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sizrobe's review against another edition
3.0
I loved the art in this graphic novel. I appreciated the punny sense of humor, and it was full of cool ideas. Unfortunately the plot just kind of meandered and I honestly had trouble following it at times, and it just sort of ended. It had a lot of potential but only partially delivered.
nkives's review against another edition
4.0
Very strange book about a "Cat Master", but a pretty fun read.
lukeh_g's review against another edition
5.0
I loved every panel of this book. This is comics at it's best.
Brandon Graham uses the medium here to its full potential. It really feels like he has had a ball creating every panel. This book is a total joy to read. Its full of jokes, imaginative plots and action, sexy women and even a crossword and board game!
The idea of the cat masters is brilliant and hilarious, and is not the only star of the story. The city of King City itself is greatly imagined and realized, lovingly bought to life with every panel.
Grahams art does not hurt the eyes either. It is amazing.
Do yourself a favor when reading this and really take your time. There are jokes and fantastic puns scattered all thought this book, in near every panel.
I have not had this much fun reading a comic in a while. I wish I grabbed this in singles, though I cannot complain with this great, slightly over sized (though I believe its the same size as the singles) collection.
If your a fan of the medium or just looking for something different, pick this up!
Brandon Graham uses the medium here to its full potential. It really feels like he has had a ball creating every panel. This book is a total joy to read. Its full of jokes, imaginative plots and action, sexy women and even a crossword and board game!
The idea of the cat masters is brilliant and hilarious, and is not the only star of the story. The city of King City itself is greatly imagined and realized, lovingly bought to life with every panel.
Grahams art does not hurt the eyes either. It is amazing.
Do yourself a favor when reading this and really take your time. There are jokes and fantastic puns scattered all thought this book, in near every panel.
I have not had this much fun reading a comic in a while. I wish I grabbed this in singles, though I cannot complain with this great, slightly over sized (though I believe its the same size as the singles) collection.
If your a fan of the medium or just looking for something different, pick this up!
thecatwood's review against another edition
5.0
Brandon Graham has a singular skill for world building that I think is one of the best in the graphic novel/comics arena. Every page is full of detail and allusions to a universe that I can only glimpse but I know lives in full detail inside Graham's head. King City has a stronger narrative voice than other works I've read by Graham, including Multiple Warheads and Prophet, but as always the art is brimming with dizzying jokes and messages that leaves me investigating pane by pane. There's so much creator personality alive in his work. If you like nicely drawn butts and cats, you'll enjoy King City.
crowcity's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
lucasmiller's review against another edition
4.0
I haven't read a graphic novel/comic collection in what feels like a long time. This was super fun and fast read.
It definitely privileges world building and aesthetics over plot. It's loose and moves along, but it's really about being immersed in the landscape and learning about the characters relationships.
I borrowed this copy from a friend over a decade ago. He was excited to hear that I was finally sitting down to read it after all this time. He told me how he read an interview with the author where he talked about this comic being his tribute to Moebius. This little fun fact really heightened my enjoyment of the book.
Excited to check out more by this author, and thankful for a reminder about how fun and engaging graphic novels can be.
It definitely privileges world building and aesthetics over plot. It's loose and moves along, but it's really about being immersed in the landscape and learning about the characters relationships.
I borrowed this copy from a friend over a decade ago. He was excited to hear that I was finally sitting down to read it after all this time. He told me how he read an interview with the author where he talked about this comic being his tribute to Moebius. This little fun fact really heightened my enjoyment of the book.
Excited to check out more by this author, and thankful for a reminder about how fun and engaging graphic novels can be.
zorpblorp's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
djotaku's review against another edition
4.0
If you go to http://www.comicpow.com/2014/02/05/life-in-the-big-city/ you can read the review with accompanying images. Here's the text:
Regular readers of Comic POW know I’m a huge fan of Brandon Graham. When I discover a new creator that I like, I tend to binge on their works. Fortunately for my bank account, Brandon Graham has a pretty small canon of work in which he is both writer and artist. Prior to working on Multiple Warheads his major non-porn was was King City.
King City started off on Tokyo Pop and then the American division went belly up. The story was left untold until Image Comics picked it up for the second half. The story is, in my eyes, a cross between Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and Brian Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim. From Pulp Fiction it takes a couple low level gangsters – a professional burglar and a human smuggler who are best friends and then spends a large portion of the story dealing with their lives outside their jobs. From Scott Pilgrim it borrows a world that’s ALMOST, but not quite our world. One of the characters is a veteran of the Korean Zombie war. The cat burglar literally uses a cat that can become nearly any device with the right injection.
Where King City benefits from the blending of the two is that it ends up able to be a lot more serious than Scott Pilgrim even while residing in a strange (at times silly) world. While I thought the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels did a good job of having a climax that showed growth in the character as well as the reason why he acted like an ass, it was, in the end, a silly book for adults who grew up playing video games in the 80s. King City is, first and foremost, a book about living in a big city. I’d known a big about Graham’s past and I correctly guessed that this book was written while he was living in New York. The book constantly leaves the reader feeling that the city doesn’t care about its inhabitants. You’re left to look out for yourself or hope you have some good friends to help you out. There’s also the feeling that there’s a lot more going on in the city than you can know. Part of this is communicated through Joe’s story. Who would guess that in their city is a burglar who gets around by injecting his cat and giving it special powers? Additionally, he’s constantly entering secret hideouts of various gangs and crime families in King City. He even lives in a complex rented out by a Bigfoot that’s only known to others in his line of work. Finally, whenever Graham does two-page spreads you can often see lots of extraneous things going on in the city – no matter what happens to our main characters, there are others with their own lives doing their own complex dances before their lives end.
The war against Korean Zombies may be ridiculous, but Graham uses it to examine how war leaves us damaged. Not only does Max have a busted leg, but he’s become addicted to chalk as a way to forget the crazy things he saw during the war. And the drug causes its users to become brittle like chalk. When they die, the dealers come and collect the person to sell the chalk. It’s a poignantly tragic story in the middle of silliness, but it doesn’t feel out of place. All the characters in King City are young adults with young adult problems – exacerbated by the weird world they live in. It could also almost be compared to Rent in the tone and the age of the characters (although with less AIDS).
Interestingly, I found the most serious story to involve the secondary character, Pete. Remember that character Dumb Donald from Fat Albert? (Image of Dumb Donald and Pete)
He spends a lot of the beginning of the book wearing that toque and we never see his face. He starts off the book picking up a girl he’s going to sell into human trafficking as he always does. For some reason he falls for her and after he delivers her to his bosses, he starts having regrets. And we end up seeing his face for the first time. Brandon Graham really makes that moment mean something to us just with that simple act. And he spends much of the rest of the comic with the toque on, until another key moment. It’s Brandon’s attention to the effects of these small moments that really transforms King City from yet another (admittedly awesome) wandering book full of puns (as Multiple Warheads has thus turned out to be since its time as a porn comic).
Surprisingly, I found Joe’s narrative to be the least compelling. That’s not to say that it wasn’t good. It definitely hangs with the other narratives like Anna dealing with Max’s drug addiction and her desire to help him even more than he wants to help himself. But Joe seems to have the least true adversity. He is getting over a breakup with Anna, the perfect girl for him, and his memories tell us it was all his fault. He’s doing burglar stuff, but that’s mostly secondary to the story. He’s our conduit to Pete, Anna, and Max and he’s our reader stand-in, explaining the world to us. He eventually hooks up with someone involved in an organization that’s trying to stop some evil form taking over the world, but it’s wonderful and meaningless sex. He never has any true obstacles. He’s still a fascinating character and insight into a world in which people fight with cats, but I quickly found myself wanting to spend more time with Pete and Max.
If you want to be transported to somewhere that’s just slightly not here and see the story of a few young adults and how they deal with this crazy world, I highly recommend checking out King City.
Regular readers of Comic POW know I’m a huge fan of Brandon Graham. When I discover a new creator that I like, I tend to binge on their works. Fortunately for my bank account, Brandon Graham has a pretty small canon of work in which he is both writer and artist. Prior to working on Multiple Warheads his major non-porn was was King City.
King City started off on Tokyo Pop and then the American division went belly up. The story was left untold until Image Comics picked it up for the second half. The story is, in my eyes, a cross between Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and Brian Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim. From Pulp Fiction it takes a couple low level gangsters – a professional burglar and a human smuggler who are best friends and then spends a large portion of the story dealing with their lives outside their jobs. From Scott Pilgrim it borrows a world that’s ALMOST, but not quite our world. One of the characters is a veteran of the Korean Zombie war. The cat burglar literally uses a cat that can become nearly any device with the right injection.
Where King City benefits from the blending of the two is that it ends up able to be a lot more serious than Scott Pilgrim even while residing in a strange (at times silly) world. While I thought the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels did a good job of having a climax that showed growth in the character as well as the reason why he acted like an ass, it was, in the end, a silly book for adults who grew up playing video games in the 80s. King City is, first and foremost, a book about living in a big city. I’d known a big about Graham’s past and I correctly guessed that this book was written while he was living in New York. The book constantly leaves the reader feeling that the city doesn’t care about its inhabitants. You’re left to look out for yourself or hope you have some good friends to help you out. There’s also the feeling that there’s a lot more going on in the city than you can know. Part of this is communicated through Joe’s story. Who would guess that in their city is a burglar who gets around by injecting his cat and giving it special powers? Additionally, he’s constantly entering secret hideouts of various gangs and crime families in King City. He even lives in a complex rented out by a Bigfoot that’s only known to others in his line of work. Finally, whenever Graham does two-page spreads you can often see lots of extraneous things going on in the city – no matter what happens to our main characters, there are others with their own lives doing their own complex dances before their lives end.
The war against Korean Zombies may be ridiculous, but Graham uses it to examine how war leaves us damaged. Not only does Max have a busted leg, but he’s become addicted to chalk as a way to forget the crazy things he saw during the war. And the drug causes its users to become brittle like chalk. When they die, the dealers come and collect the person to sell the chalk. It’s a poignantly tragic story in the middle of silliness, but it doesn’t feel out of place. All the characters in King City are young adults with young adult problems – exacerbated by the weird world they live in. It could also almost be compared to Rent in the tone and the age of the characters (although with less AIDS).
Interestingly, I found the most serious story to involve the secondary character, Pete. Remember that character Dumb Donald from Fat Albert? (Image of Dumb Donald and Pete)
He spends a lot of the beginning of the book wearing that toque and we never see his face. He starts off the book picking up a girl he’s going to sell into human trafficking as he always does. For some reason he falls for her and after he delivers her to his bosses, he starts having regrets. And we end up seeing his face for the first time. Brandon Graham really makes that moment mean something to us just with that simple act. And he spends much of the rest of the comic with the toque on, until another key moment. It’s Brandon’s attention to the effects of these small moments that really transforms King City from yet another (admittedly awesome) wandering book full of puns (as Multiple Warheads has thus turned out to be since its time as a porn comic).
Surprisingly, I found Joe’s narrative to be the least compelling. That’s not to say that it wasn’t good. It definitely hangs with the other narratives like Anna dealing with Max’s drug addiction and her desire to help him even more than he wants to help himself. But Joe seems to have the least true adversity. He is getting over a breakup with Anna, the perfect girl for him, and his memories tell us it was all his fault. He’s doing burglar stuff, but that’s mostly secondary to the story. He’s our conduit to Pete, Anna, and Max and he’s our reader stand-in, explaining the world to us. He eventually hooks up with someone involved in an organization that’s trying to stop some evil form taking over the world, but it’s wonderful and meaningless sex. He never has any true obstacles. He’s still a fascinating character and insight into a world in which people fight with cats, but I quickly found myself wanting to spend more time with Pete and Max.
If you want to be transported to somewhere that’s just slightly not here and see the story of a few young adults and how they deal with this crazy world, I highly recommend checking out King City.