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Probably the best part of being a comic fan is finding a diamond in the rough among trades as you’re perusing a shelf in a comic shop.  It’s truly great to have the subtle enthusiasm from a shop owner over a book met with your own skeptical raised eyebrow and then be proven wrong once you get through reading it.  My local comic shop owner sees me take home quite the haul over the course of a month and rarely tries to hook me up with a book he might think I haven’t heard about.  Johnny Hiro, though, was one of those books.  The book snuck under my radar due to the fact that it only had two issues published before being canceled and then had to be finished and resolicited as a trade paperback.  The book is worth the weight.  The title character is not a superhero or vigilante or warrior of any kind.  No, Johnny is just your every day average busboy who is trying to make ends meet while living in New York City and running afoul of everything from rival restaurant sushi samurais or giant monsters attacking the city.  At his side is his cheerful and loving girlfriend, Mayumi, who adores her boyfriend as much as she adores kittens and believing everything will work out in the end.  Writer/artist Fred Chao delivers a book that’s fun and engaging and completely entertaining for all types of readers big and small.  Guest-stars galore including NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg and the cast of an 80′s hit sitcom grace the same pages as Godzilla-wannabes fighting giant robots.   The art is in black and white but still dynamic and full of life between the panels.  The jokes come fast and furious but the humor is always overshadowed by the genuine charm of Chao’s writing of the Johnny and Mayumi.  It’s their relationship that holds the book together between hilarious skits and well-drawn action.   It’s like Chao knows this and makes every scene that he puts them in feel very realistic.  Even when Mayumi’s broken English is played for laughs, it never feels derogatory or childish.  He works it into the natural dialogue and counters it with Johnny’s own standard way of speaking.  Johnny Hiro is definitely a book that I’m glad was recommended to me and I’m passing that recommendation on and hoping that others pick it up.  It’s a great blind buy, I’ll tell you that.