Inside the Little Plastic Castle

This morning I sat down to breakfast and couldn't move until I finished the first half of Gene Luen Yang's latest graphic work: Boxers. It's a beautiful, gripping, detailed story of the Boxer Rebellion in China. Responding to 100 years of colonialism and war, and ignited by terrible famine and drought, an army of teenagers took their inspiration from the Chinese Opera. They create a ritual to make themselves invincible wuxia fighters, kill white Christian missionaries and Chinese Christian converts, and eventually meet their foes in Beijing.

As Yang makes evident in beautiful line and color, the Chinese Opera inspired the hungry kids just as Superman (among others) cheered WWII soldiers.

Now on to the companion book, Saints, which examines the same events from the Christians' point of view.

10 out of 10 stars.