A well-done terrorist tale for those with a taste for in-your-face, rage-fueled, vicious carnage.
A radical underground group fights against tyranny in this graphic novel set in the near future.
After a wealthy white businessman is killed in a suicide bombing, his high school daughter, Sera Solomon, is framed as a terrorist; his son’s whereabouts are unknown. Sera is taken to a black site and tortured for information that she doesn’t have—but she’s no helpless victim, having spent a lifetime being physically and mentally toughened up (some would say abused) by her father. Scarred but unbroken from guard-run fight clubs, Sera escapes two years later. The story turns to Cesar, a young man on the run whose parents are illegal immigrants from Guatemala. He’s dedicated himself to the cause of animal liberation by any means necessary but often finds himself beaten, hungry, and naked. Baby, an intimidating black man, appears and muscles Cesar to Detroit, where Sera and her crew, an exotic bunch with big plans, have a secret base. Confused and appalled but low on options, Cesar agrees to join them, especially when he gets a chance to rescue animals from a factory farm. But the real mission turns out to be far bloodier, more shocking, and more complicated than that. Additional material includes Sera’s backstory, an interview with the author, and an image gallery of characters and alternative covers. Pizzolo (Calexit #2, 2018, etc.) delivers a high-octane mix of anger, violence, gore, sex, and rebellion, with a sprinkling of humor, snappy dialogue, and human connection. Cesar, for example, trying to hide out with clothes stolen from a trucker, is discovered and chased: “I’m literally the worst at going underground,” he moans. Ironic commentary is provided by Christopher Johanssen, an Alex Jones–like character whose Infocide online broadcast offers paranoia, his patented survival kit, and, sometimes, the truth. Nahuelpan’s (Calexit #2, 2018, etc.) illustrations depict action and characters boldly, with exciting cinematic scenes and wordless panels. But under the scar tissue and punk haircuts, Cesar, Sera, and her band possess perfect bodies (the women with large, gravity-defying breasts), which seem awfully conventional for terrorists and rebels.
A well-done terrorist tale for those with a taste for in-your-face, rage-fueled, vicious carnage.Pub Date: May 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62875-209-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Black Mask Comics
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A gorgeous symphony.
Illustrator McGuire (What’s Wrong With This Book, 1997, etc.) once again frames a fixed space across the millennia.
McGuire’s original treatment of the concept—published in 1989 in Raw magazine as six packed pages—here gives way to a graphic novel’s worth of two-page spreads, and the work soars in the enlarged space. Pages unspool like a player-piano roll, each spread filled by a particular time, while inset, ever shifting panels cut windows to other eras, everything effervescing with staggered, interrelated vignettes and arresting images. Researchers looking for Native American artifacts in 1986 pay a visit to the house that sprouts up in 1907, where a 1609 Native American couple flirtatiously recalls the legend of a local insatiable monster, while across the room, an attendee of a 1975 costume party shuffles in their direction, dressed as a bear with arms outstretched. A 1996 fire hose gushes into a 1934 floral bouquet, its shape echoed by a billowing sheet on the following page, in 2015. There’s a hint of Terrence Malick’s beautiful malevolence as panels of nature—a wolf in 1430 clenching its prey’s bloody haunch; the sun-dappled shallows of 2113’s new sea—haunt scenes of domesticity. McGuire also plays with the very concept of panels: a boy flaunts a toy drum in small panels of 1959 while a woman in 1973 sets up a projection screen (a panel in its own right) that ultimately displays the same drummer boy from a new angle; in 2050, a pair of old men play with a set of holographic panels arranged not unlike the pages of the book itself and find a gateway to the past. Later spreads flash with terrible and ancient supremacy, impending cataclysm, and distant, verdant renaissance, then slow to inevitable, irresistible conclusion. The muted colors and soft pencils further blur individual moments into a rich, eons-spanning whole.
A gorgeous symphony.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-375-40650-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
Gorgeous and troubling.
Cartoonist Kuper (Kafkaesque, 2018, etc.) delivers a graphic-novel adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s literary classic exploring the horror at the center of colonial exploitation.
As a group of sailors floats on the River Thames in 1899, a particularly adventurous member notes that England was once “one of the dark places of the earth,” referring to the land before the arrival of the Romans. This well-connected vagabond then regales his friends with his boyhood obsession with the blank places on maps, which eventually led him to captain a steamboat up a great African river under the employ of a corporate empire dedicated to ripping the riches from foreign land. Marlow’s trip to what was known as the Dark Continent exposes him to the frustrations of bureaucracy, the inhumanity employed by Europeans on the local population, and the insanity plaguing those committed to turning a profit. In his introduction, Kuper outlines his approach to the original book, which featured extensive use of the n-word and worked from a general worldview that European males are the forgers of civilization (even if they suffered a “soul [that] had gone mad” for their efforts), explaining that “by choosing a different point of view to illustrate, otherwise faceless and undefined characters were brought to the fore without altering Conrad’s text.” There is a moment when a scene of indiscriminate shelling reveals the Africans fleeing, and there are some places where the positioning of the Africans within the panel gives them more prominence, but without new text added to fully frame the local people, it’s hard to feel that they have reached equal footing. Still, Kuper’s work admirably deletes the most offensive of Conrad’s language while presenting graphically the struggle of the native population in the face of foreign exploitation. Kuper is a master cartoonist, and his pages and panels are a feast for the eyes.
Gorgeous and troubling.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-393-63564-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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