An often entertaining and offbeat, if occasionally overwrought, mystery tale.
An investigative journalist and editor, who happens to look like a deer, becomes entangled in a shadowy local mystery in Lindsay’s noir-tinged graphic novel.
The story starts with human carjacker John Doe (the first of several deer-related puns) dying amid suspicious circumstances. The protagonist, an anthropomorphic deer named Bucky who has the personality of a 1950s movie detective, quickly learns that the dead man had connections to the mayor’s press secretary, Rachel Meadows. After Bucky finds her murdered, he chases down a car that’s fleeing the crime scene and rams his antlers through the window, but the perpetrators escape. The second chapter shifts focus to Bucky’s human sub-editor, Dan, as he tries to infiltrate the corrupt mayor’s inner circle. When he learns causes the story to take a detour into the supernatural, and Bucky reappears to help; the plot thickens in the following chapter. Throughout, the story captivates with its blend of hardboiled language and noir aesthetics, though it occasionally veers into clichéd territory. Women seem to exist in the story mainly to be killed, and readers may Bucky’s inner monologues are ceaselessly edgy to a fault: “Most mouthbreathers on the street think calling us a hack is an insult. There’s a reason hack is a homonym with what you do with a firm blade in a rough fashion.” With his lethal antlers, Bucky bears a striking resemblance to the X-Men character Wolverine (even, at one point, calling someone “Bub”), and the story never explores the reasons why he’s accepted as a deer in a world entirely populated by humans. Still, some of the overheated language and storytelling is saved by Kivelä’s striking two-tone artwork, which features cinematically staged fight sequences, menacing shadows, and the ever-present threat of Bucky’s antlers.
An often entertaining and offbeat, if occasionally overwrought, mystery tale.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781960578679
Page Count: 108
Publisher: Mad Cave Studios
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Immensely enjoyable.
The debut graphic novel from Mohamed presents a modern Egypt full of magical realism where wishes have been industrialized and heavily regulated.
The story opens with a televised public service announcement from the General Committee of Wish Supervision and Licensing about the dangers of “third-class wishes”—wishes that come in soda cans and tend to backfire on wishers who aren’t specific enough (like a wish to lose weight resulting in limbs falling from the wisher’s body). Thus begins a brilliant play among magic, the mundane, and bureaucracy that centers around a newsstand kiosk where a devout Muslim is trying to unload the three “first-class wishes” (contained in elegant glass bottles and properly licensed by the government) that have come into his possession, since he believes his religion forbids him to use them. As he gradually unloads the first-class wishes on a poor, regretful widow (who then runs afoul of authorities determined to manipulate her out of her valuable commodity) and a university student who seeks a possibly magical solution to their mental health crisis (but struggles with whether a wish to always be happy might have unintended consequences), interstitials give infographic histories of wishes, showing how the Western wish-industrial complex has exploited the countries where wishes are mined (largely in the Middle East). The book is exceptionally imaginative while also being wonderfully grounded in touching human relationships, existential quandaries, and familiar geopolitical and socio-economic dynamics. Mohamed’s art balances perfectly between cartoon and realism, powerfully conveying emotions, and her strong, clean lines gorgeously depict everything from an anguished face to an ornate bottle. Charts and graphs nicely break up the reading experience while also concisely building this larger world of everyday wishes. Mohamed has a great sense of humor, which comes out in footnotes and casual asides throughout.
Immensely enjoyable.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-524-74841-8
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
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