A solo artist in the heavy makeup and luxurious costuming of Peking opera steps into the frame and begins her performance in the bowels of a dimly lit warehouse. All of Taipei is watching the livestream when suddenly, the uncanny becomes horrific as the performer pulls out a gun and executes a man tied to a chair. The singer then faces the camera and calmly introduces herself: “My name is Yan Tieh Hua.”
What follows is a rip-roaring, mind-bending action sci-fi worthy of Tarantino, if he ever did a dark sci-fi superhero film inspired by Chinese opera, which is not wholly inconceivable. Nothing is quite what it seems, beginning with Yan Tieh Hua, who looks to be in her early twenties, though she should be forty-five by now, and that’s assuming she didn’t actually die ten years ago in detention, as reported. Tieh Hua was only fifteen when she found her entire family, the Yan Opera Troupe, massacred one day after school. Mere minutes into the police investigation, the entire case was hijacked by men in suits who named Tieh Hua the perpetrator and imprisoned her without trial in a certain scientific research center, which itself mysteriously imploded twenty years later, killing everyone inside, including Tieh Hua. And yet, here she is now, young and deadly. Is she really Yan Tieh Hua? Is this her rampage of revenge? Or are there greater forces at work here?
I picked up Yan due to a love for Taipei and a passing interest in Chinese opera (and especially the quick-change artistry of bian-lian or “face-changing”), but although these elements are not as strongly present as I had hoped, there is so much more here to capture one’s interest and get the heart pumping.
To begin with, this series has style! From the hot pink cover, laden with the steely, beautifully painted gaze of Yan Tieh Hua, to the cinematographic layout of the panels, crisp linework and clean shading, and distinctively realist character designs, this is a gorgeous read. Author and artist Chang Sheng started out decades ago in design—a heritage that serves him well here—but has been creating graphic novels for years now, with two decades worth of awards and accolades to his name. Enough so to catch the attention of the legendary samurai mangaka Hiroshi Hirata, who provided the calligraphy of the original title, Yan Tieh Hua. Meanwhile, Sheng’s technical skills and draftsmanship really shine through and lend a unique realism to his character designs, who could easily have stepped right off the screen of Taiwanese live action drama. That is to say, although the volumes are clearly informed by both the manga and comic book traditions, Sheng is charting his own course through his influences. Even the sizing of the volume reflects this hybrid approach, being tankoban thick and printed in black and white, but closer to the width and length of a comic book. Kudos to Titan Comics for such a high-quality physical publication!
The series is three volumes in length, and this first installment does an excellent job of setting up all the mysteries, oddities, and potentialities that will keep readers hooked. Without spoiling too much, it also sees the assembling of a misfit band of…individuals (neither heroes nor antiheroes, at least not yet!), including the retired police officer who first discovered Tieh Hua at the scene of the massacre all those years ago, and a young Go genius who, I must say, is an absolute highlight, hitting the exact right balance of teenaged snark and self-doubt to make her endearing, and boasting a special ability that had me pondering and slow clapping at the brilliance of it all long after finishing the volume.
In this volume, the emphasis is on worldbuilding and atmosphere. And it’s a dark, violent world, in which those few lights that exist are rather dim, or at least, they are obfuscated since it is unclear just how far they are willing to let their light shine. Yan and her tentative allies are unusually gifted, but will they have the strength to do more than survive, to do more than simply even the playing field for themselves as they face an oppressive existence? Will they become heroes? I’ll be honest, I can’t make a prediction here. But I’m looking forward to the rest of the ride, wherever it goes.
* All images from Titan Comics. Be warned: The first of the interior images on Titan Comics’ page for Yan is a spoiler! I’ve not included it here.
My thanks to Titan Comics for a review copy of this fab volume!
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