By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)
- Mild spoiler alert
Author and chef, Anthony Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential) and novelist Joel Rose are back with more culinary shenanigans in Hungry Ghosts. They wrote Get Jiro!, a send-up about food culture for DC/Vertigo six years ago and their play on words with this new title (published by Dark Horse Comics) is not a send-up on the traditional meaning, where ancestral spirits are forgotten by future generations. With this new work, veneration is explored in a different sense.
On a dark, haunted night, Mr. Fedachenko, a Russian oligarch dares a circle of Michelin star international chefs to play the samurai game of 100 Candles—where each storyteller has to tell a terrifying tale. Each of them better pray they can survive the challenge. This game is not like Russian Roulette. Instead, it’s a test of courage and perhaps a means to summon the undead. By the time the last candle is blown out, the hope nothing demonic is present.
Issue #1 is due to hit stands January 31st. In my preview, I was salivating over the modern delights of this retelling and modernization of supernatural lore from Japan. I find this culture’s — and my own (China) — take on the paranormal far more phantasmagorical than their Western cousins. Nothing against Europe and the gothic tradition, but in Asia, the often colourful and misty backdrop makes for a far more worrisome world for mortals to live in. In Japan, this world is revered. In Europe, it was often feared.
Continue reading “You Don’t Have to Ride a Dark Horse to run away from, er read Hungry Ghosts!”