The Dirty Pair, Book 3: Fatal But Not Serious

The Dirty Pair #5

by Adam Warren

While the majority of humanity still lives in fear of the Dirty Pair and their well-publicized "disastrous proclivities," a surprising number of people have, for a wide variety of reasons, chosen to embrace the Lovely Angels as beloved, if destructive, "idol figures." Recently, the Pair's galaxy-wide cult following has grown large enough to support an actual convention celebrating their dubious celebrity. In a doomed bid to generate some positive media coverage, the Lovely Angels themselves are attending this "Kei'n'YuriCon'41" as guests of honor... but their enemies are conspiring to derail this ill-fated "charm offensive."

Genres: Comics, Manga, Graphic Novels, Science Fiction, Humor

117 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 1996

About the author

Adam Warren (born 1967) is an American comic book writer and artist who is most famous for his original graphic novel Empowered, for adapting the characters known as Dirty Pair into an American comic book, and for being one of the first American commercial illustrators to be influenced by the general manga style.

Reviews

[Billy Kid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dirty Pair is:
- The eponymous pair, Kei and Yuri, of bio-engineered "trouble consultants" sent all over the universe to deal with "trouble"---often achieving their goals with a blatant disregard for the "collateral damage" they cause.
- An American comic serialized between 1988 and 2002 based on a Japanese light novel series. It's a raunchy science fiction action comedy with a healthy dose of cyberpunk esthetics spliced into it. - Not to be confused with The Great Adventures of the Dirty Pair manga from 2010-2011 by Hisao Tamaki. I don't know much about this adaptation other than the character designs being a little bland.
- A decades long-running comic with a visual style that's changed so much (getting much worse rather than better) despite being drawn by the same artist throughout its entire run.
- A heavily episodic comic that takes a little while to "get good". You might want to start reading at A Plague of Angels.
- Well-loved by its fans
- Post-modern. Warren is well-aware of what the Dirty Pair comic is. Especially starting from A Plague of Angels onwards, Adam Warren seems to become more interested in putting textual commentary into the text itself. - In A Plague of Angels, the journalist Cory is introduced to the story (she's cannonically trans which is cool) and is tasked with following the Dirty Pair on one of their missions. Through Cory, Warren explicitly frames the Dirty Pair as being the whirlwind of chaos and destruction that they are (whereas prior to Cory's introduction, this theme of the show was mostly implicit). - In Fatal and not Serious, Cory is re-introduced to the story as a talk show host interviewing the Dirty Pair in the days before the inaugural Kei n' Yuri con 41, an in-universe fandom convention dedicated to the main characters of the comic book. An in-universe pair of AI hosts cover the events of the con live through personalized video streams to convention goers. In the comic, panels of commentary are spliced into the events of the comic providing color commentary, textual analysis and serve as another lens through which to view the Dirty Pair's shenaningans---all within the comic itself.
- A little uneven. The first few arcs are really big standard, lacking the oomhph that makes the rest of the series stand out, and the last arc's art style is bad and just isn't that interesting.

[Ndidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the fifth American Dirty Pair comic book, written and drawn by Adam Warren.

Kei and Yuri, known as The Dirty Pair, are genetically upgraded government agents in the 22nd Century, famous for their beauty and skimpy outfits, infamous for being trouble magnets and leaving a swathe of destruction in their wake.

I've read the previous two Dirty Pair comic books, A Plague of Angels and Sim Hell. I didn't enjoy Fatal but Not Serious as much - I think because there was too much violence and not enough character interaction, and also because it felt a little too similar to A Plague of Angels.

[Timothy Moyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

AWESOME ! Great story plot and gorgeous graphics