“HIDEO IS NOT A HERO”
With Dark Horse Manga’s I Am a Hero Omnibus Volume 1 hitting stores soon, I need to give readers a heads up that our main character—Hideo Suzuki—is not a hero. He could be. He could very well grow into a heroic figure—but at the start of Omnibus 1, he’s a broken, impressionable man stuck in a rut. He has a girlfriend who admires his scattered, unreliable brain (somehow), but it’s hard for him to tell her his true feelings. Given time, Hideo’s lady could have possibly helped him grow a spine . . . but their time is running out . . .
Hideo is also quite impressionable, susceptible to absorbing incorrect and heinous notions from an older office manager he works with. Some of the things Hideo says to himself in the opening chapter of Omnibus 1 are actually things overheard in his office life and “parroted aloud” as if Hideo really believed it all. So cut Hideo some slack when he first starts babbling. (And Hideo babbles a lot when he’s stressed!) Hideo does want to change the manga industry (he has an optimistic streak), he’d love to change his fortune (since his career is on the skids), and he tries to love his girlfriend (but can’t be honest with her). And unless Hideo starts thinking for himself, he could lose everything.
We meet our quirky protagonist, flaws and all, and we’re reminded of ourselves. If something went down in real life—a real zombie apocalypse, a Leprecaun invasion, crippling earthquakes—how ready would we be to face surprising horrors in our homes and neighborhoods? Would our personal quirks wind up oddly saving us? As you read our I Am a Hero Omnibus series, keep in mind that Hideo—our “hero”—is an unreliable narrator with a lot of personal issues—and more characters will join him in the fight for survival soon. A powerhouse storyteller, I Am a Hero creator Kengo Hanazawa has us rooting for Hideo to change and become not only a better person—but a confident fighter as he tries to keep himself and a few friends alive.
-Philip R. Simon