Detroit Metal City Vol. 1
Kiminori Wakasugi
Viz Media ($12.99)

Ha ha! Fooled you, you fucking shit! There really isn't anything going on here other than more excuses for some pretty hilarious swearing and ass jokes. But hey, they are pretty funny.

OK, so there is some sort of story about how the lead singer for the popular metal band Detroit Metal City is really just some innocent 23 year old virgin who really wants to be in a trendy, hip Shibuya-kei band. There are lots of reference to other, real like acts like the aforementioned Kahimi Karie, who DMC frontman Soichi Negishi idolizes. The real problems are So-chan's anger management issues. Whenever his quest to find love starts to go wrong (and it always does) he pulls a Hulk and goes into Krauser II mode. (That's the name of his death metal persona.) His daily strife is subsumed into the DMC lyrics, where So-chan can play out his various violent fantasies, mostly about rape. Lots and lots of rape. It's actually kind of funny.

And that's it. Oh, there's a pretty good chapter where DMC goes up against Jack Ill Dark, the emperor of metal. Dark out-evil's DMC in every way. His reaction to their music is probably the best line in the entire first volume:

"This music is so gay I can barely keep my eyes open."

I know how you feel, Jack. Believe me.

Anyway, this all eventually leads to a "fuck" off. No, it's not what you think (though in DMC it certainly could be.) Actually, Krauser II and Jack Ill Dark go head-to-head, seeing who can say "fuck" the most times without passing out. Yep.

Oh, and what is really the best line in the first volume?

"I'm gonna rape your mother-fucking tambourine!!"

That's really all DMC amounts to, a few really funny on- liners sprinkled throughout the exact same situations over and over. It's absolutely over-the-top, totally juvenile and full of ruthlessly dark humor. The illustration style is about as rough as you would expect, with character models shifting on every page, lots of Beavis and Butthead-grade expressions and panels exploding into each other all over the place. It's loud and shrieking from beginning to end. It's actually a lot of fun in short bursts, just like any crazy death metal song. It might be a bit too much to deal with all at once, but in small bites Detroit Metal City actually works rather well. And I'm not just saying that because Krauser is threatening to penetrate the fuck out of me with his shiitake