Samurai Guard
Nick Abrigo with Leon Allen
Reviewed by Darren Hick

Speaking in terms of historical accuracy, Frank Miller's epic, 300, was a few points short of the mark. But at least it was entertaining. Kirk Abrigo's Samurai Guard falls short on both counts.

Samurai Guard opens with a page of text, always a dangerous move in a comic. Even those few truly great works in the comics form to have attempted to integrate text (Watchmen being a prime example) weren't foolish enough to weigh themselves down with a full page of weighty history, nor did they open the work with heavy text. This is not an introduction; it cannot be overlooked. It is an integral set-up to the story to follow. And, despite a terrible choice in font, this single page of text remains the most interesting part of Abrigo's book.

From the very next page, Samurai Guard swiftly devolves into an action romp even Steven Seagal would turn down on sight. The plot is essentially this: In the mid-19th Century, the Samurai class of the formerly feudal Japan picked up and moved itself en masse to a communal island separated from modern (and modernizing) society. A good start. Predictably, however, the island is invaded by tech-minded outsiders. Unpredictably, it's a combination of frog-men and ninjas. And it gets better: there's "ninja magic." I appreciate genre crap as much as the next layabout, but what good can possibly come of this?

Although the Samurai (they're our protagonists, apparently) are, for the most part, completely interchangeable, Abrigo adds a plot twist: a female Samurai. Gosh. I'm holding back my rhetoric. What sub-plot there is hangs completely on this. Mind you, you shouldn't take this to mean it ever moves any further. Rather, we're fed a repeating refrain:

"Why did I have to get teamed up with the only female Samurai on Bushido Island."

"I wonder if he's in such a hurry to set off the flare because he has no confidence in the female Samurai."

"A female Samurai? Don't make me laugh. Surely the Bushido Police Force is desperate for help if they will allow a woman to wear their ranks."

"I love it when anyone I'm up against takes the fact that I'm female for granted."

Why is there a woman among the Samurai? I haven't a clue. Why is it so terrible that she's of the female persuasion? Y'got me. What's the deal with her and Shunji? Frankly, it's not going to keep me up nights.

Storywise, the best I can say is that it had potential, especially if the basis were actually of historical value. For a while, I simply believed Abrigo was a poor historian. But with the exchange "Ninja magic." "Yes Samurai, ninja magic," he lost even the shred of unfulfilled potential I had presumed he had woven into the story. Now, near the end of the book, we're left with poor history, poor scripting and poor plotting. And then there's the art.

Abrigo's art is... well... uneven. So, he's at least a step up on this front from his writing. I'll start with the bad: Abrigo can't draw a face. In fact, he can rarely pull off a head. There are one or two flukes where a face is recognizably human, but the law of averages quickly shuttles these rare examples to the background. This aside, though, his drafting's not altogether bad. Abrigo has a fair grasp of figure-drawing, though it's obviously more instinctive than studied. And he has an apparently practiced understanding of composition -- of putting together elements of a panel coherently -- and with a couple of notable exceptions, panel-to-panel transitions. In other words, he seems to know how to turn a story into a comic -- he just can't write that original story.

Where Abrigo's seemingly instinctive talent most clearly shows through (a twinkle of diamond in the rough, I could say) is in his too-underplayed depiction of landscape. The opening double-page spread, a wide-shot of a cliff and shore on Bushido Island, is actually quite impressive. Minimally rendered (pre-color, that is), the piece is simple in style, but admirable in scope and technique. Even the Samurai on this spread are the best they look in the book's entirety. Did Abrigo rush the rest of the book? I'd like to think so, because that would simply imply an undeveloped work ethic. The other option is that Abrigo had one particularly impressive fluke, and the rest is the norm. There's hope, in other words, for Abrigo's visuals. As for his story-writing, he might be well-advised to stick with pure text pieces. In one sense, I suspect Samurai Guard is only a glimpse at Abrigo's potential. In another, Samurai Guard is an artistic cul-de-sac.

Samurai Guard costs a whopping $2.50 US or $3.75 in Canada. For ordering information, drop by www.colburncomics.com (of which Samurai Guard is the flagship title) or send an e-mail to Kirk Abrigo, himself.