Wait, did we kill Toyo Harada in the middle of his own series? It is called THE LIFE AND DEATH OF TOYO HARADA, after all… A young Toyo spends some quality time with one of the most brilliant men in history: Albert Einstein. Yes, really. And things get veeeeery violent with Toyo’s savage alien friend, LV-99…

I won’t lie, reading the above preview text before the comic kind of gives away more than it should, and left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth as I read the above before the comic itself. I am, after all, a man who abhors spoilers (even ones from the publisher). So when I say that despite the above text acting like a pair of weights around a sprinter’s ankles as they start the race, I still thoroughly enjoyed this issue.

The Life And Death Of Toyo Harada is a journey, and not a comic that needs to have every revelation hit you without you seeing it come. That being said, I did strike through the worst of the offending text above.

The opening to the second issue was breathtaking in what it achieved with the raging power of a storm depicted on the page, and so it was with some surprise that the third issue is equally as breathtaking, but in an entirely different manner. Joshua Dysart has Harada meet a man I never would have expected, and the encounter in interspersed throughout the comic, culminating in a scene that will leave you thinking about the consequences of the seemingly innocuous actions you’ve taken – and just how things can be twisted.

Toyo Harada is the kind of character that doesn’t come around often, and when they do, they’re always divisively popular as they begin to make one question whether they are truly villainous or merely driven by their goals. Harada was often framed as the villain in Harbinger, though one can argue that was simply because of the side of the story we were following, rather than the character being evil (again, there’s the divisive aspect of the man – there are more times than not that I find myself agreeing with his goals, but not always his methods). As Alan Moore wrote in Watchmen “I understand. Without condoning or condemning, I understand.”

I wrote this in the review of the second issue, and felt it needed repeating. This is a book that lives in the moral grey areas, and I love it.

Artistically, this book is just as wonderful as the previous issues. Cafu is joined this issue by Adam Polina, and the two artists create a visual epic that dances between the deepest of human emotions and the serenity of unaided flight. This is a book that has the artists running free, and there’s a true sense of that freedom on every page that you’ll read. This is truly wonderful stuff.

Once again, there’s honestly very little about this issue that I can fault – the only gripe you may have would be resolved by reading more about Harada (though Dysart does an admirable job conveying all you need to know about him in this series alone).This is currently the front runner for my miniseries of the year, because The Life And Death Of Toyo Harada is a series that highlights what comics are capable of.

Story: Joshua Dysart Art: Cafu abd Adam Polina
Colours: Andrew Dalhouse and Kat Hudson Letters: Dave Sharpe
Story: 9.5 Art: 9.4 Overall: 9.5 Recommendation: Buy

Valiant provided a FREE copy for review, but this is a book I’ll be buying when it hits the racks.