Comic Book Resources

Danielle Leigh's Reading Diary -- Jack Frost vol 1

Jinho Ko's Jack Frost is kind of like an undead!Battle Royale.  Except because all the characters are undead they just keep killing each other again and again.

Jack Frost seems to purposely want to offend -- the fanservice is so bizarre I can't actually take it seriously.  Within the first few pages of the volume, high schooler Noh-A loses her head when two undead folks from another world come crashing through her high school classroom, each trying to kill the other for no particular reason that I can see.  While "Nasty smile" (Noh-A's nickname for Jack Frost) and random undead!guy, Hansen, are trying to kill each other, Noh-A somehow thinks her very strange and chaotic reoccurring dreams have come true and that she's responsible the spectacular battle happening before her.  Poor Noh-A -- she's lost her head, but seems more upset by very round butt is on display for all to see (i.e. very disturbing fanservice I mentioned).

After Jack dispatches his opponent easily, Noh-A finally loses consciousness only to awake in Amityville High School infirmary...with her head newly attached to her body.  Noh-A's gone through the looking glass, but what kind of world is she in?  Noh-A assumes she must have special powers to have survived a beheading -- she thinks she's the equivalent of her world's Sailor Moon -- but sadly, she seems to only have some use value to others in this strange world.  The few souls inhabiting Amityville high school refer to her as a thing -- "the mirror image" -- and to her disapointment she's just as weak as she was in real life.  Everyone in this world is "undead," meaning they can't actually die (or at least their existence can't be "erased" very easily), although Jack and the others who fight him certainly enjoy trying to dismember each other quite a bit.

There is an implication that Noh-A might be the key to changing everyone's existence in Amityville although this is only hinted at, never really explained.  Instead the majority of the first volume is taken up in bloody, limb-severing battles that seem to entirely lack a point.  Why are "students" (as they are called" at Amityville fighting each other?  Are they hoping that death can be achieved or are they after something else?  In the end, I found Noh-A much more interesting than Jack Frost.  Why did she have so many premonitions of her death and what is her role in this strange world as the mirror image?

The first volume of this horror manhwa raises more confusion than it actually raises questions.  I'm not sure if I completely understand the premise or if there even is any sensible order to this particular "world."

Review copy provided by Yen Press.