getting misty eyed.) I thought it was an excellent ending. But not everyone shared my opinion. There were people that felt like this ending came out of nowhere, which I have to disagree with. I feel like there were many scenes in the series where if Korra and Asami had been a man and woman instead of two women, the same people that were complaining about the romance coming from nowhere would have been like, ‘Oh, they are so going to hook up.’ We’ve been socially trained to downplay possible same-sex interactions and magnify opposite-sex ones.
And, of course, there were limitations with how far the creators could take this moment, and those that didn’t like the idea of Korrasami leaped at any ambiguity in the scene as a means to erase it. ‘They were just good friends.’
So the idea of a comic series that didn’t have the imposed limitations of a TV network, that could put the final nail in the ‘just friends’ coffin, that’s very appealing to me. How’d you find the finale, Paul?
Paul Lai: I have to admit, I watched Book Four: Balance in 2015, more than a year after it had already aired, so I’d heard about the ‘controversy’ about Korra’s sexuality long before I saw the actual ending. For most of the time I watched the show, I could almost see the thought process from the creators as they nudged the character development towards Asami and Korra’s relationship. So when it culminated at the end, it felt really satisfying and not the least bit out of the blue. That Bryan Konietkzo piece you cited just drove home what we thought and appreciated with more candor and directness.
And in “Turf Wars,” DiMartino and the team make sure to remove all the equivocation and ambiguity that you might have critiqued them for in 2014. So although there’s a lot going on in this story that we’ll get into, the relationship—and people’s acceptance or non-acceptance of it within the story—is front and center. So I think it corresponds with this extension of Korra’s story to start off discussing the romantic relationship and how it plays out in this first installment. What did you think of how Korra and Asami, returning from their jaunt in the Spirit World, demonstrated their new stage of romantic partnership and faced the world with it?
Mark: I thought this was the most effective part of the story, and a big part of that comes down to Irene Koh’s art in selling these moments of connection between the two. My first exposure to Koh’s work was her story “Afrina and the Glass Coffin” on the Stēla app, a story that’s driven by the intimacy between its two leads. The same is true for the sequences between Korra and Asami. There’s the obvious stuff, you know the kiss moments that play up the romance angle in a big way, but Koh’s adept at bringing the smaller stuff to life. Asami and Korra share glances, they touch hands, there’s a lot of unspoken communication between the two that shows the level of intimacy between the characters. These smaller pieces make the romance scenes work. It’s not just a switch to romance mode, but rather an ever present undercurrent. The relationship is simply a part of who these characters are.
Continued belowConsidering the place we came from, a TV show that couldn’t do show their romance to the satisfaction of its creators, Koh’s contribution here is a big deal, because she not only puts that stuff on the page, she gives it life in all these subtle ways. I think the hand acting between Korra and Asami was something that really stood out for me. Hands are great for emoting in ways that feel tactile. In this case, I feel like Koh brought something to the comic that wasn’t just important for a “Legend of Korra” story, but something that was essential for this particular “Legend of Korra” story.
Paul: Yes, the relationship does seem central to the plot, so it doesn’t feel shoehorned in. I can imagine some readers feeling that the Korra–Asami relationship and reactions-to-the-relationship is a heavy-handed element. I’d encourage those readers to think about how much the ethic of the Avatarverse concerns finding harmony and identity with others, and therefore how much it matters that Korra enters the scene bonded with another, even visually from her first reappearance here staring at a horizon with Asami asking, ‘Where do we start…?’
There’s a lot of world-resetting that has to be done here after the closure of the Korra show. And these plot threads starting to be woven, about the Triple Threat and triads and corruption, about the Spirit World and human responsibility, about the Avatar’s role in society, they all directly or implicitly connect to the requirements and costs of coexistence. That’s a super general thematic link, but it feels more closely tied than I’m making it sound.
Anyway, I wondered if you had some of those moments that really made you feel like Korra’s back!!!
Mark: I’m going to disappoint you, I think, because it was nothing so dramatic as to deserve three exclamation points. It was simply the scene with Korra taking Asami to meet her parents. The way the characters spoke to each other were dead on. It’s impossible not to hear the characters’ voices from the show. Though there was a second moment later on with the triad fight. Irene Koh not only delivered in terms of fight choreography, but also in the way she composed each panel, pushing the perspective distortion to create a fisheye lens effect. These moments seemed such a natural extension of the show.
I’ll still miss Jeremy Zuckerman’s music though. That’s something the comic can’t replicate sadly.
So, what was your ‘Korra’s back’ moment?
Paul Lai: This sounds ridiculous, but few things sing out to me about why I loved Korra more than WonYong Keum, the skeevy developer-businessman guy, being confronted by the Dragony Spirit at the New Spirit Portal in Republic City. Everything about that mishmash screams what is utterly original and wonderful to me about Korra’s world, even distinct from the Avatar the Last Airbender world. When I grew up in Taipei, ‘the streets’ was Buddhist temples next to crumbling urban apartment buildings, cutthroat capitalist commercial centers just around the corner from shrines of incense and burning bowls of paper money. That moment transported me to how cleverly Korra avoided falsely isolating the spiritual and the technological in its Asia-inspired world, which is not only truer to contexts it draws from, but also makes for much more compelling storytelling. To me, that’s the beauty of Korra, and Irene Koh’s art adds a lot to making that convincing.
Mark: One thing that attracted me to the Avatar world very early on was the way it wasn’t afraid to get political. And they pushed that even further in The Legend of Korra. So this was an element I was glad to see was very much alive and well here. Korra’s problems are rarely something she can simply deal with by fighting, so each conflict pushes her to develop as a character. Plus there’s so much more to explore with the Spirit World in such direct contact with humans. I’m very interested to see how this develops.
Plus I like that they can handle this sort of material with humor too. President Raiko’s re-election campaign stuff was great. I mean, terrible, but great.
Paul: While we’re mentioning the pieces of the story and how well they work (like President Raiko’s comic presence), I was impressed with how briefly but efficiently old characters make their reappearances, in exactly the way you’d want them to arrive as notes of familiarity, like Bolin and Mako, as well as Tenzin and Lin Beifong.
Continued belowMark: That’s always been a strength of the series, that it doesn’t feel the need to check in on everyone. It’s why I loved the episode “Zuko Alone” in Avatar, it’s why “After All These Years” (the first episode of Korra season four) could get away with Korra only being in it for a single scene at the end, and it’s why we don’t ever check in on Sokka’s descendants. The creators have never been afraid of focusing in on a few characters when needed.
Paul: That’s true, and a great point about storytelling in the Avatarverse. Nonetheless, it does seem to me like the creators said, volume one has to get us back caring about the protagonists, put all the relevant pieces of the characters puzzle back on the table (and remind us who they are, what they’re like), and set up the problems and tensions all over again. The creators do this breezily and seamlessly, and no part of this book dragged for me.
“Turf Wars” felt successful in reopening up the world neatly, warmly, but with enough trouble brewing to escalate some conflict. In that sense, I wonder if it took a page from the “Avatar” comics, which were pretty canny in how they did that. I mean, was there a single character or situation that rang untrue to you, Mark? And does the threat posed by the Triple Threats, the political intrigue, and the renewed splintering with the Spirit World work to pull you in?
Mark: No, there was nothing that rang untrue. Initially, I had to adjust to the change in art style, but the characters’ voices and acting were so on point that I adjusted very quickly, probably even faster than I did with Gurihiru on Avatar. All that political and triad intrigue, especially the way it’s entangled with the Spirit World plotline, was a good way to pull me in fast. For one thing, it pulls Team Avatar together quickly—it’s good to see ’em all on the same page (both figuratively and literally)—and for another it creates plenty of beats to see the character dynamics between characters, especially Korra and Asami. There’re little moments where Korra’s talking to another character, and you can see Asami listening and processing. I love that stuff. It’s were plot and character intersect. And Irene Koh sells these moments beautifully.
Paul: Can we talk about the art? Irene Koh’s art has taken not a step but a leap forward. If Gurihiru felt like refined studio anime bottled into perfect, polished comics art, then Koh and colorist Vivian Ng feel like slick romance shoujo layered with the steampunk sophistication of, well, Legend of Korra.
Mark: Stylistically, she’s an excellent fit. The backgrounds in The Legend of Korra had a rougher look to them than Avatar: The Last Airbender, which was much cleaner. So Gurihiru was a good fit for Avatar: The Last Airbender, but that sort of clean line tends to stiffen up the art a bit. Koh’s linework is rougher, but very expressive, and for me feels more like The Legend of Korra series.
Below: Koh and Ng’s take on the same location
Paul: You’re spot on, Mark. The action scenes are very legible (which I mean as high praise, since action in comics can be hard to do well.) The settings feel as rich and layered as the show, even if under scrutiny they’re not quite as detailed. But that lack of detail in rendering background scenes actually goes in hand-in-hand with the action being legible, knowing when to establish with a shot of the right architecture and when to obscure it all behind speed lines. That’s where Koh really impresses me.
And then there’s how her style lends itself to the expressiveness this story needs. The pages where Korra is confronted by the human tragedies of the evacuee camp and rises up as a leader, the facial subtleties in Korra and Asami’s conversation with Kya at the gazebo in the sunset, the equal aptitude with flying stones and flowing dragons and veiny roots and jalopy-style cars in motion and angry rock spirit creatures… there’s nothing static or lifeless in any of these pages. I liked Koh’s style when she worked on the “TMNT: Casey and April” series that IDW put out, but there were times when the work could be stiff, as if deadlines inhibited refinement or flow. I think “Afrina” on Stēla pushed through a lot of those shortcomings. But this is masterful.
Continued belowMark: Agreed. I also want to quickly mention Vivian Ng’s colors, because she gave this issue a nice sense of momentum, especially in the second half of the book. Ng moves the story through a single day from morning through to evening, often changing the lighting throughout a scene. It’s most obvious in the scene with Kya at sunset, where the scene gets more pink and there’s more contrast between light and shadow so that by the time we get to the triad fight, everything’s appropriately dramatic with deeper reds. Ng doesn’t just give a scene a color palette and stick to it; she gives scenes a color progression.
Paul: Any critiques? If I had to come up with one, it would be that one daring move of Legend of Korra was being fearless about Korra’s flaws as a character, but that feels missing a little here. That complexity is part of what felt more mature about Korra’s story than Aang’s, where Aang could be accused of being too angelic, too tailored to be winsome, while Korra’s creator were not afraid to show her petulant, recalcitrant, and sometimes a little arrogant, but ultimately heroic and likable. While there are bits of that rough-around-the-edges Korra showing up in “Turf Wars,” it feels like the high stakes of the Korra–Asami relationship and referencing her hero status at the end of the show make DiMartino and Koh hesitant to take her off the pedestal too much. Maybe as the coming volumes ratchet up the tensions, more of that complex Korra shows up. Because I adore Aang. But I FEEL like Korra, and that makes my attachment to her even deeper.
Mark: That’s funny, because I actually felt like they were already hinting at problems ahead. Korra’s impatience got the better of her, she relied on intimidation to resolve a problem quickly that’ll likely escalate it in the long run, and she still has a habit of interpreting a differing opinion on something that she cares about as a personal attack. I think what was nice about this issue was it showed how Asami is good for her, and pulls her back. Asami has to remind Korra to be diplomatic, to rein herself in, to consider the concerns of others rather than just the immediate effects of their actions.
Korra sees short-term concerns, whereas Asami is more aware of long-term consequences and she can see already where the two will have problems in future—you can see it in Asami’s face a few times in this volume. It’s not a big thing, but it’s there, which feels appropriate given that their relationship is still in the ‘first date bliss’ state.
Honestly, I can’t think of anything to critique other than tiny nitpicky stuff not worth mentioning. I finished this volume with a huge grin on my face; it more than met my expectations.
Paul: Yeah, I can see where you’re coming from. I guess what I meant by the ‘high stakes’ of the Asami–Korra relationship was just what you described so well, how Asami serves to temper some of Korra’s qualities and vice versa, how positively drawn their relationship is. That’s a great thing, maybe the best thing, about “Turf Wars,” but I wonder if that’s also what constrains some of the Korra characteristics I’m thinking of. But maybe that’s nitpicking on my part, and what’s more important, I can see what you’re saying: clear road signs that there will be conflicts ahead, so I’m definitely on board for seeing how it develops. And the creative team has earned my trust, so I’m very excited for the January return of “Korra.” Any more thoughts?
Mark: I think I’m ready to grade this one. I’m giving it a 9. This truly was a great way to kick off the series.
Paul: I’m with you. I prepared myself not to like this series as much as Dark Horse’s “Avatar,” but try as I might, I couldn’t find reasons to dislike this. Instead, I find myself fully in the tank for “Korra” again, and I have a hard time going lower than a 9.
Final verdict: 9. The TV series and the Dark Horse “Avatar” comics set a high bar.
Mark: One more thing I wanted to talk about, sort of tangentially related… Gurihiru mentioned last month that “North and South” was their last book on “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” I’m sorry to see them go, but at this point they’ve done over a thousand pages of the series. They’ve had an amazing run.
Paul: Massive frowny face. Single tear. They’re incredibly fun to read and I’ll follow them into whatever their next project is. At least we have the consolation of great “Korra” art to take their place.
