CAT MASK BOY
written and illustrated by Linus Liu
A clever underachiever must navigate the feared Kowloon Walled City in Liu’s winning manga.
In a colorful 1970s Hong Kong, 7-year-old Tiger, who “prefers to be clever rather than hardworking,” announces that he wants to be a superhero. He does so by leaping onto his teacher’s desk wearing an oversized cat’s head and declaring himself Cat Mask Boy, to the delight of his classmates. But his teacher disapproves, and so does his mother at home, who chases him around with a broom stick when he doesn’t do his homework and won’t take off his mask. Rather than improving through study, Tiger strikes a deal with a friend, Rocky: In exchange for Rocky’s homework, Tiger agrees to make him his own cat mask. The plan works, and Tiger is soon rewarded with his best-ever report card performance (though he’s still in the bottom three in the class). As a reward, they celebrate after school, and Tiger’s report card slips into a middle-aged man’s shopping bag. This sets Tiger on an adventure across the feared Kowloon Walled City, “a den of vice with gambling, drugs, and everything else.” Across the border, Tiger runs into Dragon, who’s a few years older and already a primary school dropout, wise beyond his years and similarly decked out in a cat mask. As he steers Tiger through the city in search of his report card, they grow closer as friends. While the stakes are low in terms of conflict, the everyday bullies and street toughs who stand in Tiger and Dragon’s path entertainingly assume the roles of powerful manga villains in boys’ imaginations. Liu, doing double duty as writer and illustrator, brings their confrontations to kinetic life in dazzling action sequences. The color palette throughout mixes bright tones with muted, darker reds, browns, greens, and plenty of white (including the black-and-white masks themselves). He is at his best in the final night sequences in the Walled City, where the Escher-like apartment buildings twist into each other as the friends try to escape before it’s too late.
A fun, fast-paced ride with plenty of heart.