Peach Momoko has spent the last few years proving that she is one of the premier artists in comics today. Starting with her covers, then moving into her own universe Demon Saga, and now really hitting superstardom with Ultimate X-Men, Momoko has claimed a rare reputation across the Big Two as a cartoonist who basically gets to do what they want (other current notable title holder is Daniel Warren Johnson). We can tell she has the full support of Marvel because they are keeping all of her Demon Saga stuff in print and putting it in as many formats as possible.
And this is cool! Momoko certainly deserves to be treated as a star in this way. She stands out in the western market because her style isn’t drawn from the same places as others here, and also, her stuff is just really cool looking. She has a great handle of making weird horrible images, and generally knows how to use space on the page well.
So, I was excited to get into this book. More Momoko is good! Weird thing though: despite little advertisement, this book is only the line work, printed in black and white.
Now, I think it’s cool that Marvel published this comic in black and white. I really enjoyed getting to see how much of Momoko’s skill is already present on the page without the colors, and seeing how finished and legible the art is, even before it’s done being produced. I also think it’s nice that Marvel wants to publish a comic like this, when lately they’ve been punting artist editions to other companies to publish. In general, it’s nice to see Marvel actually caring about publishing a comic celebrating art, even if it’s only when it’s one of their superstars doing it.
It’s still really weird that the only printed indication that this is a special black and white version of the comic is on the back cover. Sure, it doesn’t have to be in the title, but why not the title page in the book? It is made clear on most online listings, but it seems like the print product should maybe make this a little more clear to me.
That aside, I do think this is a worse way to experience the story than the way it was originally published, or even better, the treasury edition. While I do think Momoko’s art is excellent in black and white, it really comes to life with color, and it’s tough to not get that experience here. Even beyond that, I’m not sure much effort was really put into this production either, as a lot of the art is blurrier than seems reasonable, and it seems like the work was done at a lower resolution than should be expected.
This really isn’t a volume made to tell the story as much as it is an artifact to show how skilled a great artist is, but even then I think it has some serious flaws that hold it back.
This is the kind of project that Peach Momoko deserves to have published, but not given the production level she deserves. Not the definitive way to experience the story, and not quite what I want out of a book focused on her work.
