The Labyrinth Sequal Books...Godawful or Not?

I saw these while perusing Amazon and read the reviews. Has anyone here read them and are they as horrible as the reviews say?


I do know that reading that, supposedly, the character of Sarah is cast aside to accommodate some cockamaimy storyline involving Jareth and Toby. Wasn't Toby the baby that Sarah had to rescue from the Goblin city? Wasn't he just a plot device in which to set forth the drama between Sarah and Jareth?

What gives?

Do you mean these?

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If so, they're not, strictly speaking, books. More like... western manga. The art is pretty terrible, though.

And your plot summary was accurate: after fifteen years, Jareth has lost his powers because what the fuck ever, Toby is now his heir despite being completely uninteresting, and Sarah is a schoolteacher who never got her dream of becoming a writer because Jareth took her dreams/wishes out of her and turned them into two-dimensional OC. Thanks a lot, Jareth.

Oh and also there's some more OCs with gratuitous Japanese(ish?) names running around. One of them apparently wants really really badly to be the White Witch or something, I dunno.

tl;dr it's a terrible story stuffed chockablock with OCs nobody cares about, whilst the only two characters people would read a sequel for—Jareth and Sarah—are off-screen 90% of the time.

And the art is pretty terrible.

Interestingly, the boys and were watching Labyrinth the other night, and we all agreed it's held up remarkably well over the years.

And wouldn't a sequel negate the whole purpose of the story, which I always thought was that the lessons Sarah learned while rescuing Toby and having to deal with Jareth's attraction to her made her grow up and realize that fantasies were just that; fleeting things that you couldn't hold onto, and that as hard as it was to accept, reality was preferable to simply being someone else's pawn?

It wasn't a movie that I ever thought of as needing a sequel. Particularly since Toby would've been far too young to have remembered any of it, and I got the idea that Sarah likely never told him what had happened.

I would love a Labyrinth sequel, but then one of those of the kind of 'Return to Oz', which is one of the most creepy movies I've ever seen. The world of the Labyrinth is already quite dark, but it would be fun to read a story in which it's turned even darker, maybe because Sarah had a mental breakdown. A bit like American McGee's Alice, I suppose. Yeah, I'd like that.

Those mangas? Shit, apart from the deceiving cover. Just don't bother.

I would love a Labyrinth sequel, but then one of those of the kind of 'Return to Oz', which is one of the most creepy movies I've ever seen. The world of the Labyrinth is already quite dark, but it would be fun to read a story in which it's turned even darker, maybe because Sarah had a mental breakdown. A bit like American McGee's Alice, I suppose. Yeah, I'd like that.

Those mangas? Shit, apart from the deceiving cover. Just don't bother.

Well, I kinda just buy the for the cover art, to be honest. Story is disappointing.. but that cover art... well....it's just freaking amazing. Actually, all of the covers are amazing. I kinda wish the artist who drew the cover did the whole thing, would be much better + make it worth a long flick over Jareth pretties, so yeah.

Oh and -is new/ex-lurker-
Hi~!

pearlescent wrote:

Well, I kinda just buy the for the cover art, to be honest. Story is disappointing.. but that cover art... well....it's just freaking amazing. Actually, all of the covers are amazing. I kinda wish the artist who drew the cover did the whole thing, would be much better + make it worth a long flick over Jareth pretties, so yeah.

Oh and -is new/ex-lurker-
Hi~!

The artist who did the cover is Kouyu Shurei. She actually has her own manga. It's called Alichino. You can read it online. It's beautiful, but slow, and it kind of stops after tankouban 3. Still, every picture is a piece of art. You might like to check it out if you like her haunting, dead-eyed, eerily pretty bishounen style.

kleine_kat wrote:

pearlescent wrote:

Well, I kinda just buy the for the cover art, to be honest. Story is disappointing.. but that cover art... well....it's just freaking amazing. Actually, all of the covers are amazing. I kinda wish the artist who drew the cover did the whole thing, would be much better + make it worth a long flick over Jareth pretties, so yeah.

Oh and -is new/ex-lurker-
Hi~!

The artist who did the cover is Kouyu Shurei. She actually has her own manga. It's called Alichino. You can read it online. It's beautiful, but slow, and it kind of stops after tankouban 3. Still, every picture is a piece of art. You might like to check it out if you like her haunting, dead-eyed, eerily pretty bishounen style.

Oh wow, didn't know that. Thanks, will probably have a look:)

kleine_kat wrote:

pearlescent wrote:

Well, I kinda just buy the for the cover art, to be honest. Story is disappointing.. but that cover art... well....it's just freaking amazing. Actually, all of the covers are amazing. I kinda wish the artist who drew the cover did the whole thing, would be much better + make it worth a long flick over Jareth pretties, so yeah.

Oh and -is new/ex-lurker-
Hi~!

The artist who did the cover is Kouyu Shurei. She actually has her own manga. It's called Alichino. You can read it online. It's beautiful, but slow, and it kind of stops after tankouban 3. Still, every picture is a piece of art. You might like to check it out if you like her haunting, dead-eyed, eerily pretty bishounen style.

I have the first volume of Alichino. I bought it specifically for drawing reference for those pretty, pretty eyes. (also, great bird drawings)

Who drew the inside of this comic and what does it look like?

Sakurelf wrote:

I have the first volume of Alichino. I bought it specifically for drawing reference for those pretty, pretty eyes. (also, great bird drawings)

Who drew the inside of this comic and what does it look like?

Apparently the artist of this comic is Chris Lie. You can read the first few pages of the first manga here. It's not horribly bad, but it just...fails, somehow, at least in my opinion.
Somehow this cannot compare to this.

Also, I know it's hard to draw existing people, but Chris Lie COULD have done better than this. I mean, he had this to inspire him and that's all he comes up with?! That's not Jareth! That's...nothing.

The problem is, if Lie had done the cover as well, I wouldn't have been half as disappointed. I simply wouldn't have bought the comic, because I read comics for the art, not the story. Of course I prefer it if the comic has a good story as well, but it doesn't bug me so much if the story isn't great but just ok. If I want a good story, I'll read a book. For comics, the focus definitely lies on the artwork. This artwork has nothing to draw me in. It's not bad, it's just so random I want it to stay the hell away from The Labyrinth.

I see what you mean, it's definitely "wannabe". It's boring, lacklustre, and lacking, I dunno, personality. It can't quite decide if it wants to be manga style or not.

The level of talent is probably alongside teh creator of Bizenghast, but Marty has her own personal style, and adds character to her creations. She doesn't have the best perspective, but the story makes up for that.

When I flip through the Labrynth pages, I see a whole lot of "blah"