JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Part 1--Phantom Blood, Vol. 1 (1)

I'm probably one of the few people not introduced to Jojo via Stardust Crusaders, and coming into Phantom Blood cold is probably for the best, as I hear by the time JoJo's third iteration rolls around thing are rather a bit different.What's here though, in volume 1 of Jojo is the start of something really interesting, albeit not quite to the meat and potatoes of the matter. In fact it ends at a really awkward place, it really should have gone one chapter (or two) more. But overall it does a great job at setting the tone this series is going to take.Artistically the book is really interesting. Taking a page right out of Fist of the Northstar, where men are giant slabs of meat. And the violence always comes with buckets. The art is a bit rough, as it so often is for such a long running series that started in the late 80s. But that rawness is part of its charm. To see an artist evolve over decades will be this series's greatest treat.As for the rating... I'd have given it 5 stars if the Amazon Kindle version wasn't plagued with such image compression on its color pages. Major appearances of pixilated 'crush' can be seen everywhere. I don't know if this unique to Amazon's version, and if it looks better on ComiXology or directly from Viz. Or if Viz just didn't care when putting out their digital copy files. But it sure is unnecessarily ugly. Which is a terrible shame. The one thing a mostly black and white graphic novel should have is uncompressed art.EDIT 2017 - I have adjusted my rating from 4 Stars to 5 Stars. Since writing this review Viz and Amazon have provided a ComiXology version of the digital version of this book as part of the purchase of the Kindle version. Examining that version of the book I can say that my concerns with color compression have been alleviated, and can say the book looks amazing in digital HD on ComiXology. I have not checked the Kindle version for comparison, so I don't know if that version has been improved. But since I read all of my Kindle graphic novel purchases on ComiXology its irrelevant for my purposes.

Good hard cover. Great graphics and a good read.

Great book, came in great condition

Great manga for newbies to get into— the later parts really accelerate in quality but it is very smart to read the earlier parts to understand the tone and tenor of the series

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is probably one of the greatest manga series to ever be created, but you probably already knew that. This is the first time Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency (parts one and two) have been released in the States, and boy was I excited. Of course some of the names were changed for copyright, like "Bruford" to "Bluford," but at least it's here. Also of note for this special edition is that there are some color pages! Of course I was expecting the whole thing to be full color pages like the official color scans, but in some pages there are only a few colors and not all of the pages are in color, which was disappointing but not unexpected.Of course this gets five stars, it's JoJo. If you haven't read the manga or watched the show (the fourth part should be out really soon) then you need to start. I know some people like to skip to part 3, Stardust Crusaders, since it's the most popular part, but you would be hurting yourself greatly by skipping the first two parts. Oh yeah and even though the anime for this part is basically Stardust Crusaders style of work, this is much more 80s, so it looks a little dated. I like the little interview at the end too, it gives a little insight to the author's creation of the characters.

I really didn't know what I was getting into when I wasntold to read this series by a few friends. I'm not big big into manga, but i have a deep obsession with Junji Itos work, and the grandfather of modern manga Osamu Tezuka. I prefer it in its original language but English is. Ok. The stories in JoJo are very "western" in a good not copying. Not a foolish try hard way, or in your face way. After reading The Promised Neverland in full (amazing read) this is a nice Ito, short story -esk feel to it. [ALTHOUGH P.N.L. is not Ito] pardon poor English, I am from Japan.Viz can sometimes make not so great book covers on their hardcover books. Inhave 3 Tomie Omnibus's all spine damaged, and I bhave a strong understanding of book care and maintenance, luckily PVA worked for now. The older Museum Of Terror in EN iirc, are easier and more compact anyway, but also more sought after.I digress. The books great. Its dark but not"MW" Yuki dark (the things he does are too real, thenstory is, too good, MW May be my favorite manga/graphic novel if you can handle violence, and things I cant type due to the nature of the things Yuki does are so warped and horrifically genious.In summation, if you want quality English JoJo, its cheap for the hardcover and there is anlot of material over the years the series has been in circulation, its been and still is majorly respected in Japan.So odd to see the other countries of this world getting into it now. 7780s