On Shotty Workmanship (Early Thursday)

I bought a book today. Japanese comic. Volume 14 in a 14 volume series that's been running for the better part of a decade. The artist's only drawn maybe one or two volumes a year and for the last three or four years he's been finishing the whole shebang, so after getting a bunch of translations only a few months apart I had to get used to waiting for him to create enough material to get compiled into a book, then Dark Horse gaining the international rights, then translating it, then printing and shipping the bitch.

So what do I find when I read the last volume in this series? Well not only is the art as ambiguous and ill-defined as ever, but the 6th chapter was actually just a reprint of the 5th.

I don't mean to say it was basically the same thing all over again, that's par for the course with this series. No, I mean it was the exact same pages copied over where chapter 6 should have been. Whole big fight scene completely missing from the book. Granted, we all knew where the story was going for years (there was a T.V. series in like 2001 that ended about the same despite them guessing at the ending), but still, there's just a quality of workmanship I expect from the comics I bother to actually pay for.

As a last insult I am stealing the full series off the internet, translated better. I will read the missing chapter, and return the faulty book. I will complain to the company and maybe get a free good copy. If I don't, fuck them all.

Update: I returned the book. The other copy was also in error. Dark Horse has received a very upset form email.