The King - Softcover

Down-at-the-heels journalist Paul Erfurt is in Vegas again to jump-start a moribund career, unexpectedly on assignment from Time. Six months back, a portly guy opened at the Trident casino and began packing them in. He looks, sounds, moves like . . . Elvis. Not young Elvis, not black-leather comeback Elvis, but Elvis just before that day in August--white, rhinestone-studded jumpsuit and cape; humungous belt; silk scarves; and all. Of course, there's also the helmet covering his face down to his shades, and the fact that he calls himself, as the Second Memphis Mafia does, too, only "the King." And he'll talk only to Erfurt, which is why Time hired the former tabloid hotshot. Who or what is he, really? The interviews and, once Erfurt brings in his erstwhile legman, Dave, the investigating commence, and a very fine feat of Presleyana, indeed, gets under way. Koslowski marries a cartoon-noir mise-en-scene and superb Columbo/Rockford Files dialogue to produce a terrific, not-all-that-satiric (at least, of Elvis), novelistic graphic novel. Ray Olson
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