Book Review: 悍将108 苏健著绘 (108 Furious Warriors)

The concept in 悍将108 苏健著绘 (108 Furious Warriors) is a modern sci-fi take on an old but popular Chinese novel Water Margin (水滸傳). The original story has 108 outlaws who gathered at Mount Liang (or Liangshan Marsh) to rebel against the government. In this concept art book, we have 108 furious warriors who are fighting against expeditioners who just cares about mining the planet for its resource.

The book is a large format 262-page hardcover published by 人民邮电出版社 (PTPress). The artist is 苏健 (Su Jian) and you can see more of his art on his Facebook page.

The interesting thing about this book or concept is all the characters are animals. This book reminds me instantly of Blacksad which also features a whole populated by anthropomorphic animals.

There are 108 characters, or warriors, and the designs look great. There's a lot of thought put into the designs and details. The only one thing that could be improved is the shape and sizes of the characters. All the character silhouettes belong to the lean and fit. Even the bear or shark are not much bigger than the goat or weasel. There is a lot of variety with the costumes but not the shapes.

The environment paintings look great too. There are also several pages of black and white ink sketches in great detail and those look awesome.

Since the book is in Chinese, it's probably not easy to find overseas. The ISBN is 9787115600295.

This book was borrowed from Basheer Graphic Books for review purposes. You can order the book from them. Check with Basheer on Facebook. Price is SGD 79.