Genre: Comedy
Age Rating: Older Teen
Price: $10.99
S.S. Astro is a comedy about four high school teachers and their daily lives. It lacks the driving plot engine of most manga, but that's because it's really a collection of strips, which in Japan is referred to as the 4 koma format.
The 4 koma format is tricky, and it's a bit unfair to judge 4 koma manga by typical manga standards. Imagine assuming Peanuts or Dilbert would have the kind of pacing, layout, and action as, say, Watchmen or Maus (just to name two wildly different but widely read graphic novels). That being said, you can still acheive fast-paced storytelling (look at what Chester Gould did with Dick Tracy), epic visuals (as in Hal Foster's Prince Valiant), and lots of slapsticky action (Calvin & Hobbes, anyone?).
Which is not to say that the 4-koma format equates exactly to the U.S. or British comic strip--it has it's own peculiarities. I find that ongoing narratives tend to have a herky-jerky feel, sometimes skipping through story beats to imply more than is on the page. If you're thinking along the lines of American strips, whether Apt. 3-G or Lee Faulk's The Phantom, you're in for a rude awakening: where American strips spend a panel every day or week catching you up on the action, 4 koma seem to assume that you'll not only keep up, but make the leaps of logic between scenes as strips jump over actions and transitions.
Maybe this isn't the case with all 4 koma, but it's common enough to the translated ones I've seen that it's worth giving you the heads up. Nevertheless, 4 koma has some strengths that are often missing from other manga--namely the loping, ragged, slice-of life storytelling that gets at both the large and small moments of daily life in a way that is the strength of the daily strip format (think For Better or For Worse, or Achewood, to cite two completely different examples. Basically the exact opposite of gag-a-day like Garfield or xkcd--again, two wildly different strips).
Yen Press has made some impact in the crowded manga market by licensing manwha (Korean comics) and 4 koma material, like Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro, a title I have lots of affection for. So I looked forward to S.S. Astro. I thought I would like it even more: The art is clean, attractive, and the panels never feel crowded (something that happens in Kuro, due in part to the black pages); the characters are teachers in their 20's and 30's and there's no student/teacher monkeybusiness, so it's clearly aimed at an older (as in, not tweenaged) audience.Then I read it. Actually, I began it on multiple occasions, then read it through twice, if only to answer the question "is it just me?" The book confounded me--despite solid, fun characters and an easygoing sense of humor, it lost me every time.
Several factors create the problem--the character designs are too alike to easily distinguish one from another, especially in the early strips where the characters haven't been clearly defined. Similarly, the translation and notes failed to make clear to me the various conflicts, nuances of humor, and transitions between strips. Drop this into the 4 koma format with its aforementioned quirks, and you can understand my frustration.
Simply put, I shouldn't have to work this hard to understand what's going on.
For comparison, I just sat down and read cover to cover the entire Essential Dykes to Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel's 25+ year strip (trying to remember where you've heard that name? Her memoir Fun Home was possibly the best graphic novel of the last 5 years). So, here's a strip with dozens of characters, nearly all women I might add, who are deeply entrenched in lesbian jargon and subculture, about which I know next to nothing. Yet every character, plot point, and beat of humor was clear, distinct, and funny--even if I didn't know what was going on. Put another way: remember the first time you saw Linus's little brother Rerun in Peanuts and you were confused because you thought it was Linus? Now multiply that by three or four characters and have it go on intermittently for chapters at a time.
Interested in 4koma? Unless you're willing to put up with bewilderment and confusion, check out the works of Kiyohiko Azuma (Azumanga Daioh, Yotsuba&!) or Satoko Kiyuduki's Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro.
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