i have no idea where my tablet and stylus are. i should post soon. in other news, skool's out for the summer. whooo.

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oh yeah, i've recently gotten into a manwha (korean comic) called "jack frost." it's an action, comedy, horror comic for people who already know you shouldn't cut others with knives. there's not much of it out yet, but you can read it here. [link]

anyway, it concerns the adventures of a girl named 'noh-ah' and the eponymous jack frost. noh-ah is a high school sophomore transferring to the northern district of amityville (yeah, really) private high school. for some reason or other, she is dead at the beginning of the story and not just because she was decapitated literally 2 seconds after she was introduced. as it turns out, she is the all-important 'mirror image,' which so far means she is an immortal bottle of human adhesive. jack, so far, is a tall, often pointlessly violent student who can manifest various blades, shadows and claws from underneath that nifty uniform jacket he always wears. other characters include at the moment helmina, glasses wearing uber-hottie and head of the northern district (who may or may not be as ax-crazy as jack, no one's quite sure yet), the equally attractive and nearly emotionless jin, the nurse (of course) and hansen... i'm not sure why he came to the north district but for now, we'll run with it. also, he is joyfully helmina's slave and apparently used to be a vampire. yeah...

as for the story, i'm still fairly confused about what's going on. amityville is the land of the undead and jack likes cutting people is what i'm mostly getting so far. seems everyone there has died in the real world but can't make it to the world of the dead. i'm guessing the mirror image is the key to changing all of that but even then i'm not sure what she'd be changing it to or why they care. also there seems to be some sort of war going on between the districts. jack seems to be the reigning king psychopomp and every other psychopomp (because there's others for some reason) wants a piece of the north district and by extension, some of the mirror image as well. i've heard people say it's a lot like hellsing and while i do agree in some cases, (helmina really does look like integra if she discovered fetishwear) i beg to differ mostly because hellsing made a point after 7 chapters. i'm starting to think the author created this mostly to please himself rather than the rest of us.

something i do like about "jack frost" is the art. the art is amazing. while i was complaining that only noh-ah seems to be making any sense in context to the story (and even that melted away for a chapter or two), i was continually thinking "my god, that is so very, very pretty." the fight scenes where the author makes very liberal use of black markers and photoshop splatter are especially fun to look at. the author also gets points for making jack on one page look more disturbing doing nothing than when he's ripping someone apart. [link] he's really fun to watch even if i really wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley. noh-ah is also very funny and it helps that she's as confused as the rest of us are, makes me hope that that's not supposed to be an accident. there's ecchi in this comic for some reason. it's funny in the first chapter mostly because it came right out of left field but the other times i can't help but wonder if it's just the author's love of hips and butts shining through. and even then, was it really necessary?

where am i going with this? right, jack frost is an ok manwha. fun to look and when the author shows us where he's going with this, probably fun to read. if you'd rather read hellsing though, i wouldn't stop you.