For the first time in a really long span, I’ve broken the rotation of my graphic novels reading. It’s very much not my fault, though. See, the current Walking Dead book was supposed to have been out in January, and then April, and now in a few days. But “in a few days” pushes well beyond the time I was supposed to read another one, you see. So I had to skip ahead to the nearly concluded Y series. Well, okay, not very near, since I’ve got two books to go after this one, and one of those doesn’t release until June. But it feels pretty near, right now.

Kimono Dragons, by title, is about a bunch of Yakuza chicks in Japan. (I mean, they would be chicks, right, since every warm-blooded male on the planet died years ago. Aside from Yorick and his monkey, obviously. I mean, are you even reading these things? Come on!) But by plot or theme, I’m not really seeing much in the title to interpret. In short, Yorick and company continue their hot pursuit of Ampersand the capuchin monkey who holds the key to humanity’s survival, Israeli super-soldier Alter continues her hot and frequently deadly pursuit of Yorick, cold though the trail has grown, and Doctor Allison Mann continues her hot pursuit of the truth behind mankind’s extinction. (Well, and of some choice Australian tail. A woman has needs.)

Along the way, all of the usual cultural and gender explorations take place, the plot is shifted one step closer to what still feels like a solid resolution, and a few remaining characters have their backgrounds explored. The series has reached a point where (as most long-running series do) the individual pieces no longer feel quite as profound as they did early on; like I said, if there’s a central theme to book 8 here, I missed it. But the quality remains consistently high, the story engrossing, and the artwork by turns exotic, sexy, and visceral. I can’t ask for more that that out of anything that isn’t Sandman.