Review by Frank Plowright

Karmopolis is a vision of the future where almost everything is on wheels, while “Walkers” are considered eccentric and have their own underground society. Although there’s a point to be made about obsessional car culture, it’s played as a funny all-ages story by Nick Bertozzi, who feeds in the dizzying energy of an old Hanna Barbera cartoon.

Siblings Pooja and Om acquire a strange gem that two incompetent thugs claim is theirs. As Pooja and Om search for the significance of the gem they explore a gloriously imaginative world where familiar items are creatively repurposed. Although never featuring more than three panels to a page, there’s a density supplied by the sheer number of visual references Bertozzi includes, with the frequent spreads being special treasure troves. Every new location provides either helpful new friends or an unexpected threat, and sometimes both.

Yet that’s the first of two stories. In the other Pooja and Om are kept busy retrieving an abducted baby. The plots are just showcases for Bertozzi’s imagination as he continually introduces new items of wonder or another set of weird people. It may come as no surprise to learn that Karmopolis originally appeared in the Nickelodeon Magazine, and in the manner of stories first serialised in The Phoenix, the panels have been repurposed from their original spreads. That also accounts for the constant switches of scenery. Young readers unaware of the original printings ought to delight in what’s presented here, but readers remembering the original pages from their youth might have preferred a shorter collection in the original format.