Review by C.J. Bunce
After my first review of the first volume of the Yan manhua series here at borg, I should have guessed writer-artist Chang Sheng was going to aim even higher with the second volume. I didn’t expect how much he would lean into the complexity of the best kind of superhero journeys, putting together a group of superheroes, working inside a layered tale that matches the excitement of your favorite crossovers and mash-ups. With even more of the best action choreography you’ll find in any comic series today, Titan Manga’s English translation of Yan–Volume 2 collects the next 350+ pages of the journey of heroine Yan Tieh-Hua. It’s available now for pre-order here at Amazon. More than any other series I’ve read this year, I can’t wait to learn what happens in the third and final volume, coming in January 2026. This second act is all about raising the stakes, and fleshing out a powerhouse ensemble of super-powered characters that could inhabit their own universe like Marvel or DC.
It also amps up the storytelling like a grand comic book crossover. Parallels to the benchmark X-Men: Days of Future Past abound, from young Miku Higa, who can see five minutes into the future, to a new mystery man not unlike Terminator’s Kyle Reese called Rabbit Herlock–who can teleport like the X-Men’s Nightcrawler and Blink, and save the day like Quicksilver, to a robot army of destruction. Yan, Miku, Detective Lai, and Herlock must resolve their differences long enough to face an A.I. creation called Thirteen that looks like Doctor Manhattan and an even more evil villain, a powerful woman from Yan’s past who let it loose.
Herlock uses a steampunk-designed device to travel across space and time, and his appearance and a diabolical creation from a company called Flora Tech make this installment even more science fiction than the first. Is the motive of the head of Flora Tech as simple as exposing those with super powers to the rest of us? Miku is aware of five prophesies, but she is young and inexperienced. What if she is seeing everything all wrong? And will we learn the extent of her powers in Volume 3?
In the first volume we learned Yan was an actress in the Peking Opera whose family was brutally murdered. Yan is believed dead in an explosion, and years later Detective Lei, a retired cop, returns to the cold case he worked on as a young cop when a woman appears, purporting to live stream the murder of a man she believes responsible for the crime. But was any of that real? Years later Yan is hounded by a spirit in the form of origami characters. Visually she resembles Marvel’s hardened and battle-damaged heroine Jessica Jones, and she grows into a fierce and determined warrior. I compared Chang’s work to Atomic Blonde, Fallen, Tru Calling, Alice in Borderland, Jessica Jones, Mai The Psychic Girl, and The Crow. The second volume is more like of an epic crossover of the Marvel universe.
Taiwanese writer-artist Chang Sheng is well-known for his work including the acclaimed novel Oldman, a story of a vengeful queen. This manhua (manga but Chinese created) features more of his stunning pencil and pen work, page after page of battle scenes. As with the first volume, the second volume’s colorful, shiny, and sturdy, cardboard-covered, trade paperback also sports the best visual design of any book this year.
A Terminator-inspired A.I. menace. A teleporting man from a parallel world. A girl who can see five minutes into the future. A talking origami spirit. Political influence and corruption. An insider willing to help. A bridge between traditional Chinese culture and new world technology. Add the second volume of Yan to your pull list now at Elite Comics or your local comic shop–or pre-order it here at Amazon, slated for release September 9, 2025. It’s one of the best fiction series of the year.
