Caleb writes up a nice review of Brandon Graham’s epic comic King City here.
Chris writes some initial reactions here and promises to follow up with an interview soon.
Brandon triumphantly soldiers on– a shining comics warrior here.
You can order King City Volume 1 from amazon
. Tokyo Pop has a page with previews, synopsis, creator info and more here.
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July 14th, 2007 at 4:47 am
I just wrote a quick rave and sent it out to all my faithful, was wanting to rave at Brandon hisself but after a few attempts to track his email I’ve given up (my web tolerance is about zero). So in case he can see this and in case he cares:
“Meantime, rush out to your local store and make sure to buy a copy of KING CITY by Brandon Graham, out this last week from the Evil Empire itself – TOKYOPOP. I actually think they are (now) making some good choices with their “OEL” manga (spits at using such a term), even if the Eric Wight’s dead girlfriend thing looked great (but added up to very little storywise), and Ross Campbell’s done stronger in the past.
Brandon’s KING CITY however is the real deal and the first title I feel I can unreservedly recommend to absolutely anyone – so I am!
You can argue it’s not very manga – maybe – if you are being purist (it’s as least as much underground comics), but in an alternate universe where manga was American not Japanese in origin (which is anyway kind of is, if you go back far enough) this is where it would have developed to by now. Whatever, blah, it’s a damn fine comic book read and I want a lot more like it.
This first volume (first of at least two) has throwaway ideas and characters to spare on almost every page, plus the important central ones that stick and you care about enough to want to follow their mishaps and adventures. There are fresh new concepts, laugh out loud moments (“100 years of Solid Dude”), and also genuine feeling (if you’ve ever loved and lost you’ll know how the central protagonist feels at the prospect of being back in the same city as his ex). It builds to a genuine waystation climax– something other titles I’ve seen have failed to do, pacing-wise – with mega-exciting bizarre combat scenes to end on, and the promise of lots more excitement to come. And it’s totally organic and original. It’s also sexy.
The cityscenes and urban landscapes are modern, lived in and graffiti’d up, and to die for – it’s Paul Pope without all the pretensions! So go and buy it already. Make this fella the mangaka superstar he deserves to be.”
I should qualify if this is wider seen that i reckon Pope has done some good stuff - ESCAPO, 100% I think it was called - but yeah brandon’s just better. And Faryl Khan- when are we going to see more from you, huh?
Any activity from Thomas Herpich i should know about? I rates him highly too
I’ll stop now, in case I’m howling into some kind of void.
ILYA
July 14th, 2007 at 6:25 am
Thanks for the review, Ilya. We’ll make sure that Brandon sees it.
July 14th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Dude,
Thanks for the awesome review. I’m thrilled. I appriciate the pope comparison, that’s the kind of stuff I wanna have printed on the back of my next book.
My email is royalboiler@hotmail.com
hit me up diectly some time and thanx again,
Brandon