Mosquito War

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Mosquito Wars is the 3rd work from Ji-Hoon Jeong (JH), following I Have Something to Tell You and The Horizon. While an enjoyable series overall, it does feel undermined by its mismanagement of tone and relevancy.

In its beginning, Mosquito Wars is uber grim and uber serious. The stakes that are established are thoroughly unforgiving, the immediacy and danger of the threat is very real and felt, and hope lies on a string balance which could be lost at any moment. I've got to hand it to JH for doing a great job establishing the scene through his knack for combining his artistic talents with cinematic ... scene-setting. But then it all changes when suddenly, a new element aggressively bursts to the fore: humor. This may sound welcome, and perhaps even necessary, yet so much is profused that it creates a huge imbalance. The previously established seriousness evaporates almost instantly as the reader is barraged with silly jokes ranging from fourth wall breaks to characters prancing around in the nude. It's strange that instead of beginning with a balance, these two elements were kept separate like oil and water. This creates a real tonal inconsistency which Mosquito Wars somewhat slowly adjusts and recalibrates as it heads into its middle section.

In its mid-section, Mosquito Wars has a more comfortable balance of humor, seriousness, and action. In a sense, it becomes more like your typical, well-balanced superpower action series. Characters duke it out, ideals are thrown about, and unique abilities are put on display, all while it inches towards the final confrontation. The issue with the mid-section is with how it doesn't really add much to the story. Despite how exciting the fights may get or however interesting the abilities are, it could be plucked out and the story wouldn't really be affected. In the afterword, JH reveals that the middle section was not in the original plan of the series. This admission only undermined the mid-section's value for me and made it feel very tacked-on. After all, nothing of real substantial value happens here, aside from one "power-up" moment which itself is a bit random and could have happened at another time.

The finale is where the series turns into what I'm feeling is characteristic of JH: unrestrained commentary on human nature and its failings. The end is pretty bold and strong, and stands out despite the missteps taken to get there. It isn't able to stick its message very strongly (considering the bloated middle), but it's able to make itself heard enough to get its message across.

There are some elements in the finale that highlight how lacking Mosquito Wars is in world-building, which overall is slight and mostly functions to explain certain elements necessary for the plot to make sense. Whatever world-building elements are introduced lead to more questions, but they are not answered. As for the artwork, its pretty nice, particularly in the action set pieces which utilize the webtoon format’s vertical canvas for some very, very slick action scenes. Some elements are lacking however, such as backgrounds which are rather bland and lack detail.

[I read the translation by Webtoon]