Pearl vol. 2

As you all know, Bendis unleashed a flurry of creator-owned projects when he arrived at DC.  “Pearl,” the story of a young tattoo artist who gets a crash course in her connections to the San Francisco Yakuza, is the only one of them to receive a follow-up at this point.  While I liked the first volume well enough, vol. 2 doesn’t really build on its strengths and instead takes a rambling journey through some scenes that Bendis and artist Michael Gaydos thought would be interesting.

To the extent that vol. 2 has a plot, it mostly centers around Pearl heading to Japan to square things with the head family there.  This is after she learned that her mother was a legendary Yakuza who formed the clan that is currently being run by the scumbag Mr. Miike.  The way in which Pearl seizes her legacy reads like the creators had a lot of individual scenes that they wanted to see on the page: Pearl talking to Miike in Portland about business (and gyros).  Pearl getting the score from her uncle in his casino. Pearl and her boyfriend Rick trying and failing to get normal lives. Pearl telling the Endo Twins This is How It’s Going To Be.

Taken individually these are all good scenes, and any which involve hopeless screw-ups the Endo Twins just make me want a spin-off miniseries featuring them even more.  The problem is that vol. 2 just feels like an assemblage of scenes without a strong, cohesive plot to hold things together. Interesting characters like FBI Agent Yuuko are introduced then dropped without warning.  We’re told about how the Yakuza is rabidly misogynistic, but they’re apparently so in thrall to the memory of Pearl’s mom that they cut her all the slack she wants. Why were Pearl and Rick even trying to live a normal life at one point?  It’s all a big mess with some good stuff peeking out around the edges, is what I’m saying. Vol. 2 ends with the impression that may be it for the title character’s story and it’s probably for the best after a volume like this.