Review: ‘Kaitō’84 #3’ Keep Treats Us To Time Travel Troubles

Welcome to the table,

Time to drop the needle on your favorite Tokyo jazz album, lean back, and dive into the world of Kaitō 84. Let’s get into it.

The team of writer Zack Rosenberg and artist Jared Cullum is still going strong in issue #3 as the past crashes into the present in a really interesting way.

Sasuké, a visitor from that past, tells Kaitō that his ancestral lines are converging, an event that apparently occurs every few generations. The reason for this temporal-existential-genealogical nonsense is a demonic entity named Jei, who is hell-bent on joining the gods and making even more mischief and malediction for the mortals who toil under their ever-watchful eye.

Just as Sasuké is revealing this lore in brilliant woodcut watercolor-drenched pages, special forces breaks the vibes of exposition to arrest Kaitō and crew, hauling them off to Osaka Police Headquarters.

Not all is lost, though, as Tomoe, a junior detective with a chip on her shoulder, interrogates Kaitō. We really get a sense as readers that they are two sides to the same coin. Both are going about a life’s mission to help those the system has overlooked and underserved. Both are weighed down with the baggage of self-imposed service; both headstrong and glib, making them perfect foils and more-than-likely friends if they don’t kill each other first.

That makes the next story beat even more amusing. Tomoe and Kaitō are teamed up by the former’s commanding officer at the police bureau in an off-the-record, non-sanctioned mission. Their objective: to recover the spear and root out the real villain of this whole bloody affair.

It’s so deliciously ’80s cop-drama that I was overjoyed when I saw the handful of panels telegraphing what was about to happen.

Rosenberg and Cullum continue to deliver amazing moments that make this whole book feel perfectly titled and really rewarding to read.

The art is still just as liquid and moody. It comes across like a rain-slick street blurred with well-framed story moments and some of the tightest colors and balanced palettes I have seen on the printed page.

The narrative is easy and economical, but not fluffy. It has weight to it even when not much is being said. Rosenberg picks the moment and drops just enough without making anything slow down as we drift across Cullum’s art. The whole thing creates a really meaningful comic-reading experience.

Soon after getting these off-the-record orders, Tomoe and Kaitō find their way to a mystical spring, complete with tiny dinosaurs (I see you, Spot) called Tokage. They are little dinosaur creatures that show up in Usagi Yojimbo and Space Usagi comics — often treated kinda like housepets. They act like cartoon dogs, and while they are not interacting with the cast in this issue, they are for sure in the foreground of a panel at this mystical location. So it was a rad nod to them for fans.

Tomoe and Kaitō go through a cloth entryway and appear to be somewhere else in time or space, and the issue draws to a close with some delightful development art.

This series has been a ton of fun, and this marks the 3rd of 5 projected issues we can expect. At this point, I am not sure if we are getting more of Kaitō and this fantastical, ’80s-inspired setting, but I am grateful we have been given what we have up to this point. This series has such a fun vibe and is really entertaining from cover-to-cover.

Until next time, my suspicion: we will get Kaitō fighting alongside Usagi before the series ends, but only time will tell!