Sharknife Volume 1

by Corey Lewis

The Guandong Factory isn't like other restaurants. It's five stories tall, produces more peach dumplings per day than most eateries do in a decade, and it's the home of Sharknife - a mystical protector charged with protecting the establishment from those who would do it harm! But who is this mysterious yet colorful being? Once just a simple busboy, now Caesar Ives is something more - a crazy red rocket hero destined for greatness! But can Caesar juggle both lives - nabbing the girl (the super-sexy Chieko Plumbheart) and stopping the wide assortment of bizarre baddies that would love to do his precious eatery harm?

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

136 pages, Paperback

First published May 3, 2005

Reviews

[Damon · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you left a frappuccino of manga, graffiti, Chinese food, and NES-style video games in the microwave for about 4 hours, this might be what you scraped out when you remembered it later. This is like the comics equivalent of a Michael Bay movie - when there is action, there is so much action that it is almost impossible to tell what is actually going on. So much action that it sometimes literally doesn't fit on the page (since there are places where dialog gets squished off the edges). This is all both good and bad - the artwork is super dynamic and the book's overall pretty fun to read, but when there's a big 2-page spread of some new move that Sharknife is using, with a description of what it is and how it works, it'd be nice to be able to figure out what the hell is happening.
This is presented in the standard US manga-style trade - small format, black & white. Personally, I think that a larger page and some color might help to make the action a little more decipherable, but it would take away a bit from the overall presentation, I guess. Still, it doesn't really matter - it's a super entertaining read, and the content isn't so deep that a little confusion really affects the experience or the enjoyment of it. A big super something-or-other eats cookies and fights monsters that want to eat Chinese food. Anything beyond that I think is pretty much just frills.

[Jordan Peters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Corey Lewis is an exciting new artist who's energetic style will likely give you the same buzz as a case of Red Bulls. Lewis is a soldier. His mission? To save comics from being the same rehashed crap you usually see. He's already doing incredibly well.

The action never lets up and though the story is rather loose, you won't care. The art is eye-popping and seems to create its own rules. Sometimes the action clutters up the panels, making it hard to tell what's going on, but overall this book is tops. Keep a look out for part 2 and be sure to check out his other exhilarating works!

[Erik Wirfs-Brock · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fine enough example of a post Scott Pilgrim, post manga boom east/west fushion comic, taking the tics of goofy fighting manga and video games and putting it into comic form, but I rate it slightly low for this type of thing since a)one of the benefits of uncomplicated shonen manga is that it is pumped out weekly, whereas apparently the second volume is only now coming out. b) more importantly, for a comic all about a transforming superhero fighting monsters the action scenes are mostly incomprehensible.

[Ubalstecha · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a bizarre, crazy manga that has the feel of one of those Hong Kong action flicks that you see late at night on your local multi-cultural stations. You know there is something awesome going on, but you don't quite understand all the nuanses. The Scott Pilgrim style art is chaotic, lending to the feeling that the joke may be on you.

[furious · Rating 5 out of 5]

awesome.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

The manic pop thrill...

[Mike mcghee · Rating 4 out of 5]

wanna give it a 5, but its just not tight enough. c'mon rey, volume 2 already!!!!!

[Karen Luk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wacky monter of the week fighting comic involving fortune cookies.

[Jaap]

Yessss.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun fight comic, although the action is occasionally extremely difficult to follow, which is sort of the opposite of what you want in a fight comic.