Just don’t ask, okay? Like most things in my life, I discovered Dr. McNinja way past when it was popular. Who knows? Maybe it’s still popular. I’m not the best judge of that kind of thing. I’ve read a few graphic novels in recent years, generally when someone lends them to me, or when a movie I like is based on them. Now, the thing about Dr. McNinja is that it started out as a webcomic. People younger and more with it than me have shown me other people younger and more with it than me making a good living web cartooning. They don’t have 9-2-5s and they live, going by their videos, in nicer houses than I do. So when someone suggested I look up Dr. McNinja I found an old-looking website saying it was no longer online. The author had published it in book form.
Even though I work in publishing, I find it difficult to tell if a book is out of print. We live in that strange purgatory where IP (intellectual property) can be kept on life support until copyright expires without ever really having to print more books when they run out of stock. They’re never truly out of print. I’m guessing that’s what happened when on Amazon you see that only used copies are available. So which McNinja to select? The one with a cover that riffs off Plan 9 from Outer Space, of course. That movie keeps coming back into my life. It’s one of Fox Mulder’s favorites on the X-Files. In any case, I was hardly prepared for the amazingly creative imagination that Christopher Hastings has. If you start with Operation Dracula! From Outer Space you’re entering the story in media res, as the academics say.
I confess to liking Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when it first came out. These days the exoticism of eastern Asia is frowned upon by academics, but it’s still there in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, so why not? In case you’re wondering, there is a reason behind all this. I can’t tell you at the moment, however. I can say that if you’re looking for a wild, wild story with lots of unexpected twists and turns, Dr. McNinja will not fail to win approbation. I’m dithering on whether to go back and start from the beginning—these print volumes are becoming collectors’ items, it seems. And no matter how much fun it is, reading graphic novels always feels like cheating to me.