What can a Cat Man do?

“My name is Joe. I pick locks. I pick my nose.”

So goes the Cat Master, the leading character in King City, by Brandon Graham. Well-regarded on the Internet comics blog scene, Graham’s first volume is as entertaining, crazy and well drawn as advertised.

Joe’s lock picking practice makes for a natural beginning to the action but we follow this arc into spies, drugs and his bucket, with which he carts around his special cat.

The cat, when injected with cat juice, becomes anything. I mean, ANYthing, from a periscope to a key-copying machine to a parachute.

Though Graham’s end notes shows he thinks a bit too much about his work, the effortlessness of what he’s put down on the page here shows he’s able to use this thinking subconsciously and unobtrusively to the reader’s advantage. And not just with the personality-filled pretty pictures and ideas.

He does well with not only the dialogue between characters but also Joe’s frequent monologues. My favorite is when he considers his long-lost love, who Joe remembers while looking into the mirror:

“That girl used to put glue in her hair and jump on the bed and taste like grape candy. And how do you get over that?”

A gallery of Brandon’s work, including his depiction of Joe's cat seen above, is at http://royalboiler.deviantart.com/gallery/

King City is available at better comic books shops and bookstores carrying manga from Tokyopop. He’s also got another series, Multiple Warheads, coming soon from Oni Press.