While this is, evidently, an adaptation of an adventure novel of the same name by Yumemakura Baku, it is a match made in heaven, as it reads like pure Taniguchi.  In many respects this is an ideal follow-up to Quest for the Missing Girl.  Summit of the Gods is an exploration into the mechanics of masculinity, male-bonding, identity formation and the competitive instinct in the guise of a mountain climbing epic.  It is also an artistic tour de force as Taniguchi pulls out all the stops and goes for page after page of stunning art that deftly parallels the urban environs of Tokyo, wherein the skeins of the story unwind and the haunting mountain peaks that are the story's central focus.  Readers are drawn into this work through a fairly sophisticated use of narrative bracketing technique – somewhat reminiscent of Joseph Conrad – that quite successfully contextualizes these ruggedly manly atavistic adventures in the world of men doing business in modern Japan.  The story starts off with a photographer in Nepal having just finished covering a failed attempt at scaling Mt. Everest.  His nagging feelings of let down lead him to linger longer in Kathmandu wherein he stumbles into the tale that makes up Summit of the Gods and which we are subtly led to see from his point of view.  It is a story that presents many of the tropes we associate with the superhero genre of comics here in the USA – a rugged, musclebound, loner driven by the inner demons of having his parents die tragically while he was still a child to become obsessed with achievement to the point of alienating his peers yet through his achievements attracting the adulation of a teen sidekick who had a similarly tragic loss of his parents (beginning to sound familiar?) – yet with a spectacularly greater degree of realism than what we associate with American superhero comics.  This is a story that is set in the real world and, while there is an element of escapism present in the mountain climbing theme, the material is entirely devoid of the fantastic fantasies that are essential to superheroes by their very nature, yet it nevertheless manages to provide the same quintessential frisson-filled catharsis.  This makes it an ideal comics work for those long-suffering comics fans who pine for that long-ago thrill that they once enjoyed in the pages of superhero comics but that is now denied them by the reality principle that has been imposed upon them as  responsible adults. Taniguchi is without peer in his ability to create a sense of place and in setting the pace, and this work is a real page turner if ever there was one (except for the fact that some readers will want to pause to lavish their attention on the amazingly detailed urban and mountain landscapes).  And this 320 page epic is only the first of FIVE volumes.  For lovers of pen & ink adventure, it's almost too good to be true...

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