Review by Frank Plowright

There were a few concerns about Master Keaton 7. None involved Naoki Urasawa’s phenomenal art, also well represented here. There’s an extraordinary delicacy to his people, which need to be the case as these are almost always character-based dramas, and he never swaps in a striking image at the cost of the storytelling, although Urasawa can produce some beauties. However with the second volume crediting Urasawa as co-writer, repetition seemed to be creeping in. That’s been rectified by Urasawa and Hokusei Katsushika as the variety of earlier volumes returns.

Changing global politics are sometimes used as a story background, and the collapse of Russian satellite states in Europe again features, relatively contemporary for stories produced in the early 1990s, yet still standing the test of time. This is a real heartbreaker about a former top athlete under the previous regime, now disgraced having learned team doctors were injecting him with illicit substances. He’s not a man who’d knowingly cheat. Also using the Soviet background is the tale of three children who made a vow bonded by a shared love of their teacher, and what they grew up to become. Other people experiencing crises include a friend of Keaton’s daughter, a well-dressed violin busker, and the young employee of a demanding Chinese chef. Another story about a conflict between father and son is present, but it’s a good one, and as is so often the case, the writing features an unusual trade, here a composer, accompanied by a compelling visual motif.

There have been a few stories earlier in the series staring with orange added to the standard black and white, but ‘Cheers to Catalonia’ is a rarity for starting with four colour pages before switching to four more in orange. The focus is a former SAS colleague of Keaton’s, now a security guard when there’s a threat to disrupt the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

Archaeology is the one of Keaton’s specialities not to feature greatly in this collection, and coincidentally in the weakest inclusion, regarding a suspicious death that may have been a murder. It’s of interest for showing a younger Keaton working on his first professional dig meeting an insurance investigator, but while their bonding is pleasing, the mystery is ordinary.

Any concerns, then, that the previous volume might have been the beginning of a decline have been completely resolved via a batch of great stories. Bring on Master Keaton 9.