This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. You can find all my work at MJMunoz.com.
I am back talking about the Common Writer manga, the original Common Writer manga.
I have the Seven Seas collection. This is part three, the Resurrected Cobra Man.
And this is an omnibus collecting all of Common Writer manga,
plus some little special things that I've never seen before,
especially like ten years ago or more when I bought the Comixology edition of the Common Writer manga.
So, Shocker is depraved and terrible, and for some reason this cobra woman or this snake woman
is going around poisoning the dogs of children, or dogs of people in general,
because they can kind of detect that she's a cyborg or a modified human of sorts,
so she poisons them with some sort of toxin, some sort of venom,
that causes them to go crazy and attack people, even their owners.
So, Hongo's walking by in this town where there's these protests going on,
and some people have been murdered by Shocker, unbeknownst to him,
and a dog, this pet dog, is attacking his owner.
The dog's name is Dolly for some reason, like Salvador Dolly, I guess?
Anyway, this dog, which is rendered very nicely by Ishinomori, attacks the boy and tries to hurt him,
actually tries to hurt these little girls, and Hongo comes along and he cracks the dog.
He kicks him in the jaw, hurts him real bad, and the dog ends up eventually dying,
but it's more due to Shocker's interference and influence than him actually killing it.
But he did what he had to to protect this kid, and then he ends up taking this kid into his home,
into the Hongo manor, Hongo mansion, and he's taking care of him,
and at one point Hongo starts crying because he realizes, or he's thinking about it,
and it's hitting him that this boy's an orphan, and this boy's been orphaned because of Shocker's evil
and their greed and their maleficence, and he, another victim of Shocker, is kind of all this kid has.
Of course, Tobi and Ruriko are going to help as well, but it's a touching moment
because he's bringing the kid home because he's got no other place to go, no place to be,
except for with this lonely cyborg man who's more of a monster than a man
and who's fighting for his own soul against, again, the people who did this to him,
who perpetrated these crimes on him, and who have inflicted crime and pain and murder
against this boy and his father. I mean, obviously the kid's still alive, but they'd kill him if they could.
So that's pretty intense, pretty moving, and we have the Cobra man coming to attack Hongo,
and it's never really gone into specifically why Cobra man is so upset with Hongo.
I believe he calls him a traitor at some point, so it seems like, you know, being brainwashed and whatnot,
he is loyal to Shocker entirely, and he's upset with Hongo for, or Takeshi, I should say, I guess,
for abandoning Shocker and abandoning the mission and fighting on the side of normal people,
and he wants to take him out for that reason because he's a zealot and a true believer,
but he also wants to, I believe, for his own glory and aggrandizement,
and he wants to, he wants Senpai to notice him. He wants the great leader to, or do they call him Supreme Leader in this?
I'm not sure. Anyway, he wants to please him, and he basically goes rogue during an operation and tries to kill Hongo,
and it draws, well, yeah, he goes rogue and tries to kill Hongo, and it ends up getting him in big heap trouble,
and he ends up almost getting killed. But what's interesting is that he's so hateful of this guy,
and that when he's on his deathbed, the snake woman is actually, Princess Medusa, they call her,
is able to actually convince the Supreme Leader, along with Kogure and himself,
that they should invest the money into him and rebuild him so that he can kill Hongo and, or Kamen Rider,
and I like that Supreme Leader says something along the lines of,
I have no idea how much money and resources we put into making you guys, and I swear if you fail, I'm going to kill you myself.
And, you know, it's pretty intense, but it also does make sense that they would have real resources that they're using,
and they're even pulling off a heist of gold bars from this, I don't know, Fort Knoxite place in Japan.
Oh, it's funny, it's called like, Japan's number one gold bar house, or something like that.
Which is a very funny title, and it sounds probably accurate, but it's like, I think that's Ichiban, right?
Ichiban such and such, it's the number one thing in Japan!
So that was kind of fun. But yeah, the Cobra Man tells Hongo about that, and Hongo ends up going and fighting him,
and he's just, he thinks he's luring Hongo into a trap, but you know, Hongo's pretty powerful, so he overcomes him,
and in the end, even after he's been remodified, or you know, modified and resurrected, he still gets defeated,
but then, this is a really tragic twist, and I wanted to focus on this idea that like, this Cobra Man, and then Medusa,
Princess Medusa, hate Hongo so much for their own various reasons, that their hatred of him actually is toxic to themselves.
It's a venom, or poison unto themselves, and it ends up destroying them.
Cobra Man is so overconfident in his abilities, and in this new body that Shocker's given him,
which he gets a pretty wicked, like, flamethrower, Cobra thing going on, on his arm, and that's really cool,
but he thinks he can defeat Hongo because of that, and he's not able to, and he ends up getting killed,
and then, he ends up almost getting defeated, and then Cobra Woman comes at Hongo with a vengeance,
and she ends up killing her former lover, Cobra Man, with the lasers coming out of the little head snakes that she's got,
because she's, you know, Princess Medusa, and then she ultimately kills herself because she's so heartbroken and embittered
by what her hatred and her desire for vengeance against Hongo has driven her to do, which is, again, kill her own lover tragically,
and it's really sad, and at the end of the fight, Hongo, he's in his rider suit, but you can see they're both heaps on the floor dead,
and the wind is howling, and he's standing there with his shoulders slumped, and I think he even sighs,
like, it doesn't say sound effect sigh, but it shows, like, a puff of breath.
Well, it's either them murmuring, or it's him sighing, and it's just, it's really sad, because you can see,
and he's got all this power, and he's able to overcome, you know, the physical odds and the physical fight in attacking these people,
but they're basically his brothers and, you know, sister, and he's forced to fight them, and they want him dead so desperately,
and it's so dramatic that they'll even put themselves at a disadvantage and basically put themselves in a position where they will be killed by him,
because he is going to kill them to save himself, just like he was going to kill that dog to save those kids.
He's going to kill them to preserve his own life so that he can continue to fight against shocker, no matter how much it hurts,
and it's really sad and really tragic, and it's, I don't know, it's intense.
So, anyway, where Hongo's sighing there, it's probably my most emotional page or panel,
and for the next one, the best art, or my favorite art, which actually almost ties for being the most emotional page or panel,
is this page where Hongo takes off his mask and he can see his scars.
I think it's, again, in between a break after Cobra Man escapes or presumably dies the first time, and Hongo gets the kid home or something like that.
He ends up getting changed out of his clothes, but he sees the scars on his face and he says that his face is the real mask, even scarred as it is,
it's still a mask, and it's the mask of this terrible cyborg that has such profound, such prodigious strength
that if he's not careful, he will hurt anybody who he shakes hands with or touches or whatever.
And there's just a lot of pathos and pain here, and I think this is the panel also where he talks about how the fellow shocker cyborgs
are people he has to fight and kill ultimately because that's what shocker will.
Shocker wills that they contend with each other for power so that shocker can exert its power and influence over the world,
and it's just so awful and so tragic for him. But I love these looks at his face, I love the scars,
I love the energy and the momentum in the top panel where he's pulling the mask off of his head,
and you can see this either in the video version or in the show notes on the website I'll have these images posted.
And anyway, it's just really impactful stuff and it's really impressive. I like the different angles,
we get to see him looking one way, looking the other way, and then we get to see his back and see,
I think, well there's definitely muscles, but I think there's scarring there too,
and almost like the way he's turned away from the camera in the bottom panel where he's going on about more stuff,
it's almost like he's turning away from the audience in shame, like he can't even bear to be seen or see,
he can't bear to look us in the eye as he is expounding on the torment that he feels and just what shocker has done to him
and how he's barely a man now, he's turned into a monster, and it's just, that's the pathos that I love in Covenrater.
And it's just great artwork, like, yeah, the details on the helmet look super cool, the way the scars work is neat,
it's just beautiful artwork and I absolutely love it, so yeah, that's what I like.
What was your favorite panel though in this? What do you think is the best artwork in this part three?
And what do you think is the most emotional, most emotionally impactful bit of artwork or I guess a bit of story,
if it's like something in dialogue as opposed to an image that you can see?
Also, if you look in the video version, you can see the thumbnail that will be used for the audio only version of the episode.
Oh, I kind of subtitled this thing as Serpent's Spite, because it's all about the spite of these Cobra people
and how it destroys others and ultimately themselves and how tragic that is.
And you could say that Hongo's even experiencing some of that being the guy who has to deal death to these people
that he wouldn't want to fight with otherwise. And yeah, I think it's pretty interesting.
But also I want to let you know that if you subscribe to the audio only version of this, you will get it before anybody else does.
You'll get it a couple hours before it goes up on the website on mjmunoz.com and you'll get even more hours
because a few hours after it goes up on the website, it'll go up on the video platforms.
So you can subscribe to the RSS feed and get it in your podcatcher of whatever description as soon as it's available.
And with that, I'm going to go ahead and get out of here, except I will encourage you to go to the website
and find some of the Grobug books, which are books inspired by Tokusatsu, including Kamen Rider.
And check those out for yourself and see how you like them.
See if the eventual physical release of those with full illustrations is something that you'd be interested in checking out.
Anyway, until next time, folks, I hope that you take care of yourselves and that you be well.
This is MJ signing out.
I hope you enjoyed that. Go to mjmunoz.com to leave any questions, comments, or other feedback you might have.
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