Metadoggoz: Dogs of the Metastation

In her electrifying English-language debut, French Vietnamese artist de Narbonne trips through a psychedelic cyberpunk society. In a vast futuristic city called the Metastation, “junkyard dog” Gael Kaldera and his street punk friends rely on one another to survive. During a drug trip, Gael wanders away from the crew and into a hallucinatory journey that takes him to the Gap, an outcast community crowding in the city’s dump. He falls in love with dreadlocked Borisse, the closest thing the Gap has to a leader, who warns, “We are the trash they dream of purging.” Then Naomi, a runaway from the city’s upper class, arrives with news that the Gap is about to be destroyed. De Narbonne packs her pages with boldly inked black-and-white panels filled with techno music, brawlers, squatters, graffiti, and sci-fi settings ranging from the austere penthouses of the wealthy to a street market that looks like a Spirited Away bathhouse for burnouts. Though the novel trades in modern political concerns and social trappings—the characters go to raves and discuss manga—it feels like a welcome throwback to 1970s Metal Hurlant creators like Chantal Montellier, with visual flourishes reminiscent of contemporary alt-manga artists like Taiyō Matsumoto. De Narbonne’s classic underground sensibilities will delight outsider-art comics fans. (Mar.)