MY SASSY GIRL: Volume 1

One day on the subway, Geon-woo notices the cute backside of a pretty girl who's throwing up—and there his troubles begin. The drunken "Sassy Girl" vomits on another passenger, calls Geon-woo "Honey" (leading everyone to think he's her friend) and passes out on the train. Taking her to a cheap motel to dry out, Geon-woo is ensnared by her sexiness, and an unlikely relationship begins. The Sassy Girl is a master of manipulating both Geon-woo's libido and sense of responsibility. When he balks at ditching school to meet her, she shows up at his class and tells his teacher she's on her way to get an abortion and Geon-woo is the father. Min's art shows Geon-woo's helpless mortification by depicting him as a child as he gets into increasingly worse scrapes. By the end of this volume, our hero is in jail, and readers will be as confused by the Sassy Girl's erratic nature as poor Geon-Woo is. While some might substitute the words "insane and manipulative" for "sassy," there's a certain dark humor as Geon-woo is drawn deeper into the Sassy Girl's world. Kim, who wrote the popular Korean movie of the same name and subject matter, manages to show a few flashes of vulnerability that keep the heroine from being entirely terrifying. Min's art is clean and expressive, with many vivid and atmospheric details of Korean life. This work is romance as black comedy—readers may laugh or simply feel uncomfortable depending on how much truth they see in it. (Oct.)