MJ Review: Bombos vs Everything Volume One

[Jason]

Title: Bombos vs Everything
Volume: 1
Author: Maximo V. Lorenzo
Publisher: Tokyopop
Rating: Febrile pre-adolescents who post on 4chan a lot, I mean, "Teen"

This manga has brought me something new, something I thought I'd never actually see or get to do as a reviewer. I've seen a lot of manga, more than I can count, but I've never seen anything quite like this.

Bombos is a retarded, deformed little dwarf, who has a paper route that is just beyond his mental capabilities. His favorite activity is using a billy club to beat up the "cavemen" outside of his snowy town. He wants to participate in the "Qualifiers", which means, if he passes, he can go on to beat up people with clubs in a bigger city. Addy is a woman almost twice his age who is one step away from drooling on herself and seems to be in love with Bombos and have nothing else to do with her life aside from a bug collection. The closest thing Bombos has to a friend is Veng, another deformed boy who is also a paperboy. They both work for Elder Quake, a man who seems to have something up his sleeve, until the author gives us a sample of his interior monologue and we realize he's just as retarded as his employees.

Passing the Qualifiers means going on the the city of Bokonon and fighting with the best of the best of...uh...bat boys or whatever they are. But Bokonon is the goal itself, like big cities are for small town kids everywhere in the world. Does Quake caution them about wanting something being greater than having it? Does he warn them that it might not live up to their expectations? Oh, no: he tells them it is "rad" and "awesome". So much for the "wise old man" character of the mythos.

I suppose in some twisted kind of way, Bombos could be a kind of parody of shounen manga, the overwrought threats and homoerotic posturing, the casually-delivered send-off lines that are supposed to be cool somehow... but if it is, I'm afraid it doesn't work. The story is obviously some kind of futuristic place, where today's modes of youthspeak have become the trend of correct English -- everything is "awesome", like the noodle joint is "Awesome Noodles" and a guidebook to the city is "Bokonon in 150 awesome pages". I wish I were kidding.

The art is okay sometimes. The problem is that the art is a clear rip-off of Ueda Hajime's (artist of FLCL manga and Q-ko-chan). I guess I could be kind and say it's an "homage", but if it is, then it's not a very good one. This volume contains the concept art as some kind of "omake", and in concept, Bombos is more of a cross between FLCL and Blame!, but the Blame! part of it got lost in the execution.

Tokyopop is doing good work by trying to encourage new artists in North America to make home-grown manga (OEM - Original English Manga). In their rush to publish these up-and-coming mangaka, it would help if they were a bit more stringent in their screening process, though. As much as I have loved Tokyopop's work on many of my favorite manga over the years, I have to say that this one is one to miss.

That having been said, and no matter how bad this one was, I can't shake the impression that Lorenzo is an artist to watch. If "parody" shades over into "homage" and he gets a hold of a really great idea for a story, then look out -- it's going to be a best seller.

Reviewer: Jiji
Proofer: The Mighty Highlord
Editor: Firedog