Queens
By Sung-Hyen Ha
Rated OT, for older teens (16+)
Tokyopop, $9.99
Warning: Spoilers!
Queens is a gender-bending slapstick comedy manwha that never stops for a minute to take a breath or slip in a little subtlety. It’s high-strung, with the characters not only in chibbi form a good deal of the time but sometimes even degenerating into stick figures under the stress of their emotions. It’s good for some laughs but a bit exhausting to read in a single sitting.
Pil-Hyun Jung, the lead character, is a girly boy with huge eyelashes, a feminine face, and a deep love of making teddy bears. He’s actually pretty comfortable being himself—the girls all think he’s cute, and the cafeteria ladies give him extra food. But there are downsides. His father, a wimp himself, pushes the manly-man ethos. His two older brothers are buff and athletic, which just makes things worse. Worst of all, Pil-Hyun is smitten with Song-Ah Cha, who shares his love of making teddy bears, but she has eyes only for the uber-manly Gyung-Ju Lee.
Queens revels so thoroughly in gender stereotypes that it ultimately subverts them. Determined to shed his feminine ways and become a Real Man, Pil-Hyun naturally heads to the comic book store for advice. There he bumps into, literally, a cool, manly stranger who is buying a stack of manwha titled “How to Escape from Being a Pretty Boy.” (Did I mention that there is no subtlety in this manwha?) Pil-Hyun reads volume 1 and decides he must become a disciple of the artist. Naturally, the artist turns out to be the stranger from the bookstore, and despite appearances, the stranger is… a woman. With two hawt, hawt roommates. At this point, the book morphs into a small-scale harem comedy and goes rocketing off in that direction for a while, then wheels back around to the story of Pil-Hyung’s thwarted love and the jerkitude of Gyung-Ju Lee.
You might expect a book like this to be cluttered and chaotic, but actually Queens is quite easy to read, at least, once you get past the shocking pink cover. (Subtlety? No thanks!) The art is clear and linear, with a minimum of toning and not much going on in the backgrounds. At the same time, Ha does a good job of varying point of view, panel size, and even the drawing style on each page so that the book never gets monotonous. In fact, this dynamic style really pushes the reader forward.
Tokyopop didn’t exactly break the bank with this volume, but it looks decent anyway. The cover has bright colors and a pleasant matte finish, so you don’t notice the coarse print quality so much. Inside, the paper is a cut above newsprint and loses some of the finer lines, but Ha’s art is strong enough to handle it. Sound effects are mostly left untranslated, but there are plenty of side comments and emotion signs. This is one book that never leaves you guessing.
(This review is based on a complimentary copy supplied by the publisher.)
