AltWeeklies Wire » Books » Fiction

Chinese Take-Out and Take-Downs

By J. Caleb Mozzocco
Columbus Alive | April 28, 2005
Meet Ceasar Halleluja, a busboy at a five-story Chinese restaurant whose walls are full of monsters, each with a taste for a specific Chinese food. When the monsters mature, they break out and wreak havoc, but not to worry—when that happens, Ceasar eats a magic fortune cookie and is transformed into Sharknife, a giant, bad-ass, monster-smashing hero with a really cool scarf. The secret of the restaurant’s success? Most of the diners show up just to watch Sharknife put the smack-down on all the crazy monsters.

This mad-cool madness comes from the fertile mind and pencil of Corey S. Lewis, also known as The Rey, which is the last three letters of his first name, but, typical of the multi-culti pop allusions and homages that fill up Sharknife Volume 1 (Oni Press), it’s also Spanish for “king.”

As influenced by videogames as it is by manga, the chapters read like levels of a game, Lewis offers instructions for Sharknife’s special combo moves and characters’ power ratings appear next to them.

With such specific source material informing the visual lexicon, Sharknife may not be for everyone, but for those who can dig it, it’s great, hyperbolic stuff—non-stop, over-the-top, hip-hop chop-socky action with, like, 15 exclamation points. It’s the comic all the cool kids will be raving about for years.
Tags: Corey S. Lewis, Oni, Sharknife, The Rey

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Founded in 1983, Alive is the Capital City's oldest and only independent alternative and is known for providing a forum for the area's free thinkers. The paper's spirited and original perspective on music, arts and culture distinguish it from the...
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