Meet Hiro. He and his girlfriend Mayumi live in New York City, in a humble apartment in Brooklyn. They are young and deeply, sweetly, in love. Like all young lovers though, they too are trying to make it in a big world. They are trying to make a life for themselves. It doesn’t have to be a perfect life. Hiro and Mayumi may be young, but they know enough of the world to know it will never be perfect out there. It just has to be a good life. One that doesn’t knock them around so hard. And, more importantly, one they can live out together. They work hard everyday. They barely have any time together - by the time she comes home from the office, he has to go work his shift waiting tables - but it’s okay. They know, they hope, that if they work hard enough, someday, it won’t have to be so hard. So it’s with this humble but noble dream that they face any and all obstacle that come their way - even the likes of food editor of Vogue magazine Jeffery Steingarten, an entire kitchen of angry, murderous, knife-wielding chefs, and, of course, Godzilla. Yes, Godzilla. Big lizard that likes to wreck cities Godzilla. He comes to New York in issue #1 of Johnny Hiro to kidnap Mayumi. It’s in issue #2 that Hiro gets chased by the knife-wielding chefs who want their lobster back. You also get a good number of surprise appearances by some recognizable figures (like in issue #3 when Hiro meets David Byrne).
Sound silly? Or absurd? Sure. You bet. There’s plenty of absurdity and silliness going around in Johnny Hiro. But there’s also a lot of real things going on. At the heart of everything is this young couple, trying to make a life for themselves. There’s a lot of fun and action in the city, pop-culture references and all around outlandishness, but that never takes away from the heart behind it all. In Johnny Hiro, Fred Chao has managed to mix the element of newness and surprise in each story with a cohesive tone that allows the reader to love them as a series. His art is lovely and minimalistic, and his narration is sharp and grounded - something that helps, strangely, when telling even the most absurd details of Hiro’s story. When I picked up Johnny Hiro, I was expecting a fun, lighthearted read. It was that and a lot more.
The characters of the stories, Hiro, Mayumi, Hiro’s parents, and even Mr. Masago, the big, booming man who runs the little restaurant Hiro works in, are all delightfully rendered. They are real and lovable. I was more than interested - I was involved. So when Hiro went running after Godzilla to save the girl he loves, I cheered loudly for him. I certainly knew I couldn’t stop him. He was blind to the danger, even the impossibility of the situation. He had to get her. He will go get her every time. He loves her, after all, deeply and sweetly, and he couldn’t imagine life without her. That’s what’s going to give him (and his story) real strength - that’s what’s going to take him (and his readers) all the way.