Striker & Slayer Chapter 1 Review

Striker & Slayer Chapter 1 Review
Story: Darius Walker
Art: Renzo Cardenas
Lettering: Ervin Johnson
Cover Coloring: Felix Sewada
Publisher: Habura ‘N’ Johnson

Review by John Dubrawa

Manga has an innate ability to allow our disbelief to be suspended much higher than in traditional cowl and cape stories. From a supernatural notebook granting the power to kill to 80-foot-tall naked giants raining down terror, manga is, for lack of a better term, completely bonkers. It’s also, sadly, genre I do not have a lot of experience reading (if that wasn’t obvious by my references above being two of the most mainstream examples of manga). But I’m constantly looking for material to fill this glaring omission in my reading repertoire and Striker & Slayer Chapter 1 is the kind of manga that feels tailored for me. It still contains the over-the-top wackiness of the genre (along with some of its trappings) while keeping its story generally grounded. Mostly.

There’s only so much grounding writer Darius Walker can do when his two main characters are a couple of married immortal demigods, one of whom is the son of the God of Thunder and the other is a half-vampire. But the two operate in a fairly straightforward plot in this first issue that involves a Heroes-for-Hire-esque business to free humans kidnapped by vampires. As Walker moves through the issue, he compounds layers atop his characters and by the end, there’s a definite feeling of this story growing larger than just a couple of cocky demigods freeing some humans, but it never feels overwhelmingly expansive. There’s also a ton of tongue-and-cheek involved in Walker’s writing, so much so that the characters often address the audience to explain what is happening. It’s as though Walker himself knows how complicated manga can be and is assisting an audience that might not be used to reading this kind of material.

Sometimes, however, Walker’s dialogue can be too coddling to the audience to the point where almost all of the character’s thoughts and actions are spelled out within the dialogue. It’s not enough when Noah–aka Striker–shows up to fight; he specifically tells the guard what he’s planning to do and how he plans to do it. Chalk this up to cockiness, I suppose, but it also leads to a conflict of how I’m actually supposed to feel about these characters overall. Neither Striker, nor his wife Slayer, are particularly compassionate people despite their line of work, and while the two bickering like a married couple is fun at times, it borders on meanness other times.

Renzo Cardenas’ artwork throughout this first chapter is dazzling. His linework has a controlled sense of chaos to it, with wild jagged lines and sketch-like renderings of the characters and the action sequences. Yet, there’s an insane amount of depth as well, like when our two main characters are walking into a vampire’s lord’s castle and the sprawling hallways feel that expansive. Overall Cardenas doesn’t render a lot of backgrounds in this issue but more often than not his foreground work makes up for not getting a ton of sense of scene from the panels. In a book where the action bits take center-stage, Cardenas makes them all look outstanding.

Verdict
Buy! Striker & Slayer Chapter 1 is very manga-level crazy but it’s also an ideal choice for a reader like me that isn’t ready to dive right into the genre but desperately wants to get his feet wet. It still falls to a few trappings of the genre–particularly over-explaining itself–but the writing from Darius Walker almost recognizes that with some fun, fourth-wall breaking moments. Renzo Cardenas’ artwork makes the whole presentation look stellar, with sequences that profoundly pop from the page.