ROAR!

In the past few months, I've boarded the Scott Pilgrim train.

An independent comic from a Toronto author, Scott Pilgrim deals with, well, 23-year-old Scott Pilgrim, a bassist in the rock band Sex Bomb-omb. He meets this girl Ramona, who's got seven evil ex-boyfriends that Scott has to defeat in order for Ramona to be truly his girl. Riddled with pop-culture references everywhere, and a lot of eight-bit gaming jokes (the first ex-boyfriend he defeats leaves behind a 1-Up), it's an awesome read for those people who aren't big fans of the usual superhero comics. Part manga, part old-school Oni black-and-white indy, it's truly awesome.

I've been getting it from the mall's comic shop, and so the owner tends to look out for things I like (I spend at least $20 a week there, so I'm a decent customer). The only other guy he gets Scott Pilgrim in for recommended a similar book. The owner asked if I wanted to try it. Sure, why not? It's cheap.

So I picked up Sharknife. While Pilgrim is manga-influenced, Sharknife is full-on manga. How manga, you may ask? A Chinese restaurant busboy turns into an armored warrior to defeat monsters that live in the walls.


It's super-busy artwork, in the fact that it's sometimes hard for me to pick out the action. So I was pretty lukewarm halfway through the book. Until the last sequence in the book.

It's an eggroll festival. And one of the monsters is a robo-bear that craves eggrolls. I let out a giddy emission of glee once or twice, because really, when you're dealing with a warrior grappling with a robot bear in order to save a mountain of eggrolls? As one character puts it, "he headlocked a freakin' BEAR!" Yeah, I enjoy stuff like that.

So, not half as good as Scott Pilgrim, but for a guy who loves bear/human battles, it had something for me.