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I picked up a collected
edition of the first four issues of Gold Digger on a friend's
recommendation and was immediately charmed. While I'm not a big fan of
manga in general, this book was well-drawn, witty, and perhaps the most
consistently humorous comic series I've read since the original
Tick.
The two main characters are Gina Diggers, a young Indiana Jones-type scientist-archaeologist, and her foster-sister Brittany, an orphaned were-cheetah. I liked the concept of a were-cheetah who spends most of her time in a half-human, half-cheetah form, but who can also turn completely human or completely cheetah. Gifted with superhuman strength and agility, plus the legendary quickness of the cheetah, Brittany, who goes by the nickname "Cheetah," is a formidable character.
Gina is no less of a character. She's an intellectual bookworm with a genius-level IQ and a penchant for seeking out adventure, who can calculate in her head the angle of the earth relative to the center of the universe and also seduce any guy she takes a fancy to. I was also amused by her favorite expressions, "Jinkies!" and "Zoicks!", straight out of Scooby Doo.
The first four issues focus on how Gina and Brittany help defeat the evil sorcerer Gyphon, who has stolen the magical artifacts of the Atlantians and the Kryn, two races that have been warring with each other for centuries. The action is fast-paced and full of sorcery, interesting supporting characters, and enough high-tech gadgetry to outfit a James Bond movie.
A few nits to pick: Sometimes Perry's characters suffered from overexposition, clumsily jamming background information into what would be an ordinary conversation. For example, Gina says to Brittany, "Jinkies! I know it's a full moon out tonight so you can shift forms whenever you want instead of every 24 hours ..." I would guess that this doesn't happen as much in later issues. The other thing I found distracting sometimes was Perry's use of dialect and slang. Particularly annoying was a fighter pilot who talked with the thickest Brooklyn accent this side of Bugs Bunny. I found myself having to say the words out loud to figure out what they were.
But as I said before, one of the biggest things I liked about Gold Digger was its non-stop wisecracking and joking, which often takes the reader by surprise, sandwiched in as it is among more serious plot developments or action scenes. Two of my favorite scenes from the first trade paperback are a flashback (190K GIF) to when Gina and Brittany were children and Brittany losing her temper (152K GIF) and shifting her form when Gina walks in on her and her boyfriend Stripe unexpectedly.
True to manga tradition, everyone in this story, whether male, female, or other, is supernaturally well-endowed and their skimpy clothing flaunts it. (Perry does poke a little bit of fun at his characters' physical attributes, as when Stripe tells Brittany to keep her hands off him and she bumps him with her gigantic bosom instead.) The characters' faces also reflect the manga drawing style, featuring large eyes, triangular mouths, wildly bushy hair, and practically non-existent noses. Unlike other manga titles I've seen, however, the characters in Gold Digger are individual enough that they can be told apart by more than just their costumes or hair color.
Review by Sara Lipowitz
