Writer/Artist: Minhee Kim
Publisher: Lezhin (Formerly NETCOMICS)
Publication Date: October 30, 2019
Rating: Teen
Genre: Non-VSC, Supernatural, Coming of Age, Drama, Romance
Naeun didn’t know what to expect when her parents moved from Seoul to the suburbs. But she never would have guessed that her new house would be full of strange yellow entities. Or that her teacher, Mr. Moon, not only lives next door but can also defeat these spirits with a yellow sword he pulls from his chest. What is Mr. Moon’s secret? What about these strange beings? Forget all that, though; will Naeun, a girl with a limp, ever be accepted by her classmates?
A huge nose blocking the way to the stairs
Monster hunting stories are a dime a dozen in comics. So the first thing that stood out to me about Midnight Partner is just how weird its monsters are. The yellow entities can manifest as anything from a room of hanging corpses to giant noses. At times they are quite funny; an early example appears as a huge, beautiful leg that (in an end-of-chapter cliffhanger to die for) steps out from behind a wall. But there’s always a sense of strangeness to these creatures. Artist Minhee Kim heightens the contrast between natural and supernatural by keeping to a strict color scheme of nighttime blues and monstrous yellows.
Yellow entities feed on the feelings of sleeping people. Touching them infects the mind with these repressed emotions. They aren’t physically strong, but they can regenerate. Even slaying them with a yellow sword doesn’t solve the circumstance that made them. The giant funny yellow leg, for instance, stems from Naeun’s classmate’s not-so-funny eating disorder. The most important part of the battle always comes afterwards, when Naeun must decide what she can do to help her friends with their very real, non-supernatural problems.
A sword from his chest?
In that respect, Midnight Partner is less a story about monster slaying than it is about feelings. Each encounter represents a new opportunity for Naeun to learn about other people. It’s not easy for her of course. Naeun is a teenage girl with poor grades who is judged by her peers for having a physical disability. Minhee Kim finds just the right balance between her adolescent goofiness, and the real frustration she faces at living a life just out of step with her peers.
That’s why Mr. Moon is such a big help. He sees Naeun’s problems from an adult perspective and gives her just enough guidance to navigate them on her own. This eventually leads to a “teacher student relationship” story, which I was wary of going in. To Kim’s credit, though, she has Naeun graduate from high school and even start a job before Moon becomes an option for her. That leads to the second part of the story, where the scope expands from small-scale hunts to a pharmaceutical conspiracy.
Not with a bang but with a nap
I’ll admit that this second part does not work for me as well as the first. There’s just something about intimate encounters with the supernatural in rural spaces that I find lends itself so much better to Lee’s horror chops. It doesn’t help that the plot totally falls to pieces in the final chapters, ending Naeun’s story not with a bang but with a nap. Despite this, I admire that Minhee Kim does something that many other stories of this type do not. She lets Naeun mature from a child to an adult. She also makes sure to emphasize that even after Naeun becomes self-sufficient, she continues to encounter new challenges that require her to keep deciding who she is.
Minhee Kim’s art, on the other hand, remains consistent from beginning to end. Unlike other Korean webcomics, the series is published as consecutive pages rather than as a vertical strip. Manga fans (especially those of shojo or josei comics) might find Midnight Partner to be more accessible to them as a result. Kim is particularly good at full-space sequences that deliver supernatural spectacle. On the other hand, I caught multiple failures of perspective and anatomy drawing throughout the comic. I will leave it to readers to determine whether Kim’s undeniable style makes up for her uneven artistic fundamentals.
Ewwwwwwwww!
I’d recommend the first half of Midnight Partner to just about anybody. Those invested in Naeun’s journey will have to decide for themselves whether to plunge into the woolier second half. Regardless, I’d label the series yet another pleasant surprise hailing from the world of Korean comics. At turns hilarious, scary and heartfelt, it’s a distinctly original comic that has me raring to seek out Kim’s other works.
