Comic Review: The Collector: Unit 731 #1 (Dark Horse Comics)

Allied prisoners of war in Japan are the centre of attention in the first issue of The Collector: Unit 731, from Dark Horse.

It’s the first glimpse we have, apparently, of a character called Michael Smith, a Collector, who has travelled the earth for centuries, witnessing really fun and really terrible events. But Michael used to go by the name James. Okay.

But first, writers Will Conrad and Rod Monteiro bring us to Tokyo in December 1941, a couple of days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in Hawaii. Well, the Japanese soldiers nab a bunch of Allied soldiers at the train station, and march them off to prison, in the Manchurian experimental facility named Unit 731. There, things get nasty, obviously, when the Allied soldiers are treated as lab rats for virus tests by a scheming scientist.

In my own online research into the story behind the comic, I’ve discovered that there are ‘real’ events here, and Conrad and Monteiro have overlayed a narrative onto those real events. Who knew??

Unfortunately, any suspense hits a lot of stalls; firstly, the casual reader is not aware of the actual origin and significance of Unit 731, and the story framework, that of a Collector of Experiences, is underplayed to such an extent that the first issue reads like a rather dull ‘slice-of-life’ of the process of genocide or (at least) devious evil. The banality of evil, as it were. It’s an A-to-B narrative flow.

Conrad’s artwork is sober and solid, his figures and environments rendered with great detail and a real eye for proportion, lighting, and drama. Wonderful earth colours are applied by Marco Lesko. Lettering is by Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt.

With luck, future issues of Unit 731 will spark up, become more kinetic and lively. We as readers need to be invited, cajoled, and pulled into the story, to care for the characters. We want accelerated drama, conjured and edited tight for maximum comic value and infinite Collector thrills.

Dark Horse, The Collector: Unit 731 #1, $3.99 for 22 pages of content