In Comic Shops Today: Johnny Hiro Vol. 1!

In Comic Shops Today: Johnny Hiro Vol. 1!

May 20

Once in a great big blue moon, you will find a new comic that not only fulfills any expectations you may have had for it, but far surpasses them; it easily vaults over your wildest hopes and becomes something that just amuses and entertains the living shit out of you.

That comic, my friends, is Johnny Hiro.

Johnny is a busboy living in Brooklyn with his beautiful girlfriend, Mayumi. They struggle, but they make ends barely meet, and they love each other very much.

Also, Johnny has adventures. Wild, stupid, crazy fun adventures that spring whole-cloth onto the page from the brain of writer/artist Fred Chao, in some remarkable goulash of chop-socky kung fu comics, cutesy indie relationship books, and just wildly imaginative good comics.

In issue 2, for example, Johnny is chased by crazed ninja busboys, angry at him for stealing a precious lobster so that his boss, Mr. Masago, can serve it for the food editor from Vogue and save his dying restaurant. The heart of the book is a dynamic chase sequence that takes Johnny and his pursuers onto the rooftops of Brooklyn before a stunning one-page splash with follow sound effect that gives your stomach a little jump, like when Luke and Leia swing over the chasm in Star Wars.

Everything about this book just works. Johnny Hiro is an amazing, refreshing, exciting surprise–one of those books that makes you feel so glad you even bother buying and reading comics. I cannot recommend this one highly enough.

Johnny Hiro returns to shelves TODAY in a trade paperback collection–three single issues were published by AdHouse Books, who now combine those three issues with new material to create one single fantastic volume of pure awesomeocity.

Order Johnny Hiro Vol. 1 from Amazon, from a fine online comics retailer such as Heavy Ink, or from the comics emporium of your choice using Diamond order code APR090627.