Yi Soon Shin: Korea’s Warrior and Defender Done Right

With a second volume of a planned trilogy on the way from writer Onrie Kompan and artist Giovanni Timpano, the recently-released hardcover edition of Yi Soon Shin: Warrior and Defender is truly a fascinating piece of comics literature.Not only is the book well-written and beautifully-rendered, but it’s accompanied by interviews and commentary by the creators that reflect how close the book came to not being able to be made on a number of occasions–which resonates when you’re reading a beautiful hardcover presentation with a foreword by comics legend Stan Lee.At the heart of the story is the true-life (and larger-than-life) character of Admiral Yi Sun Shin. Admiral Yi never received naval training or participated in naval combat prior to a massive war with Japan, he went to his grave as one of few admirals in world history who remained undefeated after commanding as many naval battles as he did (at least 23). In one such battle, he was outnumbered 333 ships to only 13 and managed to hold the Japanese Navy at bay.Kompan has latched onto this fascinating figure in world history and created a world around him, filled with characters real, fictional and fictionalized (for instance, a pair of samurai warriors who are depicted as having a homosexual relationship in the book were real historical figures but there is no credible evidence to suggest they were a couple, or even gay).Timpano, meanwhile, has crafted a lush, visually impressive world full of the type of detail you’d generally expect from someone like George Perez. Every inch of the comic is filled with something that crackles with life, and even the panels in which there’s an empty background have clouds, or rain, or something beyond just dead air. If there’s a weakness to his approach, it’s that like most very detailed comics artists, his work can feel a bit static at times, as though it’s a photograph and not a movie. That’s not the case with the battle sequences, though, which are some of the best fight choreography I’ve seen in a comic this year.