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In upstart talent Jonathan Hickman's The Nightly News a cult of murderous vigilantes targets various broadcast-news reporters and executives. The killers take their cue from The Voice, their mysterious benefactor and string-puller.

It's not a stretch to say you've never seen anything quite like this 21st-century Network (the author makes explicit the connection to the trenchant 1976 Oscar-winner with the first chapter title, "I'm Mad as Hell, and I'm Not Going to Take This Anymore"). Hickman catapults his considerable graphic-design sensibilities into the cartooning field with this striking visual experiment, combining some of the splattered illustrative flair of Bill Sienkiewicz (Elektra: Assassin) with Acme Novelty Library artist Chris Ware's design virtuosity, to achieve a look all his own. Dispensing with American industry standards of panel grids, word-balloon shape, lettering styles and coloring palette, Hickman's layouts instead combine superfluous elements -- circles and parallel diagonal lines -- that manage to look good as they guide the eye across and down the page. He puts the graphic in graphic novel.

The Nightly News shows all the signs of being an accomplished, efficient comic book, just without any heart; its emotional stakes are hidden under layers of coolness and intellectual gamesmanship. But it is reductive to allege that Hickman elevates form over content. The slick visuals match the dispassionate reasoning of his characters, not to mention the snappy pacing. Add the info-box sidebars and meta-commentary asides, and you might have to set the book down every so often just to give your brain a chance to absorb all the ideas tossed out in this rollicking story.