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  A young thief, Boon Sai Hong, is sent to steal some
priceless artifacts from an elderly scholar.
He succeeds. Mostly. He ends up taking a ring and a scroll of
immense power. The ring gives him great
ability whenever he holds a staff in his hands.
The scroll is a doorway to a hell filled with hungry dragons. But that’s just the beginning of the
story. A heroine wants to reclaim what’s
been taken. The city’s wicked ruler
wants to steal what’s been stolen. And
before the first arc is through, Boon finds himself running from and fighting
off everyone and everybody.
Issues 1-6: The Walls
of Zhumar
Boon is an unlikely protagonist and an even unlikelier
hero. Yet Chuck Dixon makes him a very
sympathetic character. Despite his
bumbling ways and occasional bad intentions, we can’t help but root for Boon to
succeed. Or at least to get out of his
current predicament with his life.
Credit should also go to penciller Jeff Johnson. He draws Boon as a good-looking fellow with a
charming smile. We can’t help but like
him.
Dixon
also pairs Boon with one of the best sidekicks in any media. All of the CrossGen heroes have been given
mentors to guide them on their way. Boon
is paired with a talking monkey named PoPo who is pompous, insulting-
especially to Boon- and downright hilarious.
Boon may be the hero but PoPo is the star of the book. In fact, PoPo is so popular that they use his
voice for the letter column. Again, Jeff
Johnson deserves his full half of the credit.
Johnson manages to make the monkey as expressive as his human
counterpart.
Around this central pair, Dixon arrays a wonderful cast of colorful
characters. There’s the princess and the
old scholar’s daughter. There’s the
heroine, the Silken Ghost, who may or may not be one of these women. There’s the wicked ruler, Judge X’ain. There are Boon’s fellow thieves, a pair of
clumsy men who would be right at home in a Kurosawa film.
 Way of the Rat is a fast-paced action story with some great
martial arts scenes and big beautiful battles.
Jeff Johnson is himself a martial artist. His expertise and passion inform the pages,
giving them a life found in very few comics.
I’m especially fond of his sequences of after-images showing the
intricate ways in which the characters leap and bound from one place to
another. Yet the fights are not
interruptions in the story. Rather they
are the story, forcing Boon and the reader to feel like a feather tossed on the
waves. It’s a wild, fun ride.
Then there’s the twist.
While everyone is caught up chasing Boon and trying to retrieve the
ring, the city is attacked from outside.
The attackers are facsimiles of the Mongolian horde and they’ve found a
pseudo-Russian ally who’s an expert in cannons.
Boon finds himself fighting off an invading army while trying to escape
his own city guard. Almost in spite of
himself, he becomes a folk hero in his own hometown.
I know that some readers didn’t care for the fictional
setting of the book. They didn’t want a
Shinecea instead of China. They didn’t want a pseudo-Russia instead of
the real thing. I understand the
complaint to some degree. Some of my
favorite novels are historical fiction set in the real world. And it can be difficult to keep track of all
of these names. Yet I don’t quite agree
with the complaint. In this case, I like
that this doesn’t have to be our world.
I like that Dixon
and company can take inspiration from our own history while also having the
artistic license to fashion a world of their own. The reader doesn’t have to worry himself
about anachronisms. It’s okay that in
this world, the Russians introduce the cannon to the Chinese instead of the
other way around. The fictional world
allows the book to create its own setting.
And with a book this good, I can’t complain about that.
Issues 7-12: The Hell
of Hungry Dragons     
This is easily my favorite arc in the entire series. The first one is pretty good, but it has to
spend time setting everything in place.
For this one, everything is already in place and the story can jump
straight into the action. Which it does.
Boon likes having the Ring of Staffs. Who wouldn’t want a ring that makes you a
master of weapons? But he has no desire
to hang onto the dangerous scroll of the Hell of Hungry Dragons. He thinks that he smartly tricks the Judge
into taking it off of his hands. His
mentor, the monkey PoPo, knows that you don’t give a dangerous artifact to a
dangerous man and berates him heavily for it.
The monkey is right. The Judge
uses the scroll to torture a man who defied him. The plan goes awry. The dragons escape. The town is overrun with giant dragons. And Boon must once again save the day.
As I said, this is my favorite arc. It keeps up all of the action of the
first. Boon is still on the run and
trying to fight pretty much everybody.
But the relationships are deeper.
Boon and the Judge now know each other.
And Boon has learned that the Judge is not a man to be trusted. Boon and the Silken Ghost now know each other
as well. The Ghost knows that she has to
occasionally ally herself with Boon but that doesn’t mean that she likes it, or
him. Boon’s friends are shown to have
played a larger role than anticipated.
While Boon was stealing the two artifacts, the two friends had made off
with another great treasure: the Phoenix Heart.
There are shifting loyalties and allegiances.
And, of course, all of this is happening while everybody is
either fighting off or running from giant, hungry dragons. Fast action, complications and huge, hungry dragons:
how can you go wrong?
Plus, Jeff Johnson just keeps getting better. In the first arc, he did a great job of
depicting the fluidity of battle. Now,
he gets to draw dragons. They’re
fiercesome, yet beautiful at the same time.
They’re as powerful as the Silken Ghost is graceful. You find yourself smiling at the art. It’s just that nice to look at, and it
perfectly compliments the light-hearted action of the story.
Issues 13-18: The Phoenix Heart
This third arc is another good one, even if it’s not quite
as incredible as “The Hell of Hungry Dragons.”
At the end of that story, Judge X’ain had been killed. Which is good. However, the princess had been swept up into
the scroll of the Hell of Hungry Dragons.
Which is bad. Boon and the grandmother
of thieves conspire to free the princess from the scroll without releasing the
dragons again. But, unsurprisingly, the
plan goes awry. They unleash a legion of
ghosts and the city of Zhumar
is overwhelmed once more.
Dixon
does a great job of complicating the current character’s relationships while
also introducing new ones. Judge X’ain
is one of the many ghosts to go free and he goes right back to trying to run
his town. But this time, he’s a ghost
which makes him even more ruthless with the added ability of possessing anybody
he wants to. Meanwhile, the Emperor has
sent his own operatives to Zhumar. One
is an assassin, tasked with killing Boon Sai Hong and retrieving the artifacts
for the Emperor. The other is a new
governor for the city. X’ain is dead
after all.
Yet even as Dixon
complicates the action, he gives us answers to earlier mysteries. In the first issue, Boon had attempted to
steal three artifacts of great power- the Ring of Staffs, the scroll of the
Hell of Hungry Dragons and the Phoenix Heart.
The first arc showed us the power of the Ring of Staffs. The second arc showed us the danger of the
scroll of the Hell of Hungry Dragons.
And this third arc shows us what the Phoenix Heart can do. Questions answered. Mysteries solved. Dixon
doesn’t string the audience along any longer than he has to.
Plus, in this arc, he finally resolves the mystery of the
Silken Ghost. By this time, Boon is
pretty sure that the princess is the heroine.
However, the old scholar from the first issue is one of the many ghosts
released by the Phoenix Heart. The ghost
goes to his daughter who we now discover is the Silken Ghost. Again, Dixon
teased us with a mystery and gave us the answer before we tired of it.
Jeff Johnson does an admirable job of illustrating a wide
variety of ghosts. However, you can’t
fight ghosts with a staff and a sword.
So the action scenes aren’t quite as spectacular as we’re used to
seeing.
For that reason, among others, I think that this third arc
isn’t quite as excellent as the second.
It’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination. It’s even the equal of the first. It’s just that the second arc is that
outstanding.
Issues 19-24: The
Wishing Doll
After a year and a half of excellent issues, Way of the Rat
begins to stumble at this point. The
big disappointment is the departure of penciller Jeff Johnson. It’s understandable as CrossGen was beginning
to have financial troubles at this point and Johnson wisely left the company
before things got really bad. But it
certainly had a negative impact on this book. 
This arc is drawn by three different artists: Mike Perkins,
Luke Ross and Rod Whigham. Both Ross and
Whigham had done scheduled fill-ins for the series before. Perkins had been Steve Epting’s inker on Crux
before trying his own hand at pencils.
Unfortunately, Perkins’ style doesn’t really work here. Epting has a more realistic style and Perkins
does a great job of following that. It
works on El Cazador and Captain America,
but not on Way of the Rat. This is a fun
kung fu movie and Perkins’ more realistic take removes a lot of the
whimsy. Luke Ross does a much better job
with his two issues. He manages to
capture the beauty and the whimsy of the title.
He’s a much better fit here than he had been on Sojourn. Even at the time, I could see him taking over
Way of the Rat on a permanent basis.
However, he didn’t have Johnson’s flair for the fight scenes. He didn’t draw the after-images as Johnson
did on this title or as Scott McDaniel had done on Nightwing. The Perkins issue had action without
whimsy. The Ross issues seemed to have
whimsy without action.
Unfortunately, the final three issues were drawn by Rod
Whigham. I don’t remember being
particularly upset by his earlier fill-in issues but his work here just isn’t
up to the earlier standards of the title.
He doesn’t have either the action or the whimsy down. PoPo just doesn’t seem as amusing. Plus, he’s supposed to draw an especially
sultry sultan’s daughter. This new
character is set up as a romantic interest for Boon, further complicating his
relationships with the princess and the Silken Ghost. But the sultan’s daughter, as drawn by
Whigham, isn’t pretty at all. These
issues illustrate how much the penciller contributes towards making characters
likable. Unfortunately, it illustrates
the point negatively.
The story itself isn’t that bad. Dixon
has introduced yet another mystical artifact: a wishing doll. Boon’s friends accidentally wish themselves
to a grand treasure room that’s also home to a vicious monster. Boon dumbly wishes himself there as
well. The rest of the arc follows Boon
and his friends as they run around the treasure room trying to avoid the
monster and escape. PoPo is eventually
sent out for help and he’s the one who finds the sultan’s daughter. Meanwhile, the grandmother of the thieves
works on a wish that will bring everyone home without complication.
And yet another complication arrives in the city of Zhumar. Ever since the first arc, the citizens of
Zhumar have incorrectly been calling Boon “Poon.” Now, the real Poon has come to Zhumar to
reclaim his name. And Poon is the bearer
of the Ring of Fists. There’s a pretty
cool fight scene between Poon with his Ring of Fists and the Silken Ghost who
acquired the Ring of Blades earlier in the series. It’s a nice confrontation and a nice way to
keep the Silken Ghost involved in the series while Boon is banished from
Zhumar. It continues Dixon’s mode of introducing new complications
through interesting new characters.
It could have been a good story. But with the constantly changing and often
sub-standard art, it just doesn’t hold up.
Instead, it becomes obvious that Johnson had contributed greatly to the
tone, the action and the like-ability of the series. There was the possibility that the series
could have recovered, especially if Luke Ross took over. He seemed capable of capturing the action and
has done a great job with other martial arts series like Dark Horse’s Samurai:
Heaven and Earth. It was not to be. Despite relatively strong sales, Way of the
Rat was one of the many titles canceled because of CrossGen’s mounting
financial difficulties. The end result
is that the title went out with a whimper instead of a bang. But for 18 issues, the Way of the Rat was a
fast slam-bang action fest. And that’s
always fun.
The End.
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