Quirky, unconventional, and a lot of fun.
A royal damsel, finding herself in distress, decides to save the day—and not one, but two kingdoms.
Clad almost entirely in bubble-gum pink, with artfully windblown scarlet tresses and pinkish-brown skin, Princess Artemisia of Beldora at first glance seems to be a typical princess—until she throws a pair of scissors through a darling songbird she identifies as a spy. The princess is awaiting a proposal from pale-skinned Prince Pete, a nice guy but not much of a fighter. The scrappy princess is soon kidnapped by the monstrous Lord Badlug, who killed her mother and now imprisons her in his castle in his kingdom, Grimoire. Rather than waiting for her prince to come, she vows to free herself and save both her own kingdom and Grimoire. Artemisia finds unexpected allies in Badlug's lands: the rightful prince of Grimoire, a black man; his on-again,off-again monster boyfriend; and a kindhearted gorgon who stuns but can’t petrify. Together they seek to defeat Badlug and his monsters. Their medieval-ish world is evinced through an unabashedly vibrant palette of candy-tinged hues among neatly delineated panels. There is a diverse mix of skin tones, genders, orientations, and ages among both humans and monsters; this motley crew gives a broad range of readers someone to identify with and to root for. The conceit of the princess saving the day may not be entirely new, but don't let that be a deterrent: Wheeler's take is offbeat and fresh.
Quirky, unconventional, and a lot of fun. (Graphic fantasy. 12 & up)Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62010-311-1
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Oni Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
Though this will likely be stocked with graphic novels, it shares as much in spirit with the work of Mary Karr, Tobias Wolff...
Bechdel’s memoir offers a graphic narrative of uncommon richness, depth, literary resonance and psychological complexity.
Though Bechdel (known for her syndicated “Dykes to Watch Out For” strip and collections) takes her formal cues from comic books, she receives more inspiration from the likes of Proust and Joyce as she attempts to unravel the knots of her family’s twisted emotional history. At the core of this compelling narrative is her relationship with her father, a literary-minded high-school teacher who restores and runs the familial funeral parlor. (It is also the family’s residence and the “fun home” of the title.) Beneath his icy reserve and fussy perfectionism, he is a barely closeted homosexual and a suspected pedophile, an imposing but distant presence to his young daughter, who finds that their main bond is a shared literary sensibility. As she comes of age as an artist and comes to terms with her own sexual identity, Bechdel must also deal with the dissolution of her parents’ marriage and, soon afterward, her father’s death. Was it an accident or was it suicide? How did her father’s sexuality shape her own? Rather than proceeding in chronological fashion, the memoir keeps circling back to this central relationship and familial tragedy, an obsession that the artist can never quite resolve or shake. The results are painfully honest, occasionally funny and penetratingly insightful. Feminists, lesbians and fans of underground comics will enthusiastically embrace this major advance in Bechdel’s work, which should significantly extend both her renown and her readership.
Though this will likely be stocked with graphic novels, it shares as much in spirit with the work of Mary Karr, Tobias Wolff and other contemporary memoirists of considerable literary accomplishment.Pub Date: June 8, 2006
ISBN: 0-618-47794-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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SEEN & HEARD
A problematic but powerful Holocaust survival memoir.
Mother and daughter go on the run in Nazi-occupied Hungary, then endure the Russian occupation.
It would be difficult to conceive of Katin’s debut as anything but a graphic novel, given the strength of its visuals, but a straight-text approach might have been wiser. Her story is obviously dramatic. In Budapest circa 1944, when Miriam is a young girl, her mother, Esther, decides to avoid the impending Nazi roundup of Jews by faking their deaths and escaping to the countryside with forged papers. But things hardly improve outside the city, where villagers treat them no better in their new identities, taking their dark features to mean they’re gypsies. To make matters worse, a Nazi officer quickly figures out the Katins’ secret and uses it as a means of prying sexual favors from Esther. Hard circumstances turn desperate once the Red Army sweeps through, exhibiting the morals of drunken Vikings; Esther joins the starving, freezing villagers as they take clothes off soldiers’ corpses. She does her best to conceal all these horrific events from little Miriam, though the best she can manage is to induce a sort of baffled confusion. Katin’s episodic approach conveys events with an admirable economy at times, but often just hurries the reader through situations that could have used more explanation or context. The artwork’s smeared, sketchy quality contributes to this sense of undue haste. It may be that Katin chose the graphic form because of her background (she was a graphic artist in Israel and a background designer for Disney and MTV) rather than because it was the best vehicle for her story. However, the author’s pain is difficult to ignore, regardless of the limitations of her approach and her sometimes melodramatic tone.
A problematic but powerful Holocaust survival memoir.Pub Date: May 30, 2006
ISBN: 1-896597-20-3
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2006
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