A silly and exciting flight of fancy in the form of a thoughtfully crafted graphic novel.
An imaginative and playful misfit accidentally opens a portal to a fantastical reality in Turner’s graphic novel.
Zach Vandermeer’s imagination can get the young man into trouble: The graphic novel opens with a riveting chase scene filled with guns, fast cars, and a perilous cliff’s edge. It’s exciting and intense (“Twenty millimeter cannon blew out the windows; I felt the shells fly past!”)—and it’s also not real. In a few pages and even fewer words, the author establishes Zach as a funny, creative protagonist adept at spinning stories. This is what makes him so great at Heroic Journeys, a role-playing game set in a fantasy world, which he plays with an eccentric and lovable group of friends. The harmless game takes a turn one stormy night when Zach introduces a new character: a small statue named Gunama, from a dig site near the lost city of Erkund. When the seemingly innocent game has ended and the friends have said goodbye, Zach wakes from an ominous dream and wanders outside to his backyard—except it isn’t his backyard. It’s a reality entirely set in Arthea, a fictional world created long ago by Zach and his brother, Peter. Zach recruits his friends to explore this new world with him. As the quirky gang encounters wraiths, goblins, fairies, and ghosts, they also discover that they can become their game characters—magical creatures themselves, with supernatural powers and abilities. Zach leads the way as they stumble through two worlds, swords brandished, ready for anything. Turner’s graphic tale is both silly and sincere, gratuitous and grounded. The five protagonists are delightfully nerdy and bursting with love—love they have for each other and love the author clearly has for them. They, rendered in intricate black-and-white illustrations, keep the reader eagerly turning pages to find out what else Arthea has in store. It’s a breezy, evenly paced story full of humor and escapist fun.
A silly and exciting flight of fancy in the form of a thoughtfully crafted graphic novel.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781593623197
Page Count: 175
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A clever and timely conversation on reclaiming identity and acknowledging one’s full worth.
Superman confronts racism and learns to accept himself with the help of new friends.
In this graphic-novel adaptation of the 1940s storyline entitled “The Clan of the Fiery Cross” from The Adventures of Superman radio show, readers are reintroduced to the hero who regularly saves the day but is unsure of himself and his origins. The story also focuses on Roberta Lee, a young Chinese girl. She and her family have just moved from Chinatown to Metropolis proper, and mixed feelings abound. Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane’s colleague from the Daily Planet, takes a larger role here, befriending his new neighbors, the Lees. An altercation following racial slurs directed at Roberta’s brother after he joins the local baseball team escalates into an act of terrorism by the Klan of the Fiery Kross. What starts off as a run-of-the-mill superhero story then becomes a nuanced and personal exploration of the immigrant experience and blatant and internalized racism. Other main characters are White, but Black police inspector William Henderson fights his own battles against prejudice. Clean lines, less-saturated coloring, and character designs reminiscent of vintage comics help set the tone of this period piece while the varied panel cuts and action scenes give it a more modern sensibility. Cantonese dialogue is indicated through red speech bubbles; alien speech is in green.
A clever and timely conversation on reclaiming identity and acknowledging one’s full worth. (author’s note, bibliography) (Graphic fiction. 13-adult)Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77950-421-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: DC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A Rand primer with pictures.
A graphic novel for devotees of Ayn Rand.
With its men who have become gods through rugged individualism, the fiction of Ayn Rand has consistently had something of a comic strip spirit to it. So the mating of Rand and graphic narrative would seem to be long overdue, with her 1938 novella better suited to a quick read than later, more popular work such as The Fountainhead (1943) and the epic Atlas Shrugged (1957). As Anthem shows, well before the Cold War (or even World War II), Rand was railing against the evils of any sort of collectivism and the stifling of individualism, warning that this represented a return to the Dark Ages. Here, her allegory hammers the point home. It takes place in the indeterminate future, a period after “the Great Rebirth” marked an end of “the Unmentionable Times.” Now people have numbers as names and speak of themselves as “we,” with no concept of “I.” The hero, drawn to stereotypical, flowing-maned effect by illustrator Staton, knows himself as Equality 7-2521 and knows that “it is evil to be superior.” A street sweeper, he stumbles upon the entrance to a tunnel, where he discovers evidence of scientific advancement, from a time when “men knew secrets that we have lost.” He inevitably finds a nubile mate. He calls her “the Golden One.” She calls him “the Unconquered.” Their love, of course, is forbidden, and not just because she is 17. After his attempt to play Prometheus, bringing light to a society that prefers the dark, the two escape to the “uncharted forest,” where they are Adam and Eve. “I have my mind. I shall live my own truth,” he proclaims, having belatedly discovered the first-person singular. The straightforward script penned by Santino betrays no hint of tongue-in-cheek irony.
A Rand primer with pictures.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-451-23217-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2010
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