Review by Frank Plowright
Originally serialised online, NYC is the opening volume of Mari Jiwe’s adventures as a new college student in New York. It’s another of DC’s reformats, recasting Vixen as a younger hero with a new real name for the young teen audience.
Artist Manou Azumi works digitally, and illustrative design is a great strength, as noted by the full page illustrations opening the book telling the African origins of the ancestral totem Mari’s grandmother passes on to her. Otherwise the art is manga influenced, with the focus on the people and the backgrounds frequently minimal, and a dip into cartoon exaggeration for emotional moments, such as meeting Batman. Azumi can also draw people with distractingly long necks, but that’s not the main problem.
NYC was originally designed to be read by scrolling a panel at a time on a cellphone, and the results of reformatting the art to fit printed pages isn’t ideal. The placement leads to large areas of white on every page, and prevents any great connection between images. It’s a method of telling a story, but one greatly limiting the possibilities of comics.
While Mari’s focus is on learning about her new city, Jasmine Walls ensures the audience knows evil types have been attempting to locate the totem for a while. Mari and her flatmate Karen are both sympathetic people, and Walls introduces someone else regular DC readers will recognise, although that revelation’s been kept for Volume Two.
It’s not until midway through that Mari learns that what she’s been told about the totem isn’t myth. There are some very dangerous people who believe it bestows the wearer with genuine power, and Mari’s already discovered animals somehow seem attracted to her in New York.
By the end Walls has established what’s needed going forward in the course of a viable adventure featuring likeable characters. She’s transmitted the steep learning curve Mari undertakes, and set up the problems to come, but the limitations of art designed for a different format mean this isn’t as good as it might be.
