Astral Project

Last week DC's manga line, CMX, debuted the first volume of Astral Project, written by Marginal and drawn by Syuji Takeya. The central character of Astral Project is Masahiko, who discovers he can project himself out of his body and exist unknown to others in an invisible realm (astral projection). He also meets two other people that can astral project and through them, tries to understand how he can do this. This happens shortly after Masahiko finds out about the mysterious death of his sister and then takes the last cd she had on her player when she died and listens to it. Well I don't want to give away too much more about that, other then to mention that the jazz artist on the cd, Albert Ayler, was a real life musician (I looked it up online). Ayler lived from 1936-1970 and was a pioneer of a form of jazz called "free jazz" (he played alto sax). From the little reading I did so far about Ayler he led a very interesting life and I'll be interested in seeing how Ayler fits into Astral Project as it progresses.

Astral Project comes sealed with a parental advisory label, but I didn't read or see anything in the first volume that warranted that, maybe the label applies more to future volumes as it is written by Garon Tsuchiya under one of his aliases, "Marginal". Tsuchiya wrote the Old Boy manga of which was made the acclaimed and very disturbing Korean revenge live-action movie of the same name. I haven't read the manga, but the Old Boy movie is one of the more intense movies I've seen in the past few years (and if you haven't seen it, don't look up any info on it, just watch it - you won't believe where it goes!). If the Astral Project manga comes anywhere close to what Old Boy is, well the mature label and shrink wrap are totally justified.