Starred Review Here's an example of an artist trying something different from a secure spot in his own wheelhouse. First launched as a webcomic, this work chronicles an art-school dropout's endeavors to land a paying job (with a few well-placed swipes at the comics industry), his shoot-yourself-in-the-foot attempts to kindle a romance from inside the friend zone, and his unsuccessful effort to run a blocking scheme on his success-minded Korean immigrant parents. This is all familiar territory for Kim, which readers will recognize from his breakthrough book, Same Difference and Other Stories (2004), a similar document of twentysomething urban Asian American geek life. But he's also got a few of the tricks up his sleeve that made his collaboration with Gene Yang (The Eternal Smile, 2009) such a rug-pulling treat of skewered expectations. When the story performs a dimensional about-face, it becomes clear why the panels have been floating around on starry black pages all this time. Kim's a great cartoonist with a keen sense of humor, and he has a light-handed touch for balancing irreverence with full-hearted emotion. Sure, things are just starting to really get moving by the end of this first volume, but you won't find a more kookily energetic sci-fi splice-of-life crossing adult-onset uncertainty with strands of Twilight Zone DNA.

This latest effort from Kim (Same Difference, Good as Lily) has all of the trademarks of a good 19th-century novel -coming-of-age, generational conflict, unrequited love, even a tortured artist-but it-s set in the present, speaks to a 21st-century reader, and has, well, aliens and stuff. Hero Andy Go is getting nowhere fast: he-s dropped out of his final year of art school and finds himself living with parents who tell him that he needs a job or else. Then there-s his hopeless crush on Yumi, a fellow art student. Things start to look up when he gets an illicit peek at her diary, but they take a bizarre turn when he shows up to an interview for a job at a zoo-in another dimension. Whether in Kim-s insights into everyday relationships or his examination of the difference between what we long for and what we live with, he blends his own brand of sweetness, wry humor, realism, and caricature to give readers a story that consistently suspends our disbelief. Readers new to Kim-s work will come away with a genuine appreciation of his talent-and they-ll never again be able to look at a manhole cover in quite the same way. (Nov.)