IDW Publishing has been very good to their licensed cartoon titles, resulting in books that are sure to please fans of the properties and garner new fans alike.
Written by Jim Zub
Illustrated by Andy Suriano
Colors by Josh BurchamA mystic queen of great power and beauty accepts no criticism, especially from a lowly wandering samurai. Can Jack find another one of the Threads of Time before he’s imprisoned for royal heresy?
Genndy Tartakovsky’s “Samurai Jack” was a delightful mix of dry humor and intense action that somehow succeeded in telling gripping and mature stories for all ages thanks to a lack of actual violence. Imagine that. As with all of their licensed properties, IDW has found a writer in Jim Zubkavich who has a clear appreciation for the source material and who can match the tone and “formula.” Not that “Samurai Jack” ever had too much of a formula – it’s episodes could range from slightly silly to gravely serious, and play all sorts of notes in between. Jim Zub replicates a pretty tried-and-true “Samurai Jack” episode setup here in issue #4, to solid results.
In his quest to bring together the threads of the “Rope of Eons” (time-travel is Jack’s bag, after all), Jack happens upon a subzero village filled with eccentric townsfolk. To ultimately proceed (and out of the goodness of his heart), Jack must help them solve their problem: a wicked, image-obsessed queen who has made the town an oppressive environment for her people. Though Jack has always been stoic and rarely, if ever, cracks anything resembling a joke – that’s never been true of the colorful creatures he’d encounter throughout his journey. Zub does a superb job of pitting Jack’s serious demeanor against a town that appears to be filled with well-meaning, but uncouth citizens. This all comes complete with a pretty good fart joke that Zub has been featuring on Twitter as of late.
But that’s “Samurai Jack” for you – and Jim Zub gets it. There’s the opportunity for humor from cultural gap moments as Jack integrates briefly into the townspeople – then there’s the big action set piece (the biggest strength of the cartoon and something that Zub and artist Andy Suriano generally do pretty well too) and Jack is on his way again. The issue feels a little light, but so did a 22-minute cartoon. Capturing the tone and pacing of the cartoon creates that effect and appears to just be the nature of the beast when you’re not interested in deviating.
One area where the comic does deviate from the model significantly is in the art. Where Tartakovsky always favored clean lines, extremely simple but unique character designs, and fluid motion – Suriano plays outside of the lines a bit more, to just as good an effect. He pays respect to the visual signature of Tartakovsky, while applying signature flourishes of his own. Suriano plays with the layouts far more than you’re used to seeing from licensed properties – especially ones as highly specific as something like “Samurai Jack.” Tartakovsky’s team would mimic cinematic transitions and camera shots from masters of the genre. Suriano attempts to recreate moments like that, but with a variety of comic book cartooning tricks. In one double page spread, Suriano uses a variety of segregated panels within the overall spread to mimic a montage of Jack’s arduous journey through the snowy mountains. Suriano achieves the same thing an animated montage would on just a couple of pages.
While maintaining Samurai Jack’s cartoony nature, Suriano uses a rougher line than Tartakovsky used, which actually gives him a better ability to create a propulsive sense of motion that a more on-model approach wouldn’t achieve as well on the page. The action in “Samurai Jack” was all about how pleasing the fluid movements and choreography was for a children’s cartoon. Suriano captures that pretty well.
“Samurai Jack” is such a specific type of property that it might easily go unnoticed by comic book readers who weren’t already fans of it. I’d urge anyone who didn’t watch the cartoon to check it out if they’re at all interested in all ages action-centric tales with a willingness to be goofy sometimes. Those of you that are or were fans of the character – this should be on your pull list already. Rectify that, if it’s not.
Final Verdict: 7.9 – Buy, if you like the idea of a samurai story for everyone and anyone.
