MadInkBeard | Derik A Badman

A new project, overlapping with my “30 Days of Comics” posts, I’m going to try to post 30 days in a row on 30 different comics. I really need to clear off the desk, floor, shelves that are piling up with “to review” books. I’m not sure how this will go, some will be full [...]

I’ve had the two volumes of Alex Toth: Edge of Genius on my “to review” shelf/pile for quite awhile. I finally decided that I’ll just write about one of the stories, the last one in volume 2 (theoretically the most recent of all the stories in these volumes[1]) and one of the most refined looking of these stories from the earlier part of Toth’s career.

This is a bit of a ramble, as I read/write my way through the story. I didn’t want to reproduce the whole story here, but I have included a lot of images to keep my commentary comprehensible.

Besides my ongoing reading/blogging on Tezuka’s Phoenix, I’ve also been making my way through two other “classic” manga series: Koike and Kojima’s Lone Wolf and Cub and Otomo’s Akira. These three works are very different creatures on many levels, but primarily for me in my changing and opposite reactions to re/reading them.