Storytellers: Story and art by Kimjin
Publisher:  Netcomics
Year of Publication: First published 1992
Page count:  210 pages

What I learned about writing/storytelling:
1.  The main character’s older brother, the former crown prince, was forced to commit suicide by his father, the king. The story doesn’t don’t directly state the reason why at first, but it references the death of the older brother a few times before finally the king explains that he felt the son would revolt against him.  This is sort of a “peeling an onion” approach to storytelling. It’s similar to a subplot in Big Numbers, with the foreign shopkeepers who speak untranslated foreign dialogue in issues 1 and 2.  In issue 3, Moore translates the dialogue and we understand the husband and wife in a way we didn’t before.

2.  There are some interesting tropes. The protagonists are the royal family of a kingdom formed by a prince who left the neighboring land.  A demon from a neighboring kingdom wishes to wipe out the new land for the benefit of the neighboring family, so the plot involves a sort of a distant family squabble.   This gave the book a Beowulf feel to me (or maybe the Gaiman version of Beowulf, which increased the family aspect of the story) with a demon hunting down a family due to the actions of their ancestor.

Another trope I found interesting: the main character are the crown prince and his sister. The crown prince is married, and the book also features the wife and a newly born child.  The sister is single and has more leeway to move about, so tries to hunt down the monster and do other things to help the brother while he’s tied to his responsibilities towards his nation and family family. The monster either has a “male and female” aspect or is a husband and wife monster pair, the translation is ambiguous: (this is Korean so reads left to right).

(the translation says Mupa refers to female half.)  This perhaps if intended to mirror the brother and sister’s alliance with a male and female shadow enemy. 

3.  There’s a decent use of flashbacks, like this bit showing how the crown prince and his wife were arranged to be married when they were both very young:

This would seem to be a device to make you care about the characters more than you would otherwise, since the author has fleshed out their past. Plus it’s just plain interesting to see the kids reacting to the arranged marriage.

What I learned about art/storytelling:
Nothing here.  Didn’t really care for the art.

Recommendation:  C-

Notes/Review/Synopsis:
This was a completely random book I grabbed from the library, I came in with no expectations.  (Indeed I have no idea whether Kimjin is a male or female name or neutral pen name, or whether the demographic this is aimed at is boys or girls or both, the style seems a bit shoujo but who knows…)

Some of the tropes were interesting, but this story did not come together for me. The art was not always clear, especially in the fight scenes, and the foreign names and references were a little hard to keep track of, which may be nobody’s fault but my own..  Overall, the story didn’t grab my attention and flow for me, which may be a pacing issue.