King City #10

by Brandon Graham

It's only been two weeks since the last issue of King City came out, so this feels like a real treat.  Joe's incursion into the evil hotel turns out to be a bit of a non-starter, especially after he gets poisoned, and has to sleep it all off while dreaming about painting on billboards with his ex.  Meanwhile, his friend Pete takes Earthling the cat to rescue the alien girl he's been in love with since the original Tokyopop book.

Plot is incredibly secondary to the experience of reading King City, as it's more about the city itself, and whatever strange visual creation Graham has thought of lately.  This month, we get the Echhhh Zu, a giant baby-eating slug, blood eels, and whores with pig tails, in addition to gigantic tentacled monsters that attack the city in broad daylight.

As much as I love the inventiveness of this title, I am beginning to feel like the newer issues are not really as structured as the first volume.  Perhaps it was the lengthy wait between volumes, or maybe this was Graham's intent from the beginning.  It's all good, because this is a fun comic.