Get Backers

    (Tokyopop, 2004-2008)
™ and © 2000 Yuya Aoki and Rando Ayamine
Reads right to left; black and white series.

Here’s a twist on creating “mature” super-heroes American publishers have somehow missed out on: Make your leads a pair of affable, nitwit losers who use their powers to gain big bucks and babes, all without codenames, costumes, or a clue.

Ginji Amano generates electricity, Ban Mido creates illusions with his “evil eye”; they don’t know how they got their powers and don’t care. Together, they’re the “Get Backers” (guys, enough with the broken English titles already) who’ll retrieve anything, anywhere for anyone and are so hungry and hopeless they’ll work for 10¢.

When the reader is half-convinced it’s a flat-out comedy, a homeless man with a handful of spare change hires the boys to recover his lost daughter from the Yakuza, which is when they prove they’re bruisers as well as losers. There’s enough high-impact action and girls spilling out of their tops to please a Maxim reader, and this one’s grubby, punk sensibility should attract readers of everything from GTO to Johnny the Homicidal Maniac to Lobo. It’s been entirely too long since I’ve seen a manga this good that isn’t like anything else.

— S.A. Bennett
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#12

November, 2005
Cover Price: $9.99
1 copy available for $2.55 		Yuya AokiRando Ayamine