Book Review: Biomega – Vol 2

BIOMEGA Vol 2 (COMIC)
Writer & Artist: Tsutomu Niehi
Translator: John Werry
English Adaptation: Stan!
Editors: Mike Montesa, Andrew McKeon
Publisher: Viz Media
Publication Date: 2010
Format: Full Color – 216 pages
Price: $12.99

“After capturing Eon Green, DRF forces are amassing around Toa Heavy Industry headquarters and have taken Dr. Kurokawa and his daughter into custody. Zoichi must attempt a rescue–Dr. Kurokawa’s laboratory may yield critical information on Eon Green. Elsewhere, Toa Heavy Industry agent Nishu Mizunoe searches for Kozlov Grebnev and the secrets he knows about the DRF’s research, origins and their apocalyptic plan for the entire human race!“

Artwork: 3.5 out of 5.0
This was one gritty/tough looking book. The cover is just great, and I liked how I was treated to a few pages in color before moving into the black and whites. The characters are really nice looking as are the environments. So the lower score only comes from the action scenes and there are a few. While some panels are easy to interpret, other suffer from what I am now calling ACTIONWAH! That’s right I am allowed to make up my own words as I please, so ACTIONWAH! is when there is an action scene panel where I can not figure out what is going on, no matter which way I turn the page, I find this quite often in the Manga and Manga style titles I am reading. It’s very distracting here in such an awesome looking book, which is a shame. Since I seem to have forgotten to mention this so far, the people infected in this volume are gore-geous to look at, I want toys!

Story: 4.5 out of 5.0
First of all let me say that the library system screwed up and I got Vol. 2 before reading Vol. 1. So how was I able to do it? Well there was a great recap page and things really explained themselves as the went on. So awesome touch on that. I am a big fan of the concept here too, I like the mix I am seeing of our classic horror baddies, being given this new age treatment. Much like Dark Horse’s Devil series, we are working with a virus here, this one on a worldwide scale. The idea is fantastic as a our group of heroes is out to try and bring down the corporation responsible. Nice dialogue and some good action made this a good read.

Dying Breath: 3.5 out of 5.0
I gotta go lower on this one only because of that damn ACTIONWAH! I just don’t get how panels of art like that are so often used, it’s almost as if the artist let Jackson Pollock come in and do some random work on the book. The story here is brilliant. I love the bleak future where man screwed man and we need some way of dealing with it. Plus it’s always nice to see that the guy who pushed a button will pay for doing so. So to sum it up, mostly top notch art mixed with a good story make this one very exciting to read and it’s not so much monster hunter like the others that are big hits. Worth looking into if you want something different that is good. Plus there is a talking bear and I don’t know a single person who doesn’t like a talking bear.