King of the Flies #1

Plot

Set in a suburb that is both nowhere and everywhere, King of the Flies combines the intricacy and subtlety of the best European graphic novels with a hyperdetailed, controlled noir style derived from the finest American cartoonists. Mezzo and Pirus, previously best known in Europe for a series of cynical, brutal gangster stories, but for the most part, they've internalized the violence in King of the Flies.

The book first appears to be a series of unrelated short stories, each starring (and narrated by) a different protagonist, but it soon becomes obvious that these seemingly disparate episodes weave together to form a single complex narrative, with events that are only glimpsed (or even referred to) revisited from different perspectives - revolving around Eric, a ne'er-do-well, drug-taking teenager at war with his stepfather and, apparently, the whole world. (He is the titular King.)

The comics-reader's appetite has been whetted for such books by Gipi's acclaimed Notes for a War Story, about teenagers running wild in an Italy as a war shakes loose the social order; David Lapham's Eisner-winning noir opus, Stray Bullets, which has a similar story structure, and, of course, Charles Burns smash hit teenage dystopia, Black Hole.