HAMMER

A young lad who can turn his hands into huge hammers wishes himself into the storybook that swallowed his father.

In episodic chapters that each start off in color then switch to line drawings, spiky-haired Stud Hammer discovers that his newly discovered superpower doesn’t make him any friends in his village but proves useful both in pounding monsters in his world and, after he’s sucked into watery Ocean City, hooking up with stern young Detective Dan and his big sister, ocean police commissioner Diane, to battle a supertough hammerhead shark political activist. Catering to readers who delight in continual slugfests with massive sound effects, the art is stuffed into cramped panels of wild (if hard to follow) action, and the plot jerks along from one set piece to the next, cutting off abruptly in a brief lull between battles. The special abilities displayed by Stud and several others are judgmentally characterized as “abnormal” in the equally patchy dialogue—when it’s not devolving into variations on “What the crap!!!” or weak banter in which “chubby” or “Mr. Chubs” are repeatedly used to insult Dan. Dan, Diane, and some associates are dark-skinned merfolk kitted out with tails and legs. Stud and other human Swirls, as those humans with magical mutations are called, are occasionally given a light toning, but in the monochrome scenes are generally left as unfilled figures.

Insensitive language isn’t the only rough spot, but younger fans of action manga may be entertained.