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Dragon Ball Z Viz
Big volume 1 by Akira Toriyama:
I was introduced to Dragon
Ball Z before ever being aware of Dragon
Ball. Nowadays I consider both series to be one long series as it
originally way in Japan. The popular series by creator Akira Toriyama was split
into two different series in North America. The first series chronicles Goku’s
childhood and rise to becoming the most powerful fighter on the planet. The
second series tells of Goku’s ever-increasing strength caused by the necessity
of regularly saving his adopted home planet of Earth and sometimes the entire
universe. I suspect that even if the series had not been split in two we would
still consider these volumes of Dragon
Ball Z (volumes 1, 2 and 3 collected together in this edition) as a clear
departure from the earlier Dragon Ball
volumes.
At this point in the series the story has pulled away
from the collection of Dragon Balls which was more of an adventure story with a
focus on martial arts. The whole thing was also a vehicle for Toriyama’s sense
of humour which dominated his first manga series, Dr. Slump. Dragon Ball Z
focused much more on the fighting component and saw characters becoming
increasingly, even ridiculously powerful during its publication. Even in the
first volume you notice that loveable characters from Goku’s younger years will
be playing a much smaller role during his years as Earth’s champion simply
because they’re not strong enough to fight along with him against their new
enemies. They still maintain a key role in the series but it’s mostly to
provide additional character interactions, character development, and comic
relief.
The most noteworthy change though is that Toriyama
provides one of the most incredible retcon, or retroactive continuity, that I
can remember so clearly. He did a radical change in Goku’s backstory by making
him an alien. We learn that he’s native of planet Vegeta and he’s a Saiyan, a
race of bloodthirsty warriors who completely eradicate planets of their
sentient life forms in order to sell off the planets to rich clients. This is
where the series attains its vast scope; from now on the outcome of Goku and
the Z-Fighters battles will have consequences on the intergalactic scale. There
are a few other retcons aside from Goku’s heritage but they all fall under the
same category of the story’s overall expansion. We learn that the Demon King
Piccolo and his god-like counterpart Kami are not mythological or supernatural
beings, they too are aliens. Namekians, to be precise. In Dragon Ball Kami was thought to be one of the higher rankings of
celestial officials but we quickly learn that there are other guardians above
him with the introduction of King Kay who watches over the north quadrant of
the galaxy.
The first three volumes of Dragon Ball Z are very impressive. Toriyama manages to completely
change his story from an adventure, quest and coming of age story to a grand
scale fighting extravaganza on the intergalactic level. The most impressive
thing about this change in direction is that he did it without losing the main
elements of the 16 volumes that preceded the arrival of Saiyans on Earth. Indeed,
many of the characters from Dragon Ball
will be present until the very last chapters of Dragon Ball Z. It’s all very different but also quite familiar,
allowing fans of young Goku to join up with new fans of adult Goku in enjoying
one of the most popular and loved action manga of all time.
Skeleton Crew by
Stephen King:
In an effort to get over my
unfounded prejudice against Stephen King and his massive body of work, I’m been
sampling some of his books. Even though this is my second attempt to read Skeleton Crew the results have been
pretty positive so far. The
first time I read this collection of short stories and one novella, I couldn’t
get past “The Monkey”. I really enjoyed “The Mist”, so much in fact that I
wrote a review of just that story, but everything I read after it didn’t work
for me. I wasn’t entirely surprised by this since I’ve found that collections
of stories tend to vary greatly in quality and this is true of Skeleton Crew. Some stories were simply
bad while other’s had a tone or style that didn’t particularly grab me. That’s
not to say there aren’t any good stories. There are but I’m not able to
recommended Skeleton Crew in its
entirety. Instead, I would recommend the stories I think are the best or at
least the most interesting thing and then let the reader decide if they’d like
to read the rest. Here are a few quick thoughts on the stories I liked the
most.
"The Mist"
Similarly to ‘Salem’s
Lot what makes this story shine is the villagers and how they interact. The
core of the story is surviving an invasion on inter-dimensional monsters but
the monsters aren’t the focus of the story. It’s a character piece at heart and
at just over a 100 pages it pretty powerfully condensed.
"Mrs. Todd's Shortcut"
This is a fun story that also deals with other
dimensions. One woman’s passion for finding shortcuts leads her to speeding
down roads that few or none others have travelled down before. It has a build
but the entire thing is just off kilter enough to work well, even if you know
how the story will end by the time you reach the halfway point. I’d like to
read more stories like these. There is a definitive supernatural bent but
there’s not real horror in sight.
"The Jaunt"
“The Jaunt”, is another story that can’t be described
simply as horror though there is a clear horror element to it. It’s one of
King’s few (so I’m told) science fiction stories. A father tells his family of
the history of Jaunting, a form of teleportation that has been popularized in
the future. During the telling he struggles to provide a complete narrative
while also hiding some of the more unpleasant truths about Jaunting. He fails
by leaving his listeners more curious than informed and the consequence is
unsettling.
"The Raft"
This is probably the purest dose of horror in this
collection. It’s incredibly straightforward but that simplicity helps it work.
Four students go swimming out to the raft in the middle of a lake at midnight.
It’s their last time swimming before the raft gets put away for the winter.
They’re met by a dark oil slick on the surface of the water which proceeds to
terrorize and attack them. It’s a chilling and gory story that completely
captivated me. It’s probably the story that engaged me the most from all the
other stories in Skeleton Crew.
"The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands"
I like this story more for the bookends than the story of
the title. Again, it’s a story told within a story. King creates a gentlemen’s
club with a never-aging butler and patrons that all seem to have dark secrets.
The telling of “The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands” is one of those secret
stories. While anybody with a bit of imagination can figure out why he doesn’t
shake hands, the atmospheric tone of the storytelling made it a worthwhile read
for me.
"Beachworld"
I found King’s second science fiction story in Skeleton Crew to be a disappointment but
it was a good disappointing story. The story is too simple and even though I’ve
only read a very small amount of stories by King, it has a pretty common
structure amongst his work. Characters come face to face with an incarnation of
evil, in this case a desert planet that appears to be sentient, and one of them
stares into the abyss and is unable to look away, resulting in his destruction.
It’s the one story I would have liked to see further developed as it could have
been better or at least more interesting than how it is now.
"Survivor Type"
A man finds himself the lone survivor of a sunken cruise
ship. He’s on an island with no food and a large amount of heroin. The story is
told through his diary entries which become increasingly disjointed and strange
as he slips into insanity. The best thing about this story is that King takes
it to its natural conclusion and I appreciated that.
King’s ideas for short stories are generally pretty straight
forward with the occasional twist ending. The problem with that is he takes
time with his stories. He doesn’t rush to the end and he doesn’t drop the
entire idea on the reader in just a few pages. This has the unfortunate
consequence of making quite a few stories in this book slow to read and
difficult to get through, not because of their difficulty but because it
doesn’t successfully engage the reader. On the other hand, his better stories
are a delight to read. Even some of the longer ones or those that have a simple
idea that doesn’t hide away from the reader or is revealed in a twist ending.
Reading “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut” it was clear that she would find a shortcut but
what wasn’t obvious is the nature of that shortcut. Add to that a good style
and an enjoyable pace and the result is one of the better stories. Likewise,
“Survivor Type” and “The Raft” are very simple stories but King’s commitment to
taking the story to their just conclusion is what makes them compulsively
readable and enjoyable (well, a specific kind of enjoyable – they are pretty
gruesome) stories.
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