Thanks to barnesandnoble.com for the image.

YOZAKURA QUARTET, VOL. 1

DEL REY
CARTOONIST: Suzuhito Yasuda
TRANSLATION: Satsuki Yamashita
ADAPTATION: Nunzio DeFilippis & Christina Weir
ISBN: 978-0-345-20149-3; paperback; Rating “OT” for “Ages 16+”
218 pp., B&W, $10.95

Yozakura Quartet, Vol. 1 introduces readers to four superteens.  Hime Yarizakura is a superheroine, the self-styled “Super Mayor” of her hometown, Sakurashin.  Ao is a “satori,” a demon who can read minds.  Kotoha Isone is a kotodama user who can conjure anything she speaks.  Akina Hiizumi is just the regular guy surrounded by these three teenaged supergirls.

The first volume of this new series finds them taking on a young maniac who uses his skills with a pistol to terrorize the city and a dog gone bad.

THE LOWDOWN:  Manga-ka Suzuhito Yasuda has managed to do something not done often in manga – Japanese comics – and that’s create a superhero comic that could fit in with American superhero comics.  Even with its Japanese setting, Yozakura Quartet reads, feels, and looks like an American independent comix scene spin on teen superheroes.

It helps that the English adaptation for Yozakura Quartet is written by the husband-wife team of Nunzio DeFilippis & Christina Weir, who worked on indie and alt-comix before revamping and reviving New Mutants for Marvel in 2003 and writing another New Mutants relanuch, New X-Men: Academy X.  The duo has a knack for writing superhero comics about teens that deals with both the interior and exterior world of realistic teenager characters, and they made the super power fantasy aspect of New Mutants and New X-Men seem natural in the setting of a teen melodrama.

POSSIBLE AUDIENCE:  Fans of DeFilippis & Weir and of teen superheroes will find this an unusually flavorful, smartly-written read.

B+