Almost no X-books, not much in the way of new series... hmm.  Time for a change of tack, I think.  What's in the digest pile?

Ah, Megatokyo.  This is a collected edition of the webcomic which is now done by Fred Gallagher but, at the time of these strips, was a collaboration with Rodney Caston.  Their alter egos Piro and Largo fly to Japan on a drunken whim and realise that they're stuck there, leaving them to try and earn money to get back home - although since the plot quickly spirals off into other directions, they're not going to be getting home any time soon.

By the way, this sort of thing is more plausible than you might think.  A friend of mine once actually managed to do it, waking up from a particularly heavy night's drinking to find himself on a flight to New York.  Unlike Piro and Largo, he had at least had the foresight to buy a return ticket.  Unfortunately, it was for a flight in two weeks' time.

Not that realism is entirely a concern here.  Megatokyo hovers back and forth between relative realism and the weirder stuff that you can get away with in daily comics - literal guardian angels, robot game accessories, and so forth.  The strip aspires to do more than just gag-based material, though, and seems more at home with the more normal storytelling than with inexplicable diversions into the undead.  Although, having said that, the inconsistent level of realism is part of the book's charm.

Of course, when it's trying to do things beyond gag-based material, Megatokyo finds itself kicking against its thrice-weekly, one page format.  For example, one wonders what readers must have made of the episode from 5 January 2001, which is essentially a reaction shot.  It works reasonably well in the collected edition, but on its own, it wouldn't have made for much of an episode.

Despite being labelled as volume one, this book collects what Gallagher describes as "Chapter Zero" - basically, a period of the strip finding its feet and clearing aside some initial storylines in order to begin the real storyline with the next volume.  To confuse matters further, this is actually the second edition of volume 1, because it's being reissued by Dark Horse.  The new edition includes some sketchbook material, although if you're completist enough to care about such things, you probably knew that already. 

Anyhow, it's fairly evident that the book is experimenting and finding the tone that works for it, and as a result there's some inconsistency in here.  Early episodes tend to feature a lot of jokes about the games industry which don't really work for a wider audience.

Gallagher's art, shot straight from pencils, shows obvious improvement as the book goes on - and it was pretty good to start with.  By the end, it's often beautiful stuff, though there's still the occasional page where the deadline rush is evident.  At its best, it's a really good looking book, and Gallagher has an eye for understated comedy.

Inconsistent but, at its best, very entertaining

Rating: B+

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