MYSTIC POP-UP BAR
Writer/Artist: Baehyesu
Edited by: Youngsoo Shim
Translation: Kristianna Lee and Carolyn Park
Primary Quality Control: Peih-Gee Law
Typesetting: Amanda McMillian
Secondary Quality Control: Cherisse Yanit Nadal
Platform: Tapas
Publication Date: February 19, 2021
Rating: Teen
Genre: VSC (Korea), Drama, Comedy, Slice of Life
Somewhere out there in the night there is a mysterious pop-up bar. Its proprietress, Wolju, serves delicious street food to those in need. Whether young or old, living or dead, human or not human–there may well be a seat there for you, one day.
Do you enjoy reading comics about people eating delicious food? How about comics in which people at the end of their rope pass on to the afterlife? Mystic Pop-up Bar mixes these two classic genres together. It has the same comfy appeal as Midnight Diner, the Japanese TV drama about a late-night chef who always knows exactly what meal to serve his patrons. Yet it also reminds me of Death Parade, another great series about bickering unknowable death gods and their human charges.
Charbroiled Skewers
Mystic Popup Bar is divided into episodic stories named after meals, like Salted Grilled Mackerel or Charbroiled Skewers. Each follows Wolju as she serves a new patron and learns their tale. The series has kept to this format now for 359 episodes. When you sit down to read Mystic Pop-up Bar, you know exactly what you’re going to get.
The writer and artist Baehyesu, though, finds plenty of room to experiment within the comic’s set recipe. Some stories are told out of chronological order. Others cut away from reality to flesh out the supernatural dreamworld where Wolju holds court. On one memorable occasion, Wolju is visited at the bar not by a human but by a cat.
Characters communicate in full, rich sentences. When a cat yowls at a man, the man does not ask, “what does this cat want?” Instead he asks, “why does it feel like I suddenly encountered a ferocious tiger after gently doing exercise by a mineral spring at the foot of a mountain?” Each member of the cast carries themselves as an individual with psychology rather than as a trope. It’s an essential quality for a series like this to have, which lives or dies by the audience’s affection for the characters.
Salted Grilled Mackerel
Careful readers will also notice small connections between each storyline. A curly-haired woman glimpsed in the first storyline becomes a major player in the second. Meanwhile, red hands haunt those on the border between life and death. While another author might explain everything to the reader from the beginning, Baehyesu instead lets the reader connect the dots on their own.
Mystic Pop-up Bar’s art is not as polished as the storyline. Characters are drawn as simple, stiff mannequins that stare blankly from the page. There’s little sense of depth in the storyboarding, and Baehyesu rarely utilizes the potential of the vertical strip. The series hearkens back to an earlier era of webcomics where visual appeal was an exception rather than a given.
Chicken Soup
That said, I wouldn’t want to sell the series short. Mystic Pop-up Bar can be surprisingly atmospheric despite its spartan aesthetic. Baehyesu depicts the supernatural in a way that is both creepy and oddly matter-of-fact. The meals at the bar are also drawn in great detail even if the eating illustrations leave something to be desired. My favorite sequences in the comic drain away color and detail in favor of simple, direct expression. These play directly to Mystic Pop-up Bar’s strengths as a catharsis delivery device.
Mystic Pop-up Bar was adapted into a well-liked K-drama in 2020; three years later, it was recommended via Facebook by none other than former Korean president Moon Jae-in. Despite that pedigree, the source material is a humble comic that rarely exceeds its means. It’s not so different from simple chicken soup. Despite this, it has that X-factor which comes with having lived in the world. Some series that promise “comfort food” only ever deliver potato chips. I’ll happily take Baehyesu’s great chicken soup every time.
