Adafruit’s comics reading list: King City by Brandon Graham #adafruitcomics

comics-1-1.jpg

Here’s a new edition of Adafruit’s comic reading list — this week it’s King City by Brandon Graham from the refreshingly receptive Jake from receiving!

I can’t begin to capture the myriad ways that King City, a graphic novel of collected volumes written and illustrated by Brandon Graham, is the perfect comic for Makers. Between the detailed and schizophrenic drawings, the in-plot puzzles & traps, and altogether Rube-Goldbergian world aesthetic, there’s so much here for an aficionado of D.I.Y. to love. And at the heart of it are two protagonists subsiding solely on flavored cola and their own constant, usually mechanical, cleverness.

king_city_book_1_catmaster_by_royalboiler

King City’s original title was Cat Master – named for the central protagonist, a slacker and former ne’er-do-well named Joe who joins an elite group of martial artists who can use various imbued animals – most often cats – to do basically anything with the right injection (act as telescopes, personal helicopters, cloning devices… etc.). Trainees in this group need to prove both their innate ability to wield this power, and an apathy which prevents them from ever using their talents to gain anything.

We join Joe, returning from his training with a cat named Earthling to King City: a sprawling, Harajuku-meets-Skate-Culture metropolis where anything and anyone can be bought, sold, ridden, or eaten.

kc_12_002-043-ifc-ibc

The main joy of this comic is in its world building. All credit goes to Graham’s sprawling and intricate art style. In scenes small and huge, Graham’s style is both haphazard and juicy; there are as many visual easter eggs on every page as a Where’s Waldo puzzle book.

Some panoramic pages look as if a mandala and a city planner had a baby. Cover to cover, opportunities are never wasted. This includes some rich discoveries on the inside flaps of either cover, not to mention the frenetic business in every wide shot. Graham doesn’t phone it in for a second, and as a result the comic can sometimes feel like someone’s found doodle-book from school with a through-line written in.

kc_02_08-09

That through-line does occasionally feel secondary to the joy of romping through the city — but eminently likable main characters and the gradual unearthing of forces as big as the city itself keep the reader attached to the story. Joe, returning from training, reconnects with best friend Pete and ex-girl Anna and follows a trail of breadcrumbs into the seedy underworld of gang warfare — King City’s worst-kept secret.

Simultaneously, the book follows Pete’s moral crisis as a hired hand to a squad of goons, as well as Anna and new boyfriend Max’s wrangling with his PTSD and drug addiction from the Zombie Wars in Korea. It borrows tropes familiar to any parallel-realism nerd, from sources like Phillip K. Dick, H.P. Lovecraft, and World War Z – to name just the ones I’m familiar with. Doubtless there are others I’m not even appreciating.

BrandonGraham-KingCity

If the plot sounds dark and gritty, I will reassure you this is pretty far from Frank Miller – even when things get serious, the writing never lets them get too serious. “My name is Joe,” he introduces, standing dramatically in a doorway, be-smirked. “I pick locks. I pick my nose.” The gangs usually resemble The Warriors-style cyberpunks, weirdos, and supervillians. And of course, more often Graham is bouncing from pun to pun. A coin operated newspaper dispenser requests “a pound of flesh” in its coin slot.

His characters are also flexible and high-flying in their verbal acrobatics. “I’m sorry I was short with you, Joe” Anna whispers after a fight. “I’m only five foot two.” No matter where you go, the comic seems to say, you’d better be having fun.

King_city_characters_by_royalboiler

​I promised you this comic was for makers, so I want to highlight one of several moments that reminded me of Adafruit:

“Outside his place, Pete’s built a water lock. You open the door by moving the statue onto the right pads in the right order, which is dependent on the time of day. If you get it wrong, you get a fire hose blast to the chest when you try to open the door.”

Graham, in open-source style, includes a diagram.

King City is thick but it reads at a mile a minute, and the reread value is off the charts. Like some video games, this is the kind of comic you read over and over for 100% completion. It’s also not for young kids – nothing explicit, but a healthy dose of cartoonish violence and a couple run-ins with adult themes. That said, it’s one of my very favorites and leaves me with a smile every time I put it down. Don’t miss it.

Check out our previous posts Bee and the Puppycat, Spacetrawler, Grrl PowerKrazy Kat, and She-Hulk!


Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards

Join Adafruit on Mastodon

Adafruit is on Mastodon, join in! adafruit.com/mastodon

Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.

Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.

Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!

Join over 36,000+ makers on Adafruit’s Discord channels and be part of the community! http://adafru.it/discord

CircuitPython – The easiest way to program microcontrollers – CircuitPython.org


Maker Business — “Packaging” chips in the US

Wearables — Enclosures help fight body humidity in costumes

Electronics — Transformers: More than meets the eye!

Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: Silicon Labs introduces CircuitPython support, and more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi

Adafruit IoT Monthly — Guardian Robot, Weather-wise Umbrella Stand, and more!

Microsoft MakeCode — MakeCode Thank You!

EYE on NPI — Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey

New Products – Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! — #NewProds 7/19/23 Feat. Adafruit Matrix Portal S3 CircuitPython Powered Internet Display!

Get the only spam-free daily newsletter about wearables, running a "maker business", electronic tips and more! Subscribe at AdafruitDaily.com !



No Comments

No comments yet.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.