Posted on: February 16, 2008 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

The Ghost of Silver Cliff : The Malay Mysteries 2 / 96 Pages / $6.95 / Shoto Press, P.O. Box 331, Delhi, NY 13753 / 

This is probably the most professional bit of anything that I’ve ever had the pleasure to review, coming from an Obscurity Unlimited Chat session. The Ghost of Silver Cliff is pretty much an manga-style comic book, but perfect-bound and put into a smaller format. The style of the animation itself is slightly less sharp than I would expect from the hyper-realistic school of manga but much more defined than a large deal of Viz-published comics. The story is pretty solid, detailing a grandmother that is focused in the arts of Jamu and eir’s son. The obvious parallel that can be shown in this story is the polemics encountered: the son is obviously the modernizing influence, while the grandmother is the traditional beliefs. Each continues to fight for dominance, and while the journey goes through some of the less urban places, the grandmother seems to have much more in the way of power, calling on the traditional beliefs and fears of the villagers. While I don’t intend to give away the ending during the review, lets just say that there are very important uses of both a technological and a traditional source in this story, which is expertly woven by Jai Sen and Eric Bryden. The use of silver ink to illustrate some of the more important pieces of the story is a visionary aspect of the story, and really doesn’t do much to put the price of this volume close to the $25 volumes put out by major publishing houses.

Rating: 7.3/10

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