Manga — JoJo's Bizarre Adventure : Phantom Blood

For a Japanese comic (and I apologise in the excerpts above for arranging the pages left to right while the content reads right to left), this looks awfully like the better stuff that would have appeared in Lion when I was a kid, only with a bit more girls, swearing and a lot more explicit damage in combats.

In the first volume, we are introduced to Jonathan Joestar, and his adopted evil brother Dio, and the start of an involved mythos of super-beings and mystical powers.

The story starts as you might expect with an evil stepchild showing up the gallant but naive true son, but then takes a left turn when, exposed, Dio takes up the Stone Mask that Jonathan's father had acquired in his adventures and becomes a vampire. Gathering up a host of villains, including Jack the Ripper, Dio makes his evil plans; meanwhile Jonathan swears revenge, and with the help of a mysterious Italian traveller starts to master the power of "ripple", the pneuma that underlies all life.

So ensues an escalating batch of super-powered fights, before, at long last, Dio is defeated, and cast into the sea, to be lost forever. Yeah, right.

Actually it doesn't end there, but segues into the next volume, of which more, later.