Lone Wolf 2100 Volume 1: Shadows On Saplings

Lone Wolf 2100 #1

by Mike Kennedy, Francisco Ruiz Velasco (Artist)

A young girl may hold the key to saving the world -- or destroying it. A corporation wants her secret -- no matter what it may be. Her only companion is an android -- who is accused of killing her father. The first full-length adventure of young Daisy Ogami and her android protector Itto is now available in one volume! Plunge into the dystopian world one hundred years in the future, where human-like "Emulation Constructs" fight to enjoy the same rights as their human creators, where the vast majority of the world's human population struggles to eke out an existence in a hostile landscape, and where both sides are victim to corporate whim and the deadly effects of a manmade plague. Collecting the first four issues of the series. A ground-up re-imagining of the original Lone Wolf and Cub manga, this series is being done in association with, and under the watchful eye of Kazuo Koike, the writer and co-creator of Lone Wolf and Cub.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Science Fiction

104 pages, Paperback

First published February 19, 2003

Reviews

[Andrew Uys · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great fun read with plenty of cole-cyborg-ninja combat, this is a fun "inspired-by" series!

[L · Rating 2 out of 5]

Throwing a classic ronin assassin story set in the mediaeval Edo Period of Japan into the future is a great way to inject new life into a story, reinvigorating a samurai story with cyberpunk or techno-dystopain themes.
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This story, unfortunately, saps the life out of "Lone Wolf and Cub," turning a story about a cunning masterless samurai protecting his child into a cyberpunk soldier that deals with mean rude people who are are aggressive for no real reason. The characters are largely 2-dimensional, and the samurai, who in the graphic novel is constantly training, is turned into a superhuman who can karate chop through people's bodies. That's not fun. Its attempts to mimic Lone Wolf and Cub's way of telling eastern morals through each story read like fortune cookie sentences.
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The worst part is that the art, a large point where I picked this book up, fluctuates, and the tech wasteland like feel in the first volume just gets lazy by the end.

[Kathryn Baron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somewhat confusing. Not as good as the original. The child is a cipher, less human in reaction or character than the Android. And world is fantasy, not nearly as intriguing as the unknown past. Oh and I really didn't like the sacrifice of the dog. Hoping the next one is better.

[Nathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Anytime a character or characters are launched into the future it usually sounds like a great idea but the execution can be sloppy at times. This is one of those cases. Lone Wolf 2100 takes the classic tale of "Lone Wolf and Cub" and tries to put a new spin on it. Unfortunately the initial excitement is lost within the first arc of the story. Even Velasco's artwork seems to peter out even after the second issue. The characters seem two dimensional, none of them are fully realized, which makes it hard for the reader to connect with them. The series also borrows from other anime and cyberpunk stories but never develops on them to make these additions unique to the story's universe.