Forum - View topicStan Lee and Hiroyuki Takei's Ultimo
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BellosTheMighty
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The latest (September 2008) issue of the U.S Shonen Jump features a Sneak Peek of Ultimo, the new manga created by Shaman King creator Hiroyuki Takei and american comics legend Stan Lee. It's a project which I know has raised some eyebrows around here, just from the people involved, but I hadn't heard very much about it.
The plot is nothing especially new: 1000 years ago, a mad scientist (Lee, in a slightly disturbing Hitchcock cameo) created twin android boys with the power to change their hands into any weapon imaginable. One, Ultimo, was pure good. The other, Vice, was pure evil. The scientist then committed Hara-Kiri. Which is deliberately mistranslated on the third page as "Hara-Killi", but we let Death Note get away with that kind of crap, so why not? In the present, Vice wakes up and does what pure evil tends to do in downtown Tokyo. Ultimo shows up just in time ("You woke up so late!", Vice taunts him), and a fight breaks out. It ends when Ultimo's final attack carries them both into the stratosphere. Then we see various individuals- some on the scene, some far-away schemers- reflecting on the incident, and the chapter closes with Ultimo being found by a hermit on "Mount Fuzi". I will grudgingly- no, I will freely admit that this is no less cliche than the premises of half the shonen manga out there. Admittedly "Pure Good and his brother Pure Evil" is somewhat more of a dead horse than most cliches, but aside from the initial eye-rolling I can't see how it's objectively any worse then "Powers from the spirit world" or "He has the ability to control supernatural creatures" or "His Kung Fu lets him shoot ki from his hands". The important thing is not so much the premise, but what's done with it. I mean, hell, one of the most popular anime series from a few years back was about baking bread. Which begs the question, do they do anything especially interesting with it? Yes, they do. And somewhat surprisingly, it seems mostly due to Lee's involvement. I will digress a moment to talk about superheroes. It's something of a tradition with American geekdom that we are all into superhero comics at some point in our life. For me it was Freshman/Sophomore year of High School, I understand most are a little younger. We're into it for a while- we buy the mothlies, we watch the cartoons, we buy the action figures, etc., etc.. Then we grow out of it. We stow our old books in the basement and move on to other things. Or we keep buying and reading, but our hearts are elsewhere. We spend time predicting the outcome of each storyline, reminding people that dead character A will be back in six months, or complaining about how much the stories or the industry sucks, and how much better things were in our day. Comic books become something that young geeks do before moving on to more sophisticated geekly pursuits, taking with them a kind of nostalgia for when they could like simple stories. However, I think that the tradition of superhero comics is ingrained in us a lot deeper than most people think. Take Naruto, for example. Among fans of all ages, it's one of the most popular anime around right now. And if you look at it very closely and tilt your head a bit to one side- it's essentially X-Men. Sure, the storytelling style, the setting, the narrative tropes the audience expects, those are different. But the fundamentals are much more similar than different. You have a diverse group of characters, each with some common training but unique special abilities. One or two characters are central, but each of the cast has his own storylines, and each gets his own chance to shine. You have an equally diverse group of enemies- while most anime deal with a single antagonistic mastermind or organization, in Naruto you have Orochimaru doing his thing, the Akatsuki doing their thing, the Sand Village as an enemy at least until Orochimaru backstabs them, and a significant number of one-shots and lower-level baddies in their service. You have an extensive focus on personal drama- Naruto's love-hate relationship with Sasuke, Shikimaru's not-really-my-girlfriend relationship with Temari, Rock Lee's never-ending underdog story, Naruto's relationship with the rarely-seen but significant Iruka. This is the very thing that draws people to the series. Or, take DragonballZ. For all it's many flaws, it remains the most popular shonen title ever to hit the states. And it too shares significant dramatic elements with superhero comics. It has a large supporting cast that does things, instead of just cheering on the main hero. It has a wide variety of villians and threats that the heroes must deal with. It kills off characters, and brings them back, and the audience knows that's how it works, but they still buy into the drama if it's well-executed. It has a cast that changes over time as the story moves on, though admittedly somewhat beholden to a certain status quo. It gives deplorable villians their just deserts, and has popular ones turn good and stick around. So I think for all the ragging we do on superhero comics a lot, they really define what we want and expect from an entertaining action/adventure story. "Digress a moment" seemed to turn into three paragraphs. Sorry. Getting back to Ultimo... Officially, Lee is credited with "Original Concept" and Takei with "Story & Art", i.e. everything else. But Lee's hand, or at least his influence, is very much felt, and one major way is that the story is written more than it's drawn. For example: on one page Vice leaps through the air to attack a trio of helicopters, destroys them all, and then turns his eye to the cops on the ground below. This all takes five panels, it's a simple action scene you could find in any of a dozen manga. But here, it's accompanied by narration balloons, as such: "It's the beginning of a wild show." "One..." "Two..." "...Three vehicles destroyed." "He's putting on a performance." It's interesting- something very common in superhero comics, but less so in manga. And I think it works. Maybe it's me, but I always find those full-page action sequences with no dialogue difficult to follow. Because manga is generally black and white, it doesn't define itself to the eye as quickly as a colored page- you have to take a second to process it all. But when the action starts moving fast, my mind starts moving fast too, and I don't take the time to really look at the panel- I glance at it, get the idea, and move on. If this goes on for a while, I wind up lost, and have to go back and re-read to figure out just what is going on. Some artists can overcome this problem- Toriyama's very good at it- but most can't, or don't care. The text, however, serves as a kind of cruise control. You have to stop a few seconds to read it, and while you are your eye also takes in the art, and you understand what you're seeing. It's a way for the writer to get you to slow down and focus, and it succeeds. Actually, if you asked me to name Ultimo's defining feature, that would pretty much be it. The focus on words to tell the story. I remember a while back, Marvel Comics pulled a stunt called "'Nuff said." It was a kind of a gimmick month- they called it a "dare", but everyone knew what they meant. They challenged their creative teams to write a complete issue of the monthlies they were working on with no dialogue. It produced some interesting issues, including a hilarious story where Spider-Man fought a gang of criminal mimes, but in general those who accepted the dare wound up producing below-average material. The lesson learned there was that the comic book, of which the manga is a functional equivalent- is not a wholly visual medium- it's a hybrid of text and image. I think a lot of manga artists don't really get that- they seem to be trying for a cinematic style where the images tell everything, and they're considered to be artists rather than authors. Of course, if you rely completely on words and narration, you have a novel, rather than a manga. But somewhere in between is some happy medium, some island in the ocean where words and images fuse into a unique and beautiful form of expression. Go ahead and laugh, but that's how I'm thinking of this. All of which is a long, roundabout way of saying that I don't mind the old-fashioned style that Ultimo invokes. In fact, I think it brings something to the medium that has been forgotten, and which is a great improvement to see returned. Imagine our "hero shot", so to speak: the 'camera' displays several lingering shots- back of head and shoulders, then weird, hi-tech gauntlets, then eyes- almond-shaped- and nose in profile, and finally a full-body shot, standing in midair and with a sad expression. Now imagine hearing the following in your head as you see this: "His skin is white like porcelain and looks as if it might break if you touched it. It is offset by his colorful hair and gauntlets of such a bright vermillion that they appear to be on fire. His green eyes, sparkling like a stream, are filled with innocence. Even from a great distance his beauty and goodness are unmistakable. The crowd can only stare in amazement." I liked it. 
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Imperialkat
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The overlapping narration caught me off gaurd at first, but once I got used to it it became very nice. Also, you can clearly see Stan Lee's influence in the syorytelling as well as a touch of Shaman King in the art--both of which are good things. I wish they'd have started with a premise with a little more meat on its bones, as this opener felt a little plain to me. Granted, this is just the opener, and given the previous works of these two writers/artists business should be picking up by chapter 8.
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