{"id":17137,"date":"2017-05-27T00:01:14","date_gmt":"2017-05-27T06:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/?p=17137"},"modified":"2017-05-27T22:03:51","modified_gmt":"2017-05-28T04:03:51","slug":"graphic-review-mask-red-panda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/graphic-review-mask-red-panda\/","title":{"rendered":"Graphic Novel Review: Mask of the Red Panda"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;OneJS=1&#038;Operation=GetAdHtml&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;source=ss&#038;ref=as_ss_li_til&#038;ad_type=product_link&#038;tracking_id=adamsblog03-20&#038;marketplace=amazon&#038;region=US&#038;placement=1613778716&#038;asins=1613778716&#038;linkId=61a7f84ec96a62287ae4a847630c9d59&#038;show_border=true&#038;link_opens_in_new_window=true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>The Mask of the Red Panda<\/em> is based on the audio drama podcast written by Gregg Taylor. In this three-issue comic story, the Red Panda and Kit Baxter (aka the Flying Squirrel) investigate a series of strange murders that lead them into a battle with forces of supernatural evil and Nazis. The story&#8217;s set in the pulp fiction era, so of course Nazis.<\/p>\n<p>The book captures the flow and spirit of the podcast adventures well bringing our heroes on to the comic page and into the\u00a0visual media. It moves at a nice pace with plenty of action. I also like the way they deal with magic, but fight with a magic inhibitor device which stops the story from getting too spooky, weird, and out of its typical depth. It&#8217;s certainly a better take than many modern superhero stories which become some entirely different series when magical beings come a calling. The art is good and the coloring (while far from natural) isn&#8217;t unpleasant.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, you might expect something more epic for the\u00a0trade paperback from\u00a0a long-running series. This is a decent three-issues story rather than something epic and grand that will make readers demand more Red Panda comics. In addition, some elements don&#8217;t quite transfer over from audio to the written page.<\/p>\n<p>In the Red Panda, Kit is not only the Red Panda&#8217;s sidekick but his employee as his chauffeur, so she responds to many of his statements with, &#8220;Yes, Boss.&#8221; In the radio program, Andrea Lyons, the actress who plays her, communicates a lot of what Kit thinks through voice tone as she says it. So &#8220;Yes, Boss&#8221; can be an acknowledgment or agreement or it can be annoyance, humoring the Red Panda, or something else. You don&#8217;t get that sense of expression in the comic and so you have to guess and, without voice tone,\u00a0&#8220;Yes, boss&#8221; can be a bit repetitive. In addition, while I appreciate her fighting spirit, there was one panel where I think she went a little too far.<\/p>\n<p>Still, overall this is a decent and nicely written homage to the pulp era that brings a beloved audio drama character to life. If you like pulp heroes like the Shadow or Green Hornet, but would like something a tad less intense than those heroes&#8217; current comic book offerings, this is a worthwhile read even if you haven&#8217;t listened to the podcast. If you&#8217;re a fan of the Red Panda and the Flying Squirrel, this is a great opportunity to see them in a visual medium.<\/p>\n<p>Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0<\/p>\n<p><em>This post contains affiliate links, which means that items purchased from these links may result in a commission being paid to the author of this post at no extra cost to the purchaser.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>If<\/em> you<em> enjoyed this post, you can have new posts about Detective stories and the golden age of radio and television delivered\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B004U8SET2\/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=adamsblog03-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B004U8SET2\">automatically to your kindle.\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Mask of the Red Panda is based on the audio drama podcast written by Gregg Taylor. In this three-issue comic story, the Red Panda and Kit Baxter (aka the Flying Squirrel) investigate a series of strange murders that lead them into a battle with forces of supernatural evil and Nazis. The story&#8217;s set in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[63,123],"tags":[359],"class_list":["post-17137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-golden-age-article","tag-good-review"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pECdK-4sp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17137"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17186,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17137\/revisions\/17186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}