A story about gender that is sure to elicit controversy among its target audience.
It’s 1999, and Jet is exploring their identity.
As tweens, Nirvana fans Jet and Sasha meet and strike up a friendship. At 16, Dutch Jet is experiencing the confusion of puberty and coming to terms with their sexuality and evolving gender. With their parents in Brussels working on fixing the millennium bug, Jet is sent to a boardinghouse with other students from their international school. Bullied by fellow boarder Stef, Jet navigates friendship, a first kiss, and experimenting with their gender presentation in the lead-up to the new millennium, but they’re not without support, as both Sasha and new kid Ken have their back. Charming moments, such as Jet’s pasting together images of themself and Kurt Cobain to explore their gender, contrast with incidents such as Jet’s binding unsafely using a bandage. Given the emphasis on genitals by transphobic elements in society, the lack of context in two scenes in particular is troubling: one in which Jet attempts to urinate standing up, with panels showing close-up frontal images of their genitals, and two ambiguous lines of dialogue that may be intended to signal that Jet is intersex. The muted color palette of mostly blue with the odd splash of pink serves to represent Jet’s feelings about their gender. This work is a mixed bag that will provoke strongly different reactions in readers.
A story about gender that is sure to elicit controversy among its target audience. (Graphic fiction. 16-adult)Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-913123-03-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Nobrow Ltd.
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2022
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 high-concept premise that falls short in its execution.
A teenage girl finds herself alone after everyone else in her town mysteriously disappears, leaving her scrambling to figure out how to find them all.
One late summer day, everybody in July Fielding’s town disappears. She is left to piece together what happened, following a series of cryptic signs she finds around town urging her to “GET THEM BACK.” The narrative moves back and forth between July’s present and the events of the summer before, when her relationship with her best friend, cross-country team co-captain Sydney, starts to fracture due to a combination of jealousy over July’s new relationship with a cute boy called Sam and sweet up-and-coming freshman Ella’s threatening to overtake Syd’s status as star of the track team. The team members participate in a ritual in which they jump off a cliff into the rocky waters below at the end of their Friday practice runs. Though Ella is reluctant, Syd pressures her to jump. Short, frenetically paced sections move the story along quickly, and there is much foreshadowing pointing to something terrible that occurred at the end of that summer, which may be the key to July’s current predicament, but there is much misdirection too. Ultimately this is a story without enough setup to make the turn the book takes in the end feel fully developed or earned. All characters read white.
A high-concept premise that falls short in its execution. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9780593327173
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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