Muros Within Magical Walls: The Case of the Cemetery Girl

Manila is a city kept under the shadow of its demimonde in this fun supernatural noir scripted by Chikiamco (A Sparrow’s Roar). Mysterious “Societies” control the streets, while magical beings terrorize the populace and human-animal hybrids called the Yomaw suffer discrimination and suspicion. Carlos Loyzaga is a hero to match the setting, with his cybernetic limbs and self-healing ability. Eschewing the title “detective,” the gruff investigator calls himself a taga-sagot, Tagalog for “answerer,” and his investigation into the disappearance of a powerful man’s daughter becomes the perfect vehicle to cruise Manila’s underworld. He searches through an expansive and luxurious red-light district, a hospital where a rifle-toting nun makes the rounds, an artificial island of international embassies, and a haunted forest. Sinaban’s versatile art is appropriately moody, making effective use of solid black fills and silvery-gray shading, while rendering striking fantasy architecture, fast-paced action, and goofy antics. Carlos’s prim-and-proper journalist sidekick and the characters’ simple and effective manga-esque expressions add levity, though the number of bloody (and dismembered) bodies mark this as mature reading. Folks who fell under the spell of the Philippines comics scene with Trese will delight in this. (Mar.)