manga: From Eroica With Love Vol 3-4

[meganbmoore]

I think a single volume of this takes about twice as long to read as any other manga I’ve read. And I’m including some pretty wordy mangas there. I wonder if it’s like US comics, where most of them get consistently less wordy as time goes by.

Still a very fun spy spoof manga about a flamboyant (sometimes sadistic) thief and the super serious German spy who’s the reluctant object of his affections. Reluctant enough that I regularly worry Klaus will have a heart attack. I find it funny that I was talking to smillaraaqabout how he’d kill anyone who tried to sneak sugar into his coffe, and then about 20 pages later (after getting booted from MSN…) Klaus was trapped watching someone put ten sugar cubes in their own coffee.

While I suspect the train adventures in “Hallelujah Express” and Dorian’s…uhm…“bath assault” are the fandom’s favorite parts of these volumes, mine was in “In’shallah” when Klaus was outraged that Dorian sold his gun for a fraction of its worth, and then they stole each other’s vehicles and were so incensed that they broke down that they were too busy calling each other’s enemies to think to call for help.

And then there were “Borgias” in Rome! And Dorian unable to grab “Lucretia” because of her girl bits!

And I love that even in Dorian’s fairy tale dream, Klaus hates and rejects him.

James still annoys me, but I enjoy his regular near heart attacks. I find Agent G somewhat charming, though, and like Agent Z and Klaus’s concerns over Dorian corrupting him, too. Though I’m not overly thrilled that Dorian does business with a guy who sells child prostitutes, or that he “reserves” one years in advance. I suppose it suits, though.
 

Comments

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's not unexpected, just not something I really wanted to see dwelled on.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

It's one of the odd little quirks of the series as a whole, really -- you've got hard-boiled spies, ruthless terrorists, child traffickers, etc. all running about, yet for all of the threats of death and/or serious bodily harm, the tone generally stays light and for the most part nobody even gets seriously hurt. But if you look at the side series focusing on Z and Klaus, they're deadly serious and violent, with a fairly high body count! (I've joked about it before, but it's almost enough to make you think one of the reasons Klaus is so cranky all the time is that he's used to living in a fairly dark, deadly serious John Le Carre sort of Cold War spy-thriller universe, and Dorian keeps getting him mixed up in stuff that's more suited for the worlds of Austin Powers or Get Smart or the Pink Panther...)