They're the heroes of artist Brandon Graham's magnum opus named after the city they operate in.
Joe's spy pal is Pete, who wears a Dumb Donald-like hat/mask at all times and does dirty jobs for a crime syndicate. Joe's ex-girlfriend is Anna, who's fond of puns and vandalism, and her current boyfriend is Max, a veteran of the Korean zombie wars who's addicted to deadly new drug chalk.
There's a story tying them all together, one which involves cannibal businessmen, ninja street gang the Owls, the alien porn industry and one seriously tough old man, but as enjoyable as all that it is, it's the little things that make Graham's urban action series so much fun.
Graham's art is of a world fusion style, drawing on manga, European sci-fi comics and graffiti art to end up as something that looks like a mix of America's Paul Pope and Britain's Jamie Hewlett. And like both of those artists, Graham is just as much a designer and dreamer as he is a comic book artist, leading to a fully realized world with inventive clothes, technology, drinks, restaurant dishes, weapons and vending machines.
Graham's city isn't a terribly realistic one. It feels exactly like a city invented by a single artist bursting with cool ideas—a secret hostel for spy gangs here, a yeti working a counter there—but there's nothing at all wrong with that. King City is a hell of a place to visit.
Elk's Run
Villard Books
The small West Virginia town of Elk's Ridge was a strange planned community created by Vietnam veterans in an isolated valley on the other side of a deserted mine. A wealthy benefactor paid for everything, work was completely optional, once a month or so a sympathetic truck driver brought the residents supplies, and everything was a perfect, Rockwellian utopia—for a generation or so, at least.
But utopias have a strange way of becoming dystopias, particularly in comic books. For the city to work, certain rules must be adhered to, foremost among them being that no one can ever leave, and the administration of justice is to be handled community-wide.
As the men raise their families, it becomes clear that Elk's Ridge's days are numbered. The next generation has 17 boys, but only four girls. Tensions are inflamed by a series of tragedies, and eventually town leader John and his own son find themselves on a head-on collision course, the former wanting to maintain the status quo at all costs, the latter wanting to get out at all costs.
Villard is billing Elk's Run as a "coming-of-age thriller," which isn't a bad way to describe it.
Writer Joshua Hale Fialkov has created some disturbingly realistic characters and stuck them in a plot practically packed with gunpowder. His script reads like one long, lit fuse—it's only a matter of time before things explode, and there's no looking away until it does.
Noel Tuazon offers up sketchy, occasionally gritty art, changing style and coloring subtly when illustrating flashbacks to happier times (like our teenage protagonists' childhoods) and/or more horrible times (like their fathers' brutal, scary tours of Vietnam).
Together they've created a smart thriller that's as challenging as it is suspenseful.