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Title: Jack Frost Vol 2

Author:  JinHo Ko

Publisher:  Yen Press

ISBN: 9780759529533

May Contain Spoilers

The battle for supremacy over Amityville has turned into all out war, as the South, East, and West districts have decided that it’s time to get rid of Jack Frost once and for all.  While they plan his defeat, Jack is getting ready to escort Noh-A to the Lost Lake, where she can regain her forgotten memories.  Once she remembers her lost death and has reclaimed the memories of her past, she can truly awaken.  Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?

I approached this volume of Jack Frost with caution.  The first was just too gross for me, as Noh-A was decapitated more than once, in graphic detail.  I wasn’t so upset for her, as she apparently can’t die, but watching her head sliding around on the ground like a slug leaving behind a trail of bloody slime was a little more than I had the stomach for.  I’m happy to report that while there were still plenty of flying heads, none of them belonged to Noh-A. 

Noh-A is the Mirror Image, and she has eternal life.  She’s been whisked off to Amityville, the North district to be exact, and she’s about to get caught up in the middle of the 13th Amityville War.  Right now she’s just a blissfully ignorant high-school student, trying to fit into her new surroundings.  All of her classmates, and everyone else in in Amityville, are from the world of the dead. Talk about having a bunch of creepy classmates!  Everyone is a zombie but Noh-A, so it’s understandable that she’s having a hard time making new friends!

When she learns that she and Jack are going to the Lost Lake to recover her lost memories, she’s not too happy.  Jack is the creepiest guy ever, and she doesn’t want to be alone with him.  He is very, very scary, so I don’t blame her.  He goes from normal to psycho in the blink of an eye, and he’d hand you your head on a platter with a big, toothy grin.  Not the kind of guy you want to meet in a dark alley, or take a stroll to the lakeside with. 

On the way, all kinds of chaos greets them.  It seems that everyone is out to get Jack.  Having a rep as the toughest guy in town isn’t good for your health, and guarantees that life will never be boring.  The fighting in Jack Frost is frenzied and bloody, rendered through eye-catching, violent images that convincingly display a thrilling sense of motion as limbs and heads go flying through the panels.  If nothing else, this book is an entertaining onslaught of death and destruction, where bloody battles are only a page or two away.

I’m not too clear on what exactly is going on, but now that Noh-A has a goal to works towards, I feel much more comfortable with the book.  All of that wanton destruction in the first volume made me just as uneasy as it did Noh-A.  That much senseless violence only works in Gantz, and that’s only because the characters explode in so many varied and entertaining ways.  The scope of the slaughter here isn’t as intense,  so there needed to be a story to wrap around the action.  Now that Noh-A has something to accomplish, instead of waiting around to have her head chopped off again,  I’m a little more engaged in the story, and I’m actually starting to feel curious about what is going on.  Sure, missing memories has been done to death, but I don’t think it’s been done with a girl who can reattach her extremities after they’ve been hacked off of her body.

Jack Frost may be one dimensional, but there is some crowd pleasing fighting and the promise of an all out war to hook readers.  Enough plot teasers have been introduced to make me curious to know more, even though the overall picture is still very muddled and hazy. 

Grade: B-

Review copy provided by Yen Press