Customer Reviews

The Dark Goodbye Volume 1

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Dark Goodbye is an American manga-ish book from Tokyopop, 1 from 2007 and 2 from 2008. I say manga-ish because although the size, price ($9.99 for 192 pages) and page count are typical, the book reads front to back, left to right, unlike the Japanese convention for manga. Also the art is not classic manga.

The author is Frank Marraffino with art by Drew Rausch; I don't know much about either one. Unfortunately after two books, Tokyopop pulled the plug and also still holds the rights, so the creators can't even take their creation elsewhere.

These are clearly Cthulhu mythos manga, in ways both large and small. As is typical for manga, there is a lot of not so subtle humor, but there is also considerable horror. Max "Mutt Mason is a gumshoe who lives in a bottle. His secretary is Melissa Katonic (Miss Katonic - get it?). In the city of Gatemouth (get it?) Exham is the big company. The kids read a comic book, Necronomoman. Gill (get it?) tends bar at the Great Old Pub. You get the idea. Mutt is hired by the lovely femme fatale Livinia (get it?) Tillinghast to find her missing twin sister, last seen by the homeopath, Dr. Akeley. What follows is a sequence where Mutt gets in deeper and deeper over his head, as the body count mounts alarmingly. My view was the book was a riff on themes lifted from the Dunwich Horror.

The Dark Goodbye is a welcome addition to Cthulhu mythos manga, still not a common species in the US. The story was entertaining and the art was enjoyable, with pretty good mythos beasties. It does not displace Arkham Woods as my favorite but is clearly better than Taimashin #1.

This is the first book of its kind that I have ever read. It was actually pretty good. It's a horror story that was easy to follow with a surprising ending.

While a little light on plotting, Frank Marraffino's narrative voice shines through in this supernatural pulp thriller. Mr. Marraffino is aided by the deeply chilling, but always enjoyable art of Drew Rausch who adds an element of abject horror to the story.