FIST OF THE NORTH STAR Volume 2 (2021)

                                         Shin of the Nanto Seiken style: a tragic prick of a villain.

NOTE: The text that follows was originally written nine years ago, though I have updated and expanded some of it to reflect the current edition. Also, the interior art seen here is from earlier editions — basically what I could cull from online — so the dialogue is not that of the current translation.

 Picking up from where the previous book left off, Kenshiro's journey continues, as our hero battles the highly skilled soldiers of GOLAN (short for "God's Land"), a group of intense and murderous military elite who seek to establish themselves as the salvation of post-nuke humanity and come to Ken's attention when they kidnap random females from a village for use as unwilling breeding stock.

A GOLAN soldier murders a little girl's father right in front of her. That kind of shit basically ensures a visit from Kenshiro...

Among the hapless females is Rn, a girl of perhaps ten or eleven years old, who has been one of Ken's annoying juvenile sidekicks since the series' first installment (along with young teen thief Bat, both of whom are the only constant fixtures in the series other than the hero), so Kenshiro goes to the GOLAN stronghold to retrieve Rin and kick the motherfucking shit out of the fascist survivalists, but not before rendering scores GOLAN members bereft of life on the wasteland floor.

One of the rare instances of Ken utilizing weapons. This was early in his career so he had not yet attained the "god of combat" level of badassery that would come after a couple more story arcs, so I'll let it slide.

But while Ken is ready to single-handedly take on the hordes of skilled and vicious commandos, what Ken doesn't expect is their sadistic one-eyed leader, the Colonel, whose finely-honed martial prowess is paired with impressive psychic abilities.

Kenshiro meets the Colonel, an early foe worthy of his martial talents.

And up to this point we knew nothing of exactly how the world met its nuclear-assaulted fate, but that piece of info is kindly provided to Kenshiro (and us) when the Colonel relates how the drunken tycoons, military officials and heads of state set off WWIII as what amounts to a display of macho dick-waving.

The Colonel schools Ken (and us) on some history.

When he and his elite Red Beret soldiers survived the holocaust thanks to their training, the Colonel is convinced their survival was ordained by God, and so GOLAN was born. When the bombs fell, mankind was so fucked-up that even accurate accountings of the date were lost, so all that's known is that the earth was devastated in the year "199X" (the series started in 1983, so the '90's were still a ways off) and it was up to GOLAN to take the reins of humanity (at least in the Colonel's opinion). That's all well and good but the concrete reasons for the pushing of "The Button" are afforded surprisingly short shrift, giving us the Colonel's possibly warped point of view on the events leading up to the rain of warheads. Whatever the case, if memory of the entire series, even the untranslated parts, serves me, I don't think the subject is ever broached again. Oh, well. Explaining WWIII's merely a minor plot detail that would only get in the way of the opera of manly histrionics and kung fu action, so why bother with it?

The GOLAN arc is easily my favorite of the early period FIST OF THE NORTH STAR — meaning the stuff before the introduction of Nanto Seiken anti-hero Rei and Ken's older brothers — and is in every way a perfect and exciting "lad's" comic. Filled with fast-paced, ultra-violent martial arts action from start to finish, the gauntlet of badasses Kenshiro has to face is in my opinion far more frightening than the over-the-top and ludicrous forces in Shin's army. GOLAN's military angle roots them more firmly in reality than just about any other villains in the entire series, even with the Colonel's genuine superpowers taken into account, and Ken's battles with the GOLAN forces are truly spectacular. Besides, who wouldn't want to kick the living shit out of a pack of fascistic rapists who are even okay with violating children?

                                                      Ken trash-talks the legion of GOLAN...

...assumes the position...

...and brings the muthafuckin' pain!!!

Remember the sequence in ENTER THE DRAGON where Bruce Lee battles his way through Han's underground catacombs, taking on a legion of opponents with his limbs and assorted weapons that happened to be lying around? The GOLAN arc is FIST OF THE NORTH STAR's nod to that sequence and it impresses thanks to Ken really getting to flex his early-era skills in a torrent of blistering melee combat against seasoned professionals, rather than a pack of what appear to be feather boa-wearing Christopher Street drag queens on steroids. Plus, this sequence shows artist Tetsuo Hara beginning to hit his stride as an illustrator of creative mayhem, a talent that would grow exponentially with each arc. His work even impresses when there's no fighting going on, allowing each of the story's locations to fairly drip with atmosphere that places the reader firmly within Kenshiro's violent world.

Kenshiro stalks the Colonel through the halls of the GOLAN citadel: an early and impressive example of artist Tetsuo Hara's flowering cartooning skills. I would love to own the original artwork for this...

Following the total destruction of GOLAN, the next arc kicks off with the obnoxious villain Jackal, an uninspired baddie who quickly wears out his welcome and wastes narrative time, as his is nothing more than a rote wasteland scoundrel. 

                                                           The low-grade villainy of Jackal.

Basically, after pissing off Ken one time too many, Jackal pulls out his last resort: the long-imprisoned "Devil Reborn," a psychotic literal giant who is the last master of Rakan Nioken, the fist of the Arhat Deva kings, a 5,000-year-old Indian assassination art banned by the emperor for its vicious savagery.

The Devil Reborn (as seen in the colorized Gutsoon edition).

Devil Reborn is a straight-up giant monster and an undeniably impressive adversary, but he's too extreme for Kenshiro to be facing this early on in the proceedings. After this fight (and victory), the major opponents that Ken faces can at first come off as punt by way of comparison. That said, it's a mercifully short arc.

But this volume close with the start of the arc that cements the group of core protagonists by introducing two major plarers: Mamiya, the series' sole female warrior who fights alongside Kenshiro, and who bears a startling resemblance to Ken's lost love, Yuria...

And Rei, a bishonen ("beautiful male") master of Nanto Suichoken, the elegant "swan style" of Nanto Seiken, the yang to Hokuto Shinken's yin.

Rei: a drifter of unforeseen significance.

Mamiya is the protector of a small village (apparently the one that Ken wandered into in the first chapter, as the local holy man appears to be the same guy), and she enlists Ken as more muscle, not knowing that he's pretty much a demi-god of martial arts. When Rei arrives out of the wastes, he too is conscripted as protection against the roving gangs of marauders who would prey upon the weak. However, Lin and Bat instantly distrust the stranger, because his "are not the eyes of one who would help others." She is not wrong, as Rei has been single-mindedly killing his way across the barren landscape while searching for "the man with seven scars" with murder on his mind. When he and Ken meet, Ken's scars are covered by his sirt and leathers, and once Rei's obsession with finding his scarred target is made known, Ken, Lin, and Bat keep quiet on the subject. By why is Rei hunting the man with seven scars? That is a question that must remain unanswered until the next volume...

Had the conclusion of the Shin storyline and the beginning of the Jackal arc been excised, the GOLAN arc would have made for a great stand alone adventure, and if it would work great if packaged as a stand-alone volume. As previously noted, the introduction of Rei signals the beginning of the series' classic era, but even so, it still takes a little longer for the fuse to truly ignite. At this point the creative team was still hashing out the elements, and they are only now beginning to coalesce. Rei's introductory story serves to demonstrate the differences between the Hokuto and Nanto styles, which we begin to see in the next book.

STAY TUNED...

FIST OF THE NORTH STAR Volume 1 (2021)

 

Eleven years back, I wrote several blog entries on Gutsoon Entertainment's large, color Master Editions of FIST OF THE NORTH STAR, the ultra-violent martial arts/superhero manga classic, objectively critiquing both the manga itself and the then-current English translation and its presentation. Gutsoon managed to publish nine volumes of the series before the company went out of business, which was frustrating to FOTNS fans because Gutsoon's attempt was the second time an English translation failed to go the manga's full distance, though I have to note that Gutsoon's editions at least made it further along that the previous rights-holders did during the late 1980's.

But that was then and this is now, and the original English language rights-holders, Viz Media, have reclaimed the rights and are issuing beautiful hardcover editions that maintain the manga's black and white art (with occasional color effects that first appeared in the weekly Shonen Jump chapters). I'm hoping that this time the reprinting of this epic series makes it all the way to the end, and won't crap out a third of the way through, just as things kick into high gear...

Anyway, on to an introduction to the series for newcomers, and a look at what you get in Volume 1. NOTE: The text that follows was originally written nine years ago, though I have updated some of it to reflect the current edition. Also, the art seen here is from earlier editions — basically what I could cull from online — so the dialogue is not that of the current translation.

In the year 199X, World War III breaks out and after the nuclear holocaust's smoke and fire clears (to say nothing of the attendant fallout), the earth has been rendered a scorched and barren wasteland where lawlessness and savagery rule and the weak are the pathetic prey of the strong and cartoonishly sadistic. Out of the blistering, Sergio Leone-esque wastes strides Kenshiro, a tall, stoic and impossibly-muscled warrior who is a completely flagrant fusion of the ENTER THE DRAGON-era Bruce Lee's martial prowess (taken of course to an insane next level) and Mel Gibson as Mad Max, for both the Aussie hero's post-apocalyptic setting and basic visual.
Kenshiro: a shameless gene-splicing (read "ripoff/mashup") of Mad Max and Bruce Lee. (cover art from the original Japanese tankoban edition of the first volume) 

NOTE: Kenshiro can't be considered a total visual ripoff of Mad Max because Ken's leather jacket does not have any trace of sleeves! So, there!

Mel "Sugartits" Gibson: the sartorial template for Kenshiro.

This initial collection of what was originally a twenty-seven volume Japanese series introduces readers to Kenshiro, the 64th successor to the super-human martial art of Hokuto Shinken, and the savage post-apocalyptic dystopia in which he exists. The narrative kicks off with Ken's emergence from the barren wasteland after being on the receiving end of one of the most personally humiliating ass-kickings in recorded history — a beatdown made all the worse by it having been handed out by a guy who looks not unlike one of the Nelson brothers in a Sgt. Pepper's outfit —

Kenshiro receives the beatdown of twelve lifetimes...

...and is given the chest scars that will serve as his equivalent to Superman's "S."

— and his quest to rescue his fiancee, Yuria.

Yuria: unwitting catalyst for an odyssey of violence.

who has been kidnapped by his former friend, Shin — the aforementioned Nelson lookalike — aka "King" (like in a deck of cards).
It's good to be the King: Shin enjoys the spoils of conquest. (Note: he has a Johnson, but you couldn't flat-out depict one in the Japanese comics of the time, not even in the ones that were straight-up porn. No Willies, but endless amounts of graphic violence? That's okay. Go figure...)

Shin is one of the top students of the Nanto Seiken style of martial arts, a form that grants the practitioner the ability to slice through virtually anything with their bare hands (stone included), and that discipline is the polar opposite of Hokuto Shinken's internally-based assassination techniques that cause an opponents body to literally explode.

Shin breaks it down for the readers.

Due to some obscure bit of reasoning, it has been decreed by the elders of both styles that Hokuto Shinken and Nanto Seiken must never fight due to the nature of their interdependent duality, and that if they do fight it would cause a cosmic imbalance of devastating magnitude (or some such quasi-mystical shit). So, needless to say, once the nuclear holocaust effectively re-wrote the rules of basic human existence, so too were the two-thousand year old laws governing the secret martial world cast aside, thus setting Kenshiro in motion as both a rescuer and an engine of righteous vengeance on the side of good, while Shin proves to be a vicious and power-hungry asshole of a conqueror. In the end only one man can be left standing, but what shall be the ultimate fate of Yuria?

Kenshiro versus Shin: only one can survive. And since this series went on for twenty-six volumes past this one in Japan, guess who eventually wins?   

The first arc concludes here, and immediately swings into the first three chapters of Ken's adventures, this time pitting him against an army of highly-skilled para-military bastards who savagely abuse the general public and kidnap all available females for unwilling breeding stock. Even little girls, one of whom happens be a child who befriended Ken...

 FIST OF THE NORTH STAR is in no way a work of "deep" meaning or even of great intelligence, but it is a warrior's saga that's technically science-fiction thanks to its post-apocalyptic future setting, but the virtually medieval level of society and technology, along with frequent forays into Asian concepts of mythology and the like, keep the tale firmly within the bounds of a Conan-style story in which the barbarian hero also happened to be a martial artist with superhuman skills and powers.
Why it sucks to be one of the downtrodden in the post-apocalyptic landscape of FIST OF THE NORTH STAR.

It's a crazy mashup of genres and is fun for its once-shocking amounts of over-the-top gore and violence, but once you get past that element, what remains is a "manly" soap opera of nearly non-stop kung fu. The manga recently celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary and though now considered a classic, the tropes that it invented have been eclipsed many times over since its debut. For those of us who were there for this (and its TV adaptation) when it happened, FIST OF THE NORTH STAR was exhilarating stuff, but even then it was plain to see that the protagonist was a pretty much one note superhero whose chief fascinating aspect was his sheer badassery and the fact that his martial art allowed him to pick up the skills and techniques of even his most super-powered opponents, provided he survived that initial encounter. The emotional histrionics are geared to an audience that is on the verge of discovering girls, and once Yuria is out of the picture (believe me, that isn't a spoiler) its very few remaining female characters offer little or nothing to the overall narrative. (Though there is Rin, a little girl orphan who follows Ken on his journeys, initially for protection, but eventually out a what becomes a case of chosen family, along with Bat, another orphan who previously survived by scrounging and thievery.)

Unfortunately, one of the series' biggest flaws is that it just isn't all that compelling until the introduction of Rei, a noble though conflicted Nanto Seiken master who becomes Kenshiro's closest and most respected friend, and the moment when Ken's presumed-dead brothers take center stage and launch the intra-familial power struggle that provides the series with its true core and point (a point that is eventually resolved, yet the series continued aimlessly for another twelve collected volumes after that decisive conclusion in Japan, due to the series still being wildly popular and incredibly lucrative). When Rei and Ken's brothers show up, FIST OF THE NORTH STAR comes to spectacular and memorable life and it is for that period that the series is justly remembered and revered. That said, it's a bit of a wait until it all comes together, with everything preceding the good stuff serving only to reiterate Ken's badassery and keep readers hooked solely by the Neal Adams-influenced artwork and the curiosity to find out in which outrageous way Ken will defeat his many, many adversaries.

Kenshiro makes with the Bruce Lee thing.

FIST OF THE NORTH STAR is definitely worth a look for those interested in seeing another culture's take on the superhero, but don't expect real greatness from it until a couple of volumes down the line.
Stay tuned for Volume Two and our hero testing his considerable skills the paramilitary forces of "GOLAN."

FIST OF THE NORTH STAR: MASTER EDITION VOL. 4 (2004)

YOU WA SHOCK!!! It's another FIST OF THE NORTH STAR Friday, so break out yer leather biker vest and shoulder-guards and let's rock!

Kenshiro's literally bone-shattering and explosive adventures get a much needed shot in the arm starting here, thanks to the introduction or wandering wildman Rei, and Mamiya, the series' token and rather ineffectual tough-girl/potential love interest who's a dead ringer for hero Kenshiro's deceased fiancee.

Rei is one of the foremost fighters of the Nanto Seiken style, and while many of the Nanto men base their moves on birds, Rei is the master of Nanto Suichoken, which gives him the...more Kenshiro's literally bone-shattering and explosive adventures get a much needed shot in the arm starting here, thanks to the introduction or wandering wildman Rei, and Mamiya, the series' token and rather ineffectual tough-girl/potential love interest who's a dead ringer for hero Kenshiro's deceased fiancee.
Rei, master of the Nanto Suichoken ("Southern Cross Water Bird") style: the most badassed metrosexual in comics history.

Rei is one of the foremost fighters of the Nanto Seiken style and while many of the Nanto men base their moves on birds, Rei is the master of Nanto Suichoken, which gives him the graceful and beautiful aspect of a swan. But Rei's status as one of manga and anime's many "bishonen" ("beautiful youth") characters turns that trope into something rather subversive by making Rei pretty much the post-nuke world's most badassed metrosexual, handing out gracefully-administered and gory ass-kickings that literally slice his foes like so much deli meat. He's the perfect compliment to Kenshiro's stoic, butch and biker gear-clad hyper-masculine hero, and in many ways makes a better girlfriend than Yuria or Mamiya ever could.
Say hello to warrior woman/potential love interest Mamiya. In the world of FIST OF THE NORTH STAR, a razor-edged yo-yo to the head constitutes a "meet cute."

As the story progresses, Rei acts as Ken's snarky/kinda queer, pretty-boy buddy who shares a common understanding of the superheroic martial way, and the understanding between him and Ken becomes something deep and heartfelt, kind of post-nuke Gilgamesh and Enkidu thing.

Rei and Kenshiro: back-to-back badasses.

Rei enters the story while on a quest to find his sister, Airi, who was abducted on her wedding day and sold into slavery by a helmeted man whose chest bears seven scars in the shape of Hokuto, the Japanese name for the Big Dipper constellation which translates as "the North Star." Ken famously has such a scar configuration (gained when Shin handed him a severely motivational beatdown back in book one) but keeps them hidden while waiting to see what Rei's deal is. Meanwhile, Ken and his sidekicks have come to the village where Mamiya is the de facto leader and discover the place faces the threat of the bizarre and murderous Fang clan, a small army of diminutive feral types led by their massive father.

The patriarch of the Fang clan.

NOTE: I have no idea how much time has passed between WWIII and the start of this whole story, but it's must have been at least a few years in which humanity reverts to barbarism. Nonetheless, unless the Fang clan's dad had been breeding his sons for a minimum of about two decades with about a score of different women, he could never have sired as many adult offspring as he is depicted commanding. And while I know superhero comics in general take a certain amount of willing suspension of disbelief, FIST OF THE NORTH STAR requires a greater amount of this than usual for obvious reasons, but when you get down to trying to work out such logistical details as how the Fang clan's considerable numbers could have just come from nowhere, the house of cards simply crumbles. And yet I can buy a guy whose merest touch causes people's heads to explode. Go figure...

Anyway, the Fangs will stop at nothing to conquer the village and don't give a fuck about wanton slaughter, so Kenshiro steps in to assist Mamiya and her people. Rei also gets involved and at first comes off as an angry, embittered asshole who has given up his humanity until he finds his sister (whose status as a commodity who is frequently traded for owner to owner alludes to her having been raped innumerable times, one of the more adult elements of what is intended as a kids' adventure comic), but the influence of the good guy Kenshiro soon rubs off on him and he begins to care about Mamiya and the villagers.

The tormented and self-blinded Airi.

Realizing that they have no chance against two masters of the deadliest martial arts on the planet (or what remains of it, anyway), the Fangs escalate matters by finding Airi and holding her hostage (compounding her sorry state, poor Airi has poured poison into her eyes and blinded herself since she can no longer bear to witness a world that can allow her and others to suffer so). From there on it's a question of how our heroes can eliminate the Fangs while also saving Airi and an equally captive Mamiya...

Ken meets the Fang clan and the trash-talking commences.

This arc is memorable for it being a virtually non-stop orgy of carnage, what with Ken's skills causing people to explode all over the place in spewing chunks and Rei carving up bad guys like so many Thanksgiving turkeys, and it's fun to see the two badasses impressing each other with and bonding over one another's lethal talents. My only complaints here are that it goes on a little long and features a wholly unnecessary bit of censoring of the original art; there's a bit where Rei, in full-on asshole mode, chastises Mamiya regarding how a woman's place is outside of combat, illustrating his point by using his lightning-fast and razor-sharp hand skills to reduce her warrior's garb to ribbons, leaving her surprised and exposed, wearing nothing but an incongrously demure pair of panties.

The titties deemed to dangerous for you to see. Don't look! Oops, too late...

In the original Japanese version (seen above) readers were treated to a full-page drawing of a beautifully rendered Mamiya standing there topless as her clothing delicately flutters around her, and it is without question the best illustration that Tetsuo Hara had done of a woman up to that point in his career, and over twenty years later I still say it's his best. Not meaning to sound like a perv, but the way he depicted Mamiya's breasts was quite innocent while still providing a much-needed reminder of femininity amidst all the series' deluge of unbridled manliness, but in this American printing bits of tattered cloth are tastefully added to obscure the mammalian delights, something that confuses the hell out of me since every possible bit of carnage and sadism imaginable is portrayed in nearly pornographic detail. So beautiful breasts are a bad thing that I need to be protected from? Good to know.

Oh, and how's this for a demonstration of Ken's acute senses and hyper-human speed? (Remember to read it right-to-left.)

Now that's badassed!

In two weeks: Volume 5, in which Ken re-discovers the joys of family dysfunction and sibling jealousy.

FIST OF THE NORTH STAR: MASTER EDITION VOL. 3 (2004)

FIST OF THE NORTH STAR Friday is once more upon us, and this entry is likely to be the shortest of the series for reasons about to become fully apparent.
The third Master Edition volume features the meat of the overlong Jackal arc and is notable only for some memorable bits of villainous cruelty and the sole genuine giant monster faced by Kenshiro.

Our hero, Kenshiro: no Bruce Lee influence here. Nosiree...

This arc's "big bad," Jackal, is one of those post-nuke gang leaders who pretty much infest this series and he's one of the least interesting, basically spending his time bullying his men (who would work for this asshole?), preying upon helpless villages for their food and water, and taking great glee in the torture and murder of children. In other words, he's cowardly, low-rent trash and certainly not a worthy opponent for a master of superhuman kung fu like Kenshiro.
Jackal: a thoroughly run-of-the-mill villain who wasn't interesting even when first seen nearly twenty-five years ago.
The Jackal arc gives us a look into the roots of Ken's annoying sidekick, Bat, when we are introduced to the residents of the isolated village where he and a gaggle of children were cared for by an aged adoptive mother figure, and it's through them that we see past Bat's seemingly self-serving attitude and bravado and discover that he left the village so his adopted brothers and sisters would have more food and water. And speaking of water, Jackal gets wind of the village having a well and immediately decides to take it for himself, and fuck what happens to the old lady and the kids. The situation builds as Ken uses his powers to give new life to the dried-up well and Jackal causes the deaths of some of the kids and the old lady. Thus motivated, Ken gives chase to an understandably scared-shitless Jackal, but Jackal's trail leads to a staggeringly secure prison designed to hold "Devil Rebirth," a King Kong-sized ultra-deadly martial artist who once killed 700 men with his bare hands in one fell swoop, so guess who has to fight him?

The bizarre and humongous horror of "Devil Rebirth."

It's all pretty silly stuff, even by the loony standards of FIST OF THE NORTH STAR, and if not for the few pages near the end of the volume that kick off the next arc, this volume could be completely skipped over without in any way impairing the flow of the overall narrative (episodic though it may be, it's really all one very long "warrior's journey" epic, so missing this volume is like missing two minutes of incidental dialogue in a LORD OF THE RINGS movie). But be that as it may, this arc is where we really start to see the proliferation of truly superpowered feats on the part of Kenshiro, including displays of super-strength and the first mention of the Hokuto Shinken-user's 100% mastery of the human body and mind (as opposed to Joe Sixpacks like you and I who purportedly use a mere 30%).
Let the outright superheroics begin: Kenshiro hefts a big fuckin' boulder like it was a sack of potatoes.

The last few pages introduce readers to the wandering wildman Rei, a massively popular character who proved vital to the series and became one of the classic tragic figures in '80's manga and anime, but more on him in the review of the next volume...
Next week: Volume 4, featuring the evil of the Fang Clan, the introduction of the warrior woman Mamiya, and the coming of Rei.

FIST OF THE NORTH STAR: MASTER EDITION VOL. 2 (2003)

How not to do a cover illustration: depict the dying villain committing suicide on the fucking cover, thereby totally blowing the "twist" ending of the story arc.

It's FIST OF THE NORTH STAR Friday and here we go with a review of MASTER EDITION VOL. 2!

Picking up from where the previous book left off, Kenshiro's quest to rescue his kidnapped fiancee, Yuria, and attain vengeance against his former friend, Shin, ends with Shin's complete and utter defeat and Ken's hope of a reunion with his bride-to-be shattered in an unexpected manner. Shin's fate makes him the first of several Nanto Seiken warriors whose paths cross with Kenshiro's, always with tragic and bloody results, and Shin is by far the least interesting of the lot, so his passing from the narrative is no big loss.

When the next arc begins, Kenshiro is given a far more entertaining challenge in the form of the highly skilled soldiers of GOLAN (short for "God's Land"), a group of intense and murderous military elite who seek to establish themselves as the salvation of post-nuke humanity and come to Ken's attention when they kidnap random females from a village for use as unwilling breeding stock.A GOLAN soldier murders a little girl's father right in front of her. That kind of shit basically ensures a visit from Kenshiro...

Among the hapless females is Lynn, a girl of perhaps ten or eleven years old, who has been one of Ken's annoying juvenile sidekicks since the series' first installment (along with young teen thief Bat, both of whom are the only constant fixtures in the series other than the hero), so Kenshiro goes to the GOLAN stronghold to retrieve Lynn and kick the motherfucking shit out of the fascist survivalists, but not before rendering several GOLAN members bereft of life on the wasteland floor.One of the rare instances of Ken utilizing weapons. This was early in his career so he had not yet attained the "god of combat" level of badassery that would come after a couple more story arcs, so I'll let it slide.

But while Ken is ready to single-handedly take on the hordes of skilled and vicious commandos, what Ken doesn't expect is their sadistic one-eyed leader, the Colonel, whose martial prowess is paired with impressive psychic abilities.

Kenshiro meets the Colonel, an early foe worthy of his martial talents.

And up to this point we knew nothing of exactly how the world met its nuclear-assaulted fate, but that piece of info is kindly provided to Kenshiro (and us) when the Colonel relates how the drunken tycoons, military officials and heads of state set off WWIII as what amounts to a display of macho dick-waving.

The Colonel schools Ken (and us) on some history.

When he and his elite Red Beret soldiers survived the holocaust thanks to their training, the Colonel is convinced their survival was ordained by God, and so GOLAN was born. When the bombs fell, mankind was so fucked-up that even accurate accountings of the date were lost, so all that's known is that the earth was devastated in the year "199X" (the series started in 1983, so the '90's were still a ways off) and it was up to GOLAN to take the reins of humanity (at least in the Colonel's opinion). That's all well and good but the concrete reasons for the pushing of "The Button" are afforded surprisingly short shrift, giving us the Colonel's possibly warped point of view on the events leading up to the rain of warheads. Whatever the case, if memory of the entire series, even the untranslated parts, serves me, I don't think the subject is ever broached again. Oh, well. Explaining WWIII's only a minor plot detail that would only get in the way of the opera of manly histrionics and kung fu action, so why bother with it?

The GOLAN arc is easily my favorite of the early period FIST OF THE NORTH STAR — meaning the stuff before the introduction of Nanto Seiken anti-hero Rei and Ken's older brothers — and is in every way a perfect and exciting "lad's" comic. Filled with fast-paced, ultra-violent martial arts action from start to finish, the gauntlet of badasses Kenshiro has to face is in my opinion far more frightening than the over-the-top and ludicrous forces in Shin's army. GOLAN's military angle roots them more firmly in reality than just about any other villains in the entire series, even with the Colonel's genuine superpowers taken into account, and Ken's battles with the GOLAN forces are truly spectacular.

Ken trash-talks the legion of GOLAN...

...assumes the position...

...and brings the muthafuckin' pain!!!

Remember the sequence in ENTER THE DRAGON where Bruce Lee battles his way through Han's underground catacombs, taking on a legion of opponents with his limbs and assorted weapons that happened to be lying around? The GOLAN arc is FIST OF THE NORTH STAR's nod to that sequence and it impresses thanks to Ken really getting to flex his skills in a torrent of blistering melee combat against seasoned professionals, rather than a pack of what appear to be feather boa-wearing Christopher Street drag queens on steroids. Plus, this sequence shows artist Tetsuo Hara beginning to hit his stride as an illustrator of creative mayhem, a talent that would grow exponentially with each arc. His work even impresses when there's no fighting going on, allowing each of the story's locations to fairly drip with atmosphere that places the reader firmly within Kenshiro's violent world.

Kenshiro stalks the Colonel through the halls of the GOLAN citadel: an early and impressive example of artist Tetsuo Hara's flowering cartooning skills.

Following the total destruction of GOLAN the next arc kicks off with the obnoxious villain Jackal, an uninspired baddie who quickly wears out his welcome and wastes narrative time, but more on that in the review of the next volume. Had the conclusion of the Shin storyline and the beginning of the Jackal arc been excised, the GOLAN arc would have made for a great stand alone adventure, and if it ever gets reprinted in English I suggest that the publishers give it its own volume.Next week: Volume Three, in which Kenshiro takes on boring biker asshole Jackal and we meet soon-to-be-classic supporting character Rei, master of Nanto Suichoken.