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
All told, a thoughtful—and by no means dumbed-down—approach to events still very current.
A comic book, utterly serious, documenting the attacks of September 11.
The horrendous events of that day may seem an odd choice for comic-panel treatment, but Jacobson and Colón—known to legions of fans for their longtime work at DC and Marvel Comics—are doing an honorable public service by putting the official report in a form that anyone can understand, through words or not. The project is fraught with peril; as drawn, for instance, Ronald Reagan looks more like Leonid Brezhnev than the Gipper, and it must have been daunting to reduce the carefully nonpartisan complexities of the report to a few frames depicting, say, Condoleezza Rice’s failure to grasp the meaning of actions on which she had been fully briefed, to say nothing of the president’s inaction. For all that, the captions pack a lot of punch. Reads one, “Little effort in the legislative branch was made to consider an integrated policy toward terrorism. All committees found themselves swamped in the minutiae of the budget process, with little time for the consideration of longer-term questions.” The point is well-taken, even as Osama bin Laden’s eyes glower from the page. The graphics are meaningful as well, and some of them, such as the depiction of Afghan leader Ahmed Shah Massoud’s last moments, are, well, quite graphic. The book includes the 9/11 Commission’s sober determination that the invasion of Iraq was based on anecdotal evidence at best, as well as its recommendations that since so much of the US infrastructure is in private hands, the government would do well to integrate civilians into emergency planning. The most telling moment here comes at the end, and here the graphic treatment is exactly right: It depicts the Commission’s “report card” on the administration’s response to its findings, with an average grade of D.
All told, a thoughtful—and by no means dumbed-down—approach to events still very current.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-8090-5738-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
Not for kids, though adult readers should take some pleasure knowing that they’re better off than Matt, at least as depicted...
The cartoonist tests the limits of pathetic self-absorption in a volume that should appeal to his cult following but is unlikely to expand it.
The work of graphic-diarist Matt (Peepshow, 2003) is practically review-proof, for any criticism one could make he has already flagellated upon himself. His obsessive focus remains the life of Matt, though even he questions why anyone else could possibly be interested. He’s geeky (at least within these drawings) even by the standards of his fellow geek-comics, who are the closest thing he has to friends, though they spend most of their time together either criticizing or ridiculing him. During the mid-1990s, as detailed in these panels, he lives in a Toronto flophouse with a shared bathroom (which he generally avoids in favor of a bottle in his bedroom). He’s consumed with his collection of bootleg pornography, which he has painstakingly edited into marathon video anthologies of the “good” parts. He masturbates eight or ten times a day, leaving less time, energy and inspiration (as the title suggests) for the graphic narratives that barely earn him a living. Fortunately, for a man of meager income, he’s notoriously cheap. He laments the girlfriend he lost and wishes he had another, though he’s unsure whether such flesh-and-blood complications would be worth sacrificing his porn collection. On video, he favors submissive Asian women; out the window, he fixates on schoolgirl uniforms and wonders whether he might be a pedophile. Interspersed with ruminations on Matt’s tawdry adult existence are flashbacks to his Pennsylvania boyhood that provide some clues as to how he ended up this way. The spirit of the underground era lives in these comics, which make no attempt at graphic-novel respectability.
Not for kids, though adult readers should take some pleasure knowing that they’re better off than Matt, at least as depicted here.Pub Date: May 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-897299-11-1
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2007
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