Writer & Artist: Chang Sheng
Translator: Vanessa Liu
Letterer: Tom Williams
Editor: Louis Yamani
Designer: David Colderley
Publisher: Titan Manga
Price: $24.99
Release Date: June 24, 2025
What's happening now always grabs our attention, especially
if it's new and different. As people go through their days in modern Taipei, a
live broadcast gets people talking. They share it with their friends,
coworkers, and fellow commuters. While they watch their phones, a woman dressed
in traditional Peking Opera attire sings before a man strapped to a chair. Her
beautiful voice and the poetic lyrics draw them in.
Then the woman pulls out a gun, shoots her captive, and
introduces herself as Yan Tieh Hua. What prompted this trained opera performer
to make a snuff film? And why is Yan Tieh Hua threatening to kill a Taiwanese
Councillor? Let's leap into Yan Vol 1 and see!
Story
Chang Sheng’s story begins thirty years ago, as the Yan
Opera Troupe performs for an outdoor audience. Despite the picturesque setting
and the intricate artistry of their stage, only three men sit in the rows of
chairs. Yet even this trio of aficionados sleeps as the two sisters discuss having
reached their beautiful destination. Then Qingmei's sister asks where she was
the previous evening. Breaking their well-rehearsed routine, the mother demands
to know why her daughter stayed out so late. The men wake up as Tieh Hua combats
her enraged mother in Yan Vol 1.
After this disastrous performance, Chang Sheng checks in on
the sixteen-year-old after school. Her friends want her to join them, but Tieh
Hua cannot. Her mother has put her foot down and grounded her indefinitely. But
as the girls walk away, the teenager senses that something is wrong. Tieh Hua
races through town toward home.
Thirty years have passed by the time the opera performer
commits her livestream murder. As Chang Sheng interweaves past with present, he
introduces a woman with impressive fighting skills in Yan Vol 1. She is the
opera performer who introduced herself to Taiwan as Yan Tieh Hua. The surging popularity
of her performance and her threat to kill a leading member of the government
prompt the police to recall Lei Ming Zhi to active duty. The Senior Detective
has not fared well since he retired a year ago. And the way that the government
whisked Yan Tieh Hua away, before he could investigate her parents’ death,
still haunts him.
Art
As the young teen in her school uniform speaks with her
friends, she remembers her mother clad in her ornate headdress and decorated
costume. Her mother's threat, accompanied by her maniacal laughter, haunts Yan
Tieh Hua. When the schoolgirl begins to sweat, she races through town, bounding
over obstacles and bridging chasms with impressive leaps.
Thirty years later, the young woman bent on revenge wears a
cap, a leather jacket, a short skirt, and fishnet stockings. When the time
comes to make good on her threat, she dons a leather fighting suit, adorned
with a swath of ornamental fabric, and her ornate headdress. As she ventures
out to storm the heavily protected tower office of the councillor, the young
woman demonstrates a fluid combination of Parkour and martial arts vastly
beyond Tieh Hua’s freerunning and onstage fighting.
Chang Sheng’s settings evoke an architect’s realism as
Senior Detective Lei Ming Zhi sits in a restaurant studying Yan Tieh Hua's
file, or investigating the secret government research center that mysteriously
collapsed years ago. The exacting penciling reveals an incredible level of
destruction. As the retired detective stands amid the broken concrete and bent
steel in his old suit, straggly hair frames his bearded face. When Lei Ming Zhi
receives a phone call, he idly picks up a small piece of rubble. As the retired
Senior Detective tosses it away, a strange thing occurs in Yan Vol 1.
Physical Copy and Lettering
The glossy cover's French flap (or gatefold cover) evokes
the dust jacket of a hardcover. The 7" x 10" size of the prestige
edition enlarges the art and letters to a generous size. Direction lines never obscure the
high-speed action and fraught battles. Characters speak into dialogue balloons
that grow spiky amid the intense emotions and fighting. Narrative boxes relate off-camera
dialogue, and translated sound effects amplify a young woman’s threat to avenge
her family. Thanks to Titan Manga for providing a physical review copy.
Final Thoughts
When a young opera performer shoots a councillor's son on
camera, she announces she is Yan Tieh Hua, a 16-year-old accused of murdering
her family thirty years ago. Even though the imprisoned woman died ten years
ago, the police detective who arrested her reopens her case. As retired Senior
Detective Lei Ming Zhi struggles to meet this teenager with impressive martial
arts prowess, a 15-year-old Go prodigy vanishes. Yan Vol 1 mingles mysteries
and government conspiracies with Taiwanese folklore, magic, and mysticism to
create a mesmerizing, fast-paced science fiction adventure.
Rating 10/10
To look inside see my preview of Yan Vol 1.
