Merry Christmas, you filthy animals. Buy King City.

Another reason why King City is so vibrant is that it’s just full to bursting with content. This panel is simple–Joe walks up a stairwell past some goons and into a hideout. It’s the sort of panel where you don’t have to do a lot. Just show some stairs, some goons, and bam, done. Instead, though, Graham loads it with information. Tons of graffiti, characters with real personality and style, the couple making out over in the corner… it’s a panel that your eye should sprint past, but it’s got so much to it that you have to pay attention.

A story can’t just maintain one tone and expect that to be fulfilling. Switching things up, introducing conflict, telling jokes… good stories are versatile. I like that Graham can drop a quick little punch of sadness into a book like this, which isn’t necessarily a mopey work. It adds to the overall realism of the work, where the characters all have traits that we recognize in ourselves or our friends. Everybody knows what a big dollop of despair dropped into the middle of your day feels like, right?

When you pick up King City, you’re getting a comic that’s been stuffed with content. Every single page features some fresh joke or great action. And the back cover? Same thing.

I have no idea whether it’s true, but a lot of stuff in King City feels like something that was included because it made Brandon Graham or someone he knows laugh. Maybe it’s the strain of puns and dumb jokes that litter the series, or absurdities like this one, but that’s just the feeling I get.

What I like about Joe is that he’s not some super heroic guy out to do what’s right. He’s not Captain America. He’s a regular fella who has a good idea of right and wrong, and works toward that, but he’s also a guy who can’t resist a big butt and a smile, for better or for worse. He gets distracted and thinks about sex in a way a lot of comic characters don’t.

Guys say and do stupid things for girls sometimes, no matter how much we psyche ourselves up or tell ourselves otherwise.

Real life is awkward. I was at the movies the other day and waiting on a friend. He was going to show up late, so I was keeping an eye out. I saw someone who I thought was him walk in, so I waved him over. He waved back and came to sit down. When he got about a seat away, we both realized that we didn’t know each other at all. He sat one seat down from me and we both quietly decided not to acknowledge what happened.

Basically, mere seconds after you do something cool like a cat flip? You’re going to do something perfectly normal and awkward like float down a hallway. You can’t have the awesome without the mundane.

How often do people eat in comics? According to my friend Chris, not often enough. I agree. So much of our entertainment is geared toward big things happening, whether explosions or laser eyes, that we miss the small things that make the big things matter. Case in point: Joe is about to do something, so he eats. What do you do in real life before doing things? You eat.

And dig that “no stabbing” sign.

You ever have somebody you can talk to freely? That kind of free wheeling, free association, talking just to talk and maybe be a little clever sort of thing? Where you can have a conversation where you’re both saying a lot of nothing, but it’s still time well spent? Graham is really good at writing those conversations.