The late, great Anthony Bourdain was a chef, author, TV host, and one of my favorite celebrities ever. Not everyone is aware that he was also a comic book writer as well. Bourdain co-wrote several graphic novels (that I will detail here) with author Joel Rose. They all deal with food and the culinary world, they show off Bourdain’s love of Japanese culture, and they’re all filled with his trademark offbeat sense of humor.
Get Jiro, with Joel Rose and Langdon Foss
Bourdain’s first graphic novel takes a look at a dystopian future Los Angeles controlled by mafia-like gangs of chefs. Jiro is a sushi chef with a mysterious past who takes his culinary work deadly seriously. When two warring gangs, the traditionalist French chefs and the militant vegans, both take an interest in recruiting Jiro to their cause, Jiro decides to play both sides against another and free Los Angeles from gastronomic oppression.
Get Jiro is an adaptation of the Akira Kurosawa samurai film Yojimbo, twisted through Bourdain’s sardonic view of high cuisine. There are plenty of little details in the dialogue and in the way food is prepared that only an experienced chef like Bourdain would be able to contribute. Langdon Foss’s artwork is wonderfully odd and grotesque. There’s a lot of over-the-top violence, but it’s depicted in a surreal, stylized way befitting a story about chefs murdering each other with swords over sushi. Get Jiro is a special kind of off-the-wall fun that showcases Bourdain’s unique personality.
Get Jiro: Blood and Sushi, with Joel Rose and Alé Garza
This prequel graphic novel tells the story of how young Jiro, Tokyo assassin and son of a powerful Yakuza crime boss, could end up a sushi chef. This graphic novel is much less surreal than its predecessor, in both plot and art. It forgoes the dystopian concepts for a more straightforward story of family, love, and revenge. Blood and Sushi takes elements from hard-boiled gangster movies, as well as from classic samurai films. It’s an easy-to-digest (get it?) story that provides a lot of answers to the questions posed by Get Jiro.
Anthony Bourdain’s Hungry Ghosts, with Joel Rose and various artists
Hungry Ghosts is a collection of short horror stories, inspired by Japanese folktales of evil spirits called Yōkai. Bourdain takes these old stories and weaves in his own culinary themes and influences. A sadistic French chef gets his comeuppance at the hand of a Kappa demon. An out-of-work chef falls in with a group of disgraced cooks with a terrifying secret. A young man develops a second mouth with an insatiable appetite. There’s a lot of wonderful originality and creepiness in Hungry Ghosts in Bourdain and Rose’s storytelling, and in the artwork, done with a different artist on every story.
In addition to the ghost stories of Japan, Hungry Ghosts also owes a lot to the E.C. horror comics of the 1950’s, such as Tales from the Crypt. Some of the artists who take a turn illustrating these stories include Francesco Francavilla (Detective Comics, The Black Beetle) and Paul Pope (Batman: Year 100, Heavy Liquid, Battling Boy). Hungry Ghosts also includes several of Bourdain’s own recipes. It’s a gross, unique, and very Bourdain comic. It’s also being adapted by Sony Pictures Animation, so that’ll be cool to see more of Anthony Bourdain’s work reach the screen
