Orphan and the Five Beasts vol. 1

There is rot in the valley.  First it came from the Bandit King, whose reign of terror cowed the hearts of many, save five who sought the power to defeat him.  Power that came from the martial arts teachings of a lone master who taught them aspects of his art under the condition that they return to complete their training.  These five used this knowledge to defeat the Bandit King, but they never returned.  Now, their once noble aims have become corrupted because they refused to finish their training and these five have become an even greater threat than the one they vanquished.  Enter Orphan Mo, the adopted daughter of the master who has been charged with bringing an end to their menace by any means necessary.

“Orphan and the Five Beasts” is James Stokoe doing a fantasy martial-arts epic.  Do I need to say any more?  

Okay, fine.  The creator is one of the best artists who’s also pretty good with the stories he tells as well.  Here, he takes his meticulously detailed style and gives us a setting and setup that feels like it could’ve come from the glory days of Hong Kong cinema.  Along with the action as well.  That’s the real draw of this volume as Stokoe choreographs some incredible fights between Orphan Mo and two of the five beasts:  Thunderthighs and Chopper Teng.  Both are uniquely disturbing monsters with their own style and make for impressive threats for the title character to pit her skills against.

While the action is unimpeachable, Orphan Mo herself comes off as more of a cipher than an actual character.  All we know about her is that she’s a badass martial artist who’s also a vegetarian.  Hopefully we’ll find out more as the volume ends with the promise of another arc in this series.  From that and the way it’s paced so far, I get the feeling this was originally meant to be a twelve-issue maxiseries and that Dark Horse is publishing it this way in the hopes that this collected edition will help fund the rest of it.  I don’t mind that because even if this is just the first third of the story, the action in this volume still delivers the goods.