This manga-format volume collects the first story arc of Brandon Graham's typically surreal, black-and-white comic King City. The protagonist has just returned from the journeys that have made him a "cat master," capable of exacting a variety of miraculous feats from his cat, with the use of hypodermic injections into said feline. King City itself is a crime-ridden futuristic setting, apparently in the US, and the narrative flashes back at one point to a veteran's combat tour in the Korean Zombie War. The story involves heartache, intrigue, and action. The book--like much of Graham's work--is heavy on exposition, but the content is so pleasingly bizarre that it never drags for that.

The second arc has been completed as individual issues, but unfortunately seems as if it won't be issued in this format. Instead, there's a single volume that includes this part again, plus the next long segment. Having picked this one up used and relatively cheaply, I'm tempted to go in for the big book.

How many manga-sized comics can fit in espionage, zombies, the end of the world, drug addiction, a love story and a shape-changing cat in its few pages, and still have room for humor?

Too bad the second volume was canceled. . .

(UPDATE!) King City vol 2 is now running in comic form! ( )

A very entertainingly deranged take on the notion of Green Lantern, with our hero being a Cat Master whose sidekick is a superpowered feline that can do a wide variety of improbable things. Graham depicts very human characters living in a very bizarre superheroic future city; this makes a good companion to Top Ten. ( )