New York Magazine’s marvelously snarky blog The Daily Intelligencer is showing some love for one of Tokyopop’s quirkier titles. This week, the Intelligencer is running a short excerpt from Brandon Graham’s King City, an OEL title that debuted last month. (Thanks to the eagle-eyed Brigid Alverson of MangaBlog for spotting the blog entry.) I’ve read the first two chapters (which are available to registered users at the Tokyopop site), and it looks like a lot of fun: think Futurama with eye-popping artwork. Or Metropolis with jokes and a transforming cat. Or, in the words of Comics Should Be Good! reviewer Pol Rua,

It’s like Warren Ellis/Masumone Shirow-style technofetishism married to Paul Pope-style post-Cyberpunk romanticism, and Bryan Lee O’Malley-style absurdism with art by some sort of ungodly mutant artbaby spawn of Dan (Amazing Joy Buzzards) Hipp and Jim Mahfood. There’s even flashes of China Mieville in there somewhere. Golly.

‘King City’ is the story of Joe. Joe is a professional lockpick, and also a Cat Master, which means that he owns, and is trained to operate, a strange cat which operates as a kind of universal magical tool/weapon/domestic pet. Joe makes his living stealing stuff, an as is typical for this kind of story, he ends up attracting the attention of the wrong people.

Also involved are Pete, Joe’s best friend, who ends up in a mess of trouble with another group of extremely unpleasant people, Joe’s ex-girlfriend Anna, and Anna’s new boyfriend, Max, a veteran of the Korean Zombie Wars is having problems of his own. It’s a glorious mess of Eastern Bloc Sasquatches, Lethal Snot Rockets, Alien Mermaids, Questionable Eating Habits, Sex, Love, Regret and Unfairly Hung She-Males.

Sounds like a winner to me. Need more convincing? Here are some early reviews:

Comic Book Bin
Comics Should Be Good!
The Pittsburgh Tribune
Prospero’s Manga
Warren Peace Sings the Blues

And to all you manga snobs–yes, I’m talkin’ to ya, ANN forum junkies–don’t cheat yourself of an opportunity to read some great sci-fi slapstick just because it isn’t made in Japan. Graham’s artwork holds its own against the best licensed titles from the Tokyopop catalog, and boasts some of the best-looking backdrops I’ve seen in manga–King City is practically a character. And c’mon… how can you NOT like an artist who pokes fun at the absurdity of manga sound effects? Graham’s SFX for a piece of popping toast: ‘TOAST.’ That’s genius, I tell you, genius!