Back in 2012, Colorado Springs artist and illustrator Langdon Foss teamed up with famed food personality Anthony Bourdain and Joel Rose to release Get Jiro, a 154-page graphic novel about a dystopian sushi chef set in Los Angeles.
Reviewing it that September, the Wall Street Journal wrote, “Foss’s artwork is vibrant and dynamic, the story is inventive and engaging, and the entire piece is peppered with Easter eggs for food and wine lovers alike …” The book went on to top the New York Times’ best seller list for hardcover graphic novels.
Now comes the release of a sequel — or prequel, actually — titled Get Jiro: Blood and Sushi, now set in Tokyo. However, this time the illustration is handled by Ale Garza instead of Foss. Here’s how Bourdain explained the change to Food & Wine:
“I love, love, love, love Langdon Foss’s work in the first book,” he told the magazine last week. “But this is a very different style of story. It’s set in a completely different location. The influences are different. I just wanted the art to reflect that difference.
“I like collaborating and I like being pushed by the collaborators. I wanted a shockingly different look. That was particularly challenging given how good Langdon Foss’s work was—it was so incredibly intricate and detailed. We asked for an entire world and he created one for us. This is slightly in the future but it’s more of an existing world. It’s a younger book. It’s about a guy in his early 20s, so I guess I just wanted a different, more pop culture style.”
