Won Ton Soup: The Collected Edition Review

Written and Art by: James Stokoe

Publisher: Oni Press

James Stokoe’s Won Ton Soup is a self-declared Space Trucker Opera reminiscent of Cowboy Bebop, but it is much, much weirder than that. Instead of being Bounty Hunters, Johnny Boyo and Deacon Vans are tuckers, delivering goods from planet to planet delivering food various food products. The collected edition of Won Ton Soup contains both the first and second volume of the story, as well as a Won Ton short thrown in at the end.

In the first volume, we are introduced to Johnny Boyo, a culinary school drop out who has taken up with Deacon after leaving his girlfriend, Citrus, and his planet behind. As a space trucker, Johnny has been able to travel to the ends of the galaxy, trying all of the culinary specialties of the different planets he and Deacon stop at. While Deacon uses his down time to get into all sorts of promiscuous trouble, Boyo tries different restaurants and hunts down ingredients so he can cook in his hotel rooms.

Boyo is forced to return to his home planet of Plaxos when the ship is damaged by Space Ninjas on a run to deliver a shipment of Super Heated Incendiary Turbo Tea (aka S.H.I.T.T.), tea that explodes if you don’t sip it at a precise angle. The tea doesn’t really have much to do with the story, but it’s a great example of the sort of strange food encountered in the comic.

Stokoe creates a fairly straightforward narrative in the first volume of Won Ton soup. We are introduced to all of the characters and all of the events build up into a fairly traditional narrative arc. Stokoe uses misdirection to change up the plot, taking a few unexpected twists. At one point Johnny Boyo is eating in a won ton restaurant and he chomps on a small transmitter that relays a message similar to Princess Leia’s in A New Hope, but despite what the title leads us to believe, this is not Johnny’s story and he flicks the transmitter away, passing the responsibility to someone else.

In the second volume, Johnny and Deacon end up crashing onto an almost abandoned planet after a fifteen day long drug trip. They are out of fuel and have no idea what planet they are on, so they are forced to take the ship on a hike to what is hopefully a trading post. On their way, we hear Deacon’s weird, oversexed origin story and strange violent monsters that only say “Gow.”

This volume is not nearly as linear as the first volume, the story goes in all different directions, including Deacon’s origin story, which I won’t even attempt to summarize here, and Johnny’s creation of lunch on this strange planet. Johnny finds a fruit that looks like a pineapple, but each fruit contains it’s own small civilization. When you cook two of the fruits, called pookapples, together, you have to let the meal sit for a minute so the two civilizations can decide if they get along or not. If they do, the resulting dish is sweet, and if they don’t, it turns into a hot, fiery dish. All of these things happen within the constraints of the over-reaching arc of trying to find fuel for the ship.

Won Ton soup is incredibly unique. The dialogue is exceptionally strange, as Stokoe has created his own galactic slang to go with his universe. Won Ton Soup is inked entirely in black and white, setting it apart from most comics that are being produced right now. The raw art and language serve to make Won Ton Soup endearingly odd. Stokoe enhances this feeling by breaking the fourth wall frequently, including one section where he mentions his deportation from the United States and invites the reader to fill in some panels for him. It’s an entertaining ride with Johnny Boyo and Deacon Vans, and if you’re looking for something different, Won Ton Soup is the book for you, but be warned: this comic does not shy away from raunchy content.