The Manchurian #1 // Review
Calvin’s life is a pile of lies nestled in an otherwise perfectly respectable structure. He’s got a totally normal life that just happens to involve being a Chinese spy operating in the U.S. And that’s the type of job that involved being very untruthful to some very nice people. It’s also a job that could cause Calvin to lose his life inThe Manchurian #1. Writer Pornsak Pichetshote and artist/colorist Terry Dodson navigate a distinctly Chinese spy thriller that shoots rather gracefully across page and panel between a pair of covers. It might not live-up to its potential, but it’s a lot of fun.
Calvin’s target is an attractive woman named Madysin Brown. She’s thoughtful, intuitive and really, really nice. Of course...being intuitive means that she knows that he’s lying to her. And that’s only going to make things that much worse for everyone involved. Calvin’s got other bits of business to deal with, though. Lots of little bits of information need to be moved around. It’s the “1,000 grains of sand” approach to espionage and Calvin’s more than happy to let the reader know about it in his own personal narration as the story progresses.
The author chooses not to necessarily completely reinvent the concept of espionage. Although it would be really interesting to see him do so. Action heroes, who deals with very small bits of information have appeared in various formats before. they've never really managed the kind of truly trippy and deliciously convoluted sort of a narrative structure that they might otherwise manage. There's something about a fragmented narrative that could really serve an espionage format quite well. The Manchurian doesn’t try this. Instead Pichetshote graphs, a 007-style cloak and dagger story in clever alternative cultural background. It’s fun without totally pursuing its full potential.
Dodson’s art is as gorgeous as ever. He wields action and mystery with a clever mastery of nuance and tension. There are some vert sharp moments in and around the edges of the action. For the most part, though, Dodson is merely following the author’s lead in taking the visuals one might expect to find in a James Bond story and grafting them onto a charismatic, young Chinese guy. It’s a very slick story visually. Dodson’s colors are rather gracefully muted for the most part. Everything seems so elegantly tateful from beginning to end. It’s all quite impressive.
It's really difficult to manage a narrative of espionage and such in a postmodern era. No one has really managed to capture the nature of secrets in an information in a way that would transfer to the page all that well in a comic book format. The Manchurian really has a sharp opportunity to engage in that given the nature of Chinese spy tactics. The fact that he's not actually pursuing it is not necessarily a failure in execution. in the story is internally consistent, and well executed. It is, however, a failure in conception. And that's only a little disappointing given how well everything else is put together.
Grade: A
