He hallucinates, talks to himself, and barricades the door to his apartment against an unspecified threat, in thrall to the voices in his head. He now toils as a mangaka’s assistant, working alongside other middle-aged artists whose professional disappointment has curdled into misogyny and grandiosity.Ĭompounding Hideo’s problems is his fragile mental state. Though Hideo tasted success with the publication of his own manga, his triumph was short-lived: Uncut Penis was cancelled just two volumes into its run. The “hero” of Kengo Hanazawa’s series is thirty-five-year old Hideo Suzuki. Peel back its gory surface, however, and it becomes clear that I Am a Hero is really a meditation on being trapped: by a dead-end job, by thwarted expectations, and by fears, real and imagined. Bone appetit!Īt first glance, I Am a Hero looks like a Walking Dead clone, complete with gun-toting vigilantes and hungry zombie hordes. Can the market support another zombie comic? That’s the question at the heart of this week’s column, as I examine Kengo Hanazawa’s I Am a Hero, a manga about a geeky artist living through a zombie apocalypse.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |