An impressive, pulse-pounding start to a new series that will leave readers eager for another compilation.
Tishler offers a collection of historical war comics with a supernatural touch.
This book brings together the first four installments of writer Tishler’s titular comic series, starting in media res with a young narrator, Yuli, recalling a memory of her mother. Their hometown, her mom said, was Eden, and its wintertime, when everything was cold and dead, was just a temporary “Edenfrost.” Beneath this opening voiceover are images of a burning village, dead soldiers in the snow, and Yuli’s brother, Alex, carrying her on his back. The story is set during the Russian Civil War in the early 20th century, when the siblings are desperate to reach their extended family in Kyiv. On their trail are Lt. Col. Krasnov and Lt. Belov of the White Army,who’ve been informed of a “monster made of rock and ice” that once came to the kids’ rescue. With the stakes firmly established, the series moves between the doe-eyed, determined sister and brother and the imperious officers chasing them. Dream sequences and flashbacks skillfully establish the siblings’ past and unveil the true nature of the “monster”— a Golem that Alex can summon with a talisman around his neck. Alex, it turns out, is still mastering control of the creature, whose voice occasionally intrudes into the boy’s mind, asking to be let out, to take over—and Alex fears its full power. In proper serial fashion, each issue ends with an effectively suspenseful cliffhanger, and readers will likely find it difficult to not devour all four parts in a single sitting. Frenda’s realistic, full-color artwork likewise captivates, sometimes ably carrying the story alone, and rendering various fight and battle sequences with a cinematic flair—albeit with a level of gore that may not be suitable for younger readers. Avid comic-book fans will find that the overall style successfully captures the feeling of classic 20th-century war comics.
An impressive, pulse-pounding start to a new series that will leave readers eager for another compilation.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781960578686
Page Count: 88
Publisher: Mad Cave Studios
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
Using modern language, McDonald spins the well-known tale of the two young, unrequited lovers. Set against Nagar’s at-times...
A bland, uninspired graphic adaptation of the Bard’s renowned love story.
Using modern language, McDonald spins the well-known tale of the two young, unrequited lovers. Set against Nagar’s at-times oddly psychedelic-tinged backgrounds of cool blues and purples, the mood is strange, and the overall ambiance of the story markedly absent. Appealing to what could only be a high-interest/low–reading level audience, McDonald falls short of the mark. He explains a scene in an open-air tavern with a footnote—“a place where people gather to drink”—but he declines to offer definitions for more difficult words, such as “dirges.” While the adaptation does follow the foundation of the play, the contemporary language offers nothing; cringeworthy lines include Benvolio saying to Romeo at the party where he first meets Juliet, “Let’s go. It’s best to leave now, while the party’s in full swing.” Nagar’s faces swirl between dishwater and grotesque, adding another layer of lost passion in a story that should boil with romantic intensity. Each page number is enclosed in a little red heart; while the object of this little nuance is obvious, it’s also unpleasantly saccharine. Notes after the story include such edifying tidbits about Taylor Swift and “ ‘Wow’ dialogs from the play” (which culls out the famous quotes).Pub Date: May 10, 2011
ISBN: 978-93-80028-58-3
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Campfire
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
A not-very-illuminating updating of Chaucer’s Tales.
Continuing his apparent mission to refract the whole of English culture and history through his personal lens, Ackroyd (Thames: The Biography, 2008, etc.) offers an all-prose rendering of Chaucer’s mixed-media masterpiece.
While Burton Raffel’s modern English version of The Canterbury Tales (2008) was unabridged, Ackroyd omits both “The Tale of Melibee” and “The Parson’s Tale” on the undoubtedly correct assumption that these “standard narratives of pious exposition” hold little interest for contemporary readers. Dialing down the piety, the author dials up the raunch, freely tossing about the F-bomb and Anglo-Saxon words for various body parts that Chaucer prudently described in Latin. Since “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” and “The Miller’s Tale,” for example, are both decidedly earthy in Middle English, the interpolated obscenities seem unnecessary as well as jarringly anachronistic. And it’s anyone’s guess why Ackroyd feels obliged redundantly to include the original titles (“Here bigynneth the Squieres Tales,” etc.) directly underneath the new ones (“The Squires Tale,” etc.); these one-line blasts of antique spelling and diction remind us what we’re missing without adding anything in the way of comprehension. The author’s other peculiar choice is to occasionally interject first-person comments by the narrator where none exist in the original, such as, “He asked me about myself then—where I had come from, where I had been—but I quickly turned the conversation to another course.” There seems to be no reason for these arbitrary elaborations, which muffle the impact of those rare times in the original when Chaucer directly addresses the reader. Such quibbles would perhaps be unfair if Ackroyd were retelling some obscure gem of Old English, but they loom larger with Chaucer because there are many modern versions of The Canterbury Tales. Raffel’s rendering captured a lot more of the poetry, while doing as good a job as Ackroyd with the vigorous prose.
A not-very-illuminating updating of Chaucer’s Tales.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-670-02122-2
Page Count: 436
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
PERSPECTIVES
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