The Fall 2024 K-Comics Guide

Checkmate (18+)

What's It About? 

Detached. Disinterested. Dispassionate. All words used to describe Soohyun and his uneventful, mediocre life. He's nothing like he once was. As a teen, he had a fire, a passion burning within, all thanks to one person: bright-haired and brilliant Eunsung. Throughout high school, Soohyun obsessively competed with Eunsung for the top spot in all things, only to consistently come in second place. And as high school ended without victory, so did his passion for anything. But all this changes when, as an adult, he suddenly sees Eunsung again—except the other man is in the news, embroiled in scandal! Seeing Eunsung in a state of shame ignites something in Soohyun. Fiery hate, long thought dead, comes alive within him once more.

Determined to see a fallen Eunsung with his own eyes, Soohyun reinvents himself as a reporter and begins dishing out one dirty article after another. He's sure that with each scathing article, Eunsung will come crawling to Soohyun and begging for mercy. Except, it doesn't happen. Eunsung doesn't react at all the way Soohyun expects! Just who is being manipulated, and who, the manipulator?

This K-Comic is intended for mature audiences only. Content Warning: Rape depiction.

Checkmate has a story and art by TAN. The English translation is by Lezhin US. This volume was lettered by Karis Page. Published by ‎Seven Seas (October 8, 2024).

---

Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

What are you willing to put up with in the service of a gritty story? If the answer doesn't include rape, Checkmate may not be the BL series for you. Oh, it does its best to make it clear that Soohyun isn't so traumatized by what his longtime rival Eunsung does to him by framing it as yet another piece of his motive for revenge, but there aren't any grey spaces when it comes to what Eunsung does to him in that hotel room. Making it part of a revenge story doesn't make it any better, especially if nonconsensual scenes aren't something you enjoy in fiction. But even then, this one does not allow for any line blurring at the moment, even if later Soohyun is ready to get back into bed with his assailant.

Soohyun's anger at Eunsung is the backbone of this book. The two have known each other since high school, and Soohyun resented how easily things seemed to come to the other boy. He was always the first place to Soohyun's second, the hottest guy in school with tons of friends. Soohyun has been holding on to his resentment for at least a decade since they graduated, to a truly unhealthy degree. How unhealthy? Well, when he sees Eunsung's name pop up on the news in a story about a destroyed painting, he quickly decides to quit his office job and reinvent himself as a reporter, all for the single-minded goal of inserting himself into Eunsung's life again and making it miserable. All he wants is revenge, and it's hard to think that what he needs instead is a good therapist and some lessons on how to let things go.

There's another story brewing underneath Soohyun's revenge narrative, and it looks a lot more interesting. It's still gritty, but less seedy: the artist whose work Eunsung is accused of destroying looks an awful lot like a terrible human being, one who might be stealing his students' work and claiming it as his own and who very likely physically abuses everyone in his studio – and maybe sexually abuses them too. Could Eunsung have destroyed “his mentor's” painting to bring the whole sordid situation to light? Maybe, but if that's the case, he's conflicted about it, because he doesn't want to tell Soohyun anything. Of course, he also claims not to remember Soohyun (or at least doesn't act like he remembers him), so he could just be very good at keeping everything close to his chest; one comment he makes about Soohyun being his type could speak to a long-ago crush. All of this works well with a color scheme that's just one step above black and white, which lends the implication that there's more going on here than anyone assumes.

It's not a terrible book, but it leaves a bit of a bad taste in your mouth. That could be on purpose, and the longer I think about it, the more that seems likely. But I'm not keen on coming back for a second volume, because the unpleasantness overwhelms the mystery in the story's execution.

---

Lauren Orsini
Rating:

I still remember how I met the love of my life: by quitting my job to write unflattering articles about him until he finally took revenge by sexually assaulting me in a seedy hotel room. Oh wait, that wasn't me because I'm not insane. Instead, I'm describing the premise of Checkmate, a BL manhwa about one of the least healthy romantic relationships since Killing/Stalking. Attractive, full-color art can't make up for the fact that this toxic, twisted dynamic is not going to appeal to the majority of readers. It's hard to root for Soohyun and Eunsung to get together when what I'm really hoping for is for both of them to seek professional help.

Guys will literally do anything but go to therapy. In the case of Soohyun, “anything” means swapping careers so he can get closer to his high school frenemy, this time as a member of the tabloid press. Soohyun's articles are so blatantly provocative that Eunsung has no choice but to confront him, which was exactly Soohyun's plan. What wasn't in Soohyun's plan, however, was for Eunsung to sexually assault him in retaliation—he wasn't expecting his hate crush to be as ruthless as himself. This is because both romantic leads (if I can even call them that; there's no love lost here) are psychopaths who think of life as a grand competition over other people. The “checkmate” from the title refers to this miserable game of 4D chess they're both playing, up until they meet their cruel, calculating match in each other. Love stories are often about getting to a happily ever after, but I don't think either of these men are happy, much less deserve to be. I know that Soohyun never is unless he can make other people suffer, and Eunsung isn't any better. It's a tense, irritable game they're playing, and everyone is losing.

A love story where both characters are in their villain arc is absolutely going to appeal to a certain subset of people. But as enticing as antagonists can be, the lack of characterization here makes it feel like they're both being cruel for cruelty's sake. Checkmate is a love story with no love and a story about humans with no humanity. These two deserve each other.

---