And finally, two years after the American release of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, someone has managed to capture that same feel of martial arts fantasy in comics. I had pretty high expectations for Way of the Rat, being a fan of the creators and the genre, and I was very pleased by the results. The book is not only gorgeous to look at, continuing the tradition of artists coming to Crossgen and doing work that is among their very best, but it's a lot of fun to read, with some genuinely funny moments and an engrossing plot line and characters. Best of all, the dreaded Sigil is nowhere in evidence yet, which was another contributing factor that made this my favorite Crossgen issue yet.
Capturing the fluid and fast movements of martial arts in a medium that is as still as comics is a difficult task, but Johnson, Ryder and Garcia have really given the sense of a good Hong Kong action movie in their artwork here. The stances, the rapid movements, the use of improvised weapons... all of these elements come through as clearly and vividly as they would in film. The costumes and scenery are likewise very true to the genre and breath-takingly detailed, from the imaginative designs of the X'ain's masked warriors to the stunning shot of Boon gliding into the palace.
It's not just the artwork that evokes the genre, however. Dixon has crafted a story that is full of the elements of Hong Kong theatre, from the flashy names of the characters and magic (The Brotherhood of Scoundrels and The Book of the Hell of the Hungry Dragons) to the variance in dialogue between subdued and formal speech and outraged, loud proclamations. Anyone who has seen even a little of the world of martial arts films will pick up on the cadences of the voices that we're supposed to be hearing from these characters, and the dialogue, while certainly not parody, often has a welcoming and humorous undercurrent.
There's plenty of upfront humor to be found in the book as well. Boon's reaction to his encounter with the talking monkey is a lot of fun, and Boon's attempt to talk his way out of a fight provides several laughs as well. However, while Jackie Chan was listed as one of the influences for this book, it's not all comedy. The sinister X'ain seems to be a fairly dastardly villain, and the sense of an epic quest lurking beneath the surface is as present here as it is in Crossgen's Western fantasy epic Sojourn.
Bottom line, I expected to like this book. I did not expect to love it this much. Dixon, Johnson and the rest have created an action-adventure comic that is unlike anything else in Crossgen's stable so far, or for that matter unlike anything that comics has to offer at the moment.
