Dr. McNinja

Review covers the series so far

The titular character of this comic is a Doctor, who is also a Ninja. To avoid any confusion, both he and the comic are named Dr. McNinja.

When you first hear about it, the concept of a ninja-doctor will probably make no sense whatsoever. That and most of the plot. What does a ninja-doctor actually do?

Well, action comedy of course! Most of the humour in the comic comes from the characters and the absurd events that happen. But the beauty of this comic is that it takes some extremely silly source material, and then delivers it perfectly straight. Reading through it, the reader will quickly stop questioning the absurdity of the situations and the craziness will sink into their subconscious.

In fact Dr. McNinja has a habit of twisting your mind until the characters and going ons all seem perfectly normal and familiar. Gorilla receptionists? We're used to that by now. Giant lumberjacks? Yes, that's quite common. Dinosaur attacks? Happens all the time round our way.

Anyway, as with all of my online comic reviews, I won't go into much depth on the comic itself, because you can easily go have a look yourself. (If it sounds interesting then try checking it out at drmcninja.com.) In the meantime I'm going to spend the rest of the review talking about the print version.

The books seem to be aimed at fans of the comic who want to support the comic, or possibly want to have the comic to read offline. They're not available in the shops and must be brought from an online store in the US, which I hope means that the author gets a bigger share of the profits, but also means that they're more expensive to actually buy.

Pretty much most of the plot is character driven. Faeries' Landing relies on random events to trigger story-lines far less than most other Manga, purely because it doesn't need them; the characters are creating events and driving the plot forward on their own.

There's little in the way of bonus material, but the print quality is good, and (one animated gif aside) all of the comics have been drawn with print originally in mind. If you're willing to pay the slightly higher than normal price tag associated with an independent comic then Dr. McNinja is a good comic to have on your bookshelf.