Not your average boy-meets-boy story.

Okay, so raise your hand if you loved Fake, but the depiction of the private lives of New York City police detectives made you laugh out loud. Repeatedly. That would be me. So needless to say, I was really psyched to get to work on Off*Beat, where the New York locations help to create a realistic and really cool setting for a fantastic, smart and very sweet story. Tory's got an overactive imagination, as we see in these chapters, but when it comes to Colin, his across-the-street neighbor, his imaginings may not actually be that far off. From transferring schools, taking detailed notes in a journal and raiding the guidance office, Tory is determined to find out who (or what) his curious (and curiously attractive) neighbor really is!

~Lillian Diaz-Przybyl, Editor

Meet 15-year-old Tory Blake, a self-proclaimed genius who is somewhat antisocial and more than a bit cynical about the world. Life is just tedious for Tory...until the day an attractive but secretive boy his own age moves in across the street.

Tory becomes obsessed by his intriguing new neighbor and begins documenting his every move. But this pursuit of friendship—and possibly something more—leads Tory to the one thing he wasn't expecting to discover.

You like what you've seen so far? Well, you ain't seen nothin' yet! Things are just starting to get interesting for Tory, and his relationship with Colin develops slowly, but surely. Through book one and beyond their friendship deepens as Tory learns more about Colin's past and the mysterious Gaia Project!

Jen Lee Quick has crafted a wildly imaginative romantic drama, filled with all the hopes, dreams and anxiety of a teenager trying to make sense of his place in the world.

Jen Lee Quick:

Creator Website

Likes: movies, animation, comics, videogames, cooking, sleeping

Dislikes: television, legal/political stuff, phone calls, noise pollution

History: Jen attended The School of Visual Arts where she earned her BFA in traditional animation. As an undergrad freelanced for White Wolf Publishing, Central Park Media, Othervision, Broken Lizard Films, and Plympton Studios. Her previously published comic work includes Soul Union, published in I.C.Entertainment's anthology Amerimanga, and Oni Press's graphic novel Once in a Blue Moon.

Tory Blake:
Tory's very bright, a self-declared genius who possesses an uncanny sense of time and a photographic memory. He gets bored easily, but he has a wild imagination and constantly daydreams. A bit introverted due to a superiority complex, he has few close friends. Tory's life was pretty normal—if not totally boring—until a mysterious boy, Colin Stevens, moves into the apartment across the street. Learning more about his new neighbor quickly becomes an obsession. Although he lives in Queens, Tory commutes every morning to a private school in Long Island in order to stalk him. When properly motivated, Tory's patience in pursuing his goals is unlimited. He meticulously records his observations of Colin, noting every detail down to the minute (and sometimes even second) in which it occurred.

Colin Stevens:
Tory's mysterious new neighbor. He's quiet, extremely antisocial, and secretive. He generally regards other people with a coldness that comes across as being rude. Due to this, he developed a reputation at school for being a loner and a jerk. Although he is always studying, he seems to only have average grades. His attendance at school is poor enough to draw concern from teachers, and he is constantly on the brink of being expelled. Outside of school, he only leaves his apartment to go to church and to travel. Tory discovers that Colin is a key person in a scientific research program called The Gaia Project.

Paul Patterson:
Paul is the college student who rents out the apartment above Tory's. He is Tory's only real friend and somewhat of an intellectual match. He makes a good living off graphic design work and still manages to go to college full-time in Manhattan as a film major. He's good with computers and dabbles in some amateur hacking and program writing. Paul has a very laid-back personality and liberal, down-to-earth mindset. He often plays the role of Tory's voice-of-reason and gives the younger boy a lot of sound advice. He loves Ms. Blake's cooking and alwas tries to steal Tory's leftovers.

Mary Grace Blake:
Ms. Blake is Tory's mother, a hardworking single parent. She works in a management position at a small advertising agency in Manhattan. Head of the graphic design department, she also owns the apartment duplex in which she and Tory reside, renting out the upstairs apartment to Paul. Ms. Blake worries a lot about Tory, but since Tory has a habit of talking down to his poor mother, she often resorts to asking Paul how her son is doing. She's very patient and mild-tempered to a fault, and almost never scolds Tory, no matter how he speaks to her.

Dr. Dustin Garrets:
Dr. Garrets is the founder and lead scientist of The Gaia Project. He claimed to have retired from science, but in actuality, he met Colin's parents and started his mysterious new project. After Colin's parents passed away, Garrets gained full custody of the boy. Rigid and obsessed with his work, Garrets treats Colin more as a colleague than a son. Insensitive to Colin's age and personal interests, he encourages Colin to pursue science and discourages him from making any friends or wasting time or money on frivolous things.

Mandy Townslan:
Amanda is a student at St. Peter's who has the same science class as Tory and Colin. Although pretty and popular, Mandy seems to be drawn to the people who are the most distant. She always tries to befriend both Colin and Tory. She's a gossip and bad at science, so she asks Tory for help with homework while she meddles in his business with Colin. Tory finds her to be a good listener when he needs to vent. A very feminine girl, Mandy loves all things cute, and chooses to be a vegetarian out of deference to animal rights. She is very outgoing and plans on pursuing a career in some type of social services.

From Publishers Weekly

Mystery, obsession and a whiff of life in New York City blend to make Quick's manga an intriguing entree to the compulsive world of Christopher "Tory" Blake, a high school student living in Queens. He seems like a regular teenager, but for some unknown reason he's developed a fascination with the boy who recently moved in across the street, Colin Stephens. Why do Colin and his guardian keep the blinds drawn and live in a pricey duplex when there's just two of them? In pursuit of answers, Tory enrolls in Colin's school. But Colin remains frustratingly unknowable, despite Tory's schemes. Snooping through school records, running license plate numbers and even tutoring Colin in physics don't pan out as Tory hopes, although he does uncover a few tidbits. What is the Gaia Project and how is Colin's guardian involved? Why does Colin keep missing school? Most intriguingly for the reader, why on earth is Tory so deeply and unshakably obsessed with someone he barely knows? Although Quick does nothing to clarify this final question, her likable characters and crisp, convincing drawing make the reader willing to stick with the story and more than ready for the answers volume two should bring.

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Manga Life

Author Jen Lee Quick tosses out clues about Colin and his guardian at just the right pace to keep the reader interested. As in any good mystery, the first few clues serve only to raise more questions. Colin's guardian, Dr. Garrett, is mixed up with something called the Gaia Project, and Colin seems to be ill. With his almost photographic memory and his notebooks filled with facts and figures, Tory is a good detective, but his obsession with Colin seems creepy at times, as his upstairs neighbor Paul likes to point out.

The cast is rounded out with several likeable secondary characters. Paul, who lives upstairs from Tory, is a college student and a graphic designer who drops in frequently to mooch some of Tory's mom's cooking. Paul's computer skills complement Tory's observations to keep the clues coming. Blonde and perky Mandy, Tory and Colin's classmate, breaks the popular-girl stereotype a bit with her attraction to loners and misfits. Tory's mom is overworked but affectionate, but, in typical teenage fashion, he brushes her away.

If there is a weakness to this book, it's Quick's rendering of faces, which all have the same snub-nosed profile. On the other hand, her figures are never stiff but gesture in a natural manner, and the settings are well drawn without being overwhelming....

Off*Beat is an intriguing mystery that taps into the universal curiosity we have about the people around us. I'm looking forward to volume 2.

~Brigid Alverson

Copyright © Manga Life

From Sleep is for the Weak

How Good Little Boys Become Stalkers

Christopher "Tory" Blake is a 15-year-old New Yorker with a mop of red hair, a blindingly-high I.Q., and an over-developed sense of entitlement. He lives alone with his mother in Queens and is regularly forced to fend off his neighbor Paul, a slacker college student obsessed with eating other people's food. Tory—like so many kids you knew in high school—thinks the world is boring because he's oh so smart, and bemoans a lack of stimuli for his giant brain.

One day, Tory's lame teenage life is interrupted when a mysterious boy named Colin moves in across the street—in the middle of the night. Strangely intrigued (and with nothing better to do), Tory starts using his considerable smarts to find out more about the elusive Colin...but the more Tory investigates, the bigger the mystery becomes. Tory eventually spirals from curiosity into obsession, and it becomes clear that whatever Tory can discover about Colin pales in comparison to what Tory can discover...about...himself!...

Although TOKYOPOP has marketed Off*Beat as a drama/romance and Quick herself admits to the story having "a bit of shounen ai,"Off*Beat is largely a coming-of-age story that speaks to anyone who struggled through adolescence (read: everyone who ever existed). Off*Beat is engaging and believable, and is told in a beautiful East/West hybrid: Quick's storytelling has the subtlety and thematic significance of indie comics with the faster pacing and clearer focus of manga. Quick's art is practiced and smooth, and her creative use of varying tones and backgrounds does a good job of keeping the eye interested. While I'm sure some fans will dislike Tory and co.'s dumpy noses and big lips, Quick's character designs are appropriate and unique. Seriously, what 15-year-old boy who prefers reading in the dark to exercising isn't floppy-looking? Her variety of character designs adds to the realism of the story, as does her fantastic representation of Queens.

Probably the most impressive aspect of this manga, though, is Quick's expert story buildup. Plenty of manga and even respected anime titles...like to waste the audience's time with useless filler episodes, beaten-to-death messages, and/or vapid character development for bad characters. Almost every single scene in Off*Beat has a significant purpose, be it to give depth to the setting or to illustrate Tory's escalating obsession; as a result, character actions are justified, the story is linear, and everything is terribly believable. Quick's buildup is so successful that even simple discoveries carry a surprising amount of weight...watching Tory peek under his quiet neighbors' blinds to find bars on the windows? Cryptic as hell....

Admittedly, Off*Beat may not be everyone's cup of tea. Those who are uncomfortable with mild themes of shounen ai and want explosions in their manga should go read...I don't know, something about fire robots. But if you want to learn how to write and draw a manga, at least consider studying Off*Beat. Jen Quick does something every OEL and Japanese/Korean/Chinese mangaka should strive toward—a fantastic job. 4.5 stars out of 5.

~Lianne Sentar

Copyright © Lianne Sentar