Yee-haw! Pa never does show up, but there are plainly more misadventures in store before trail’s end.
Two children get into one pickle after another as they search the Old West for their elusive dad.
There’s never a dull moment as Opie (Calliope, but woe betide anyone who calls her that) and pesky little brother Ned chase rumors of their pa’s whereabouts—being as he’s universally feared as “the criminal king of the west,” there are plenty of rumors—while a posse of disasters rides hot at their heels. In a series of set-piece chapters, Hirsch chucks the young searchers into saloon brawls, gunfights, and encounters with a massive mountain man clad in a bearskin onesie and a motherly if larcenous woman of low virtue, among other dust-ups. Finally Opie and Ned brave a booby-trapped underground lair to confront one of Pa’s “representatives,” a lowdown snake who killed their mother. Beneath a prized coonskin cap that, according to Ned, smells “like ten butts,” Opie’s orange hair glows as brightly as her feisty spirit in the neatly squared-off cartoon panels. Horses and other livestock (plus the odd jackalope) show as much personality as any of the two-legged characters. Amid the large typecast array of white gamblers, cowpokes, Pinkerton agents, settlers, and outlaws, the author floats an occasional darker-skinned or Native American figure.
Yee-haw! Pa never does show up, but there are plainly more misadventures in store before trail’s end. (Graphic Western. 11-13)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62672-279-8
Page Count: 226
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
Despite a few rough edges, a promising start.
An escalating war unites a ragamuffin with a secret and two fugitives with secrets of their own in this steampunk-tinged opener.
Having herself spent three years in disguise as a news “boy,” orphan Lavender Blue is willing to accept Jack Jingle, a brilliant but distracted inventor, and the oddly clicking, heavily muffled figure Crow as friends without probing into their pasts. Ultimately those pasts come home to roost, though, with revelations that Jack has built a flying war machine and Crow is its reluctant but purpose-built mechanical pilot. An escape attempt ends in a crash, separating it from the main characters and setting up the next volume in the series. Xu creates a nicely realistic 1920s-style setting for events and spaces out her panels to make the action reasonably easy to follow. Her manga-influenced figures, though, display only a limited range of expressions, most of them more exaggerated than called for by the circumstances, and many of the story’s twists are thoroughly telegraphed. Confusingly, the blue-eyed, light-skinned child is tagged as “mixed” (i.e., part Grimmaean) and therefore suspicious for her light hair, while Jack, with similar coloring, is accepted without comment. By and large, characters display a range of skin tones, from dark brown to white.
Despite a few rough edges, a promising start. (Graphic science fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-80311-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
An action-oriented closer, conventionally tidy at the end but distinctive for its richly imagined world.
Rounding off a tale begun in NewsPrints (2017), budding journalist Blue continues to search for her robotic friend, Crow, as the long war between Goswing and Grimmaea comes to a head.
Just 17 and blind, but determined not to appear weak, Corazana Lina, newly crowned queen of Goswing, lays a fresh claim to mines needed to fuel her rapidly growing fleet of flying warships. But as Grimmaea is building an air force of its own and the mines’ range is also home to a cluster of active volcanoes, widespread disaster looms…and, ultimately, strikes. Meanwhile Blue, caught between opposing armies and monarchs, weathers a rapid succession of dramatic encounters and narrow squeaks as she brings her quest to a successful conclusion at last. Exaggerated facial expressions occasionally give the figures in Xu’s bordered panels an artificially stylized, manga-esque look, but the action is easy to follow, and sharply rendered background details add depth and detail to the steampunk-ish setting. The author weaves a strong anti-war message through her tale, casting righteous shade on the evil, which both sides here practice, of recruiting children for military service and playing up the importance of an independent press. Though a bit unwieldy, her populous cast features several characters with mixed ancestry (including Blue), a trans character, and one that is constructed but human in all the ways that count.
An action-oriented closer, conventionally tidy at the end but distinctive for its richly imagined world. (Graphic science fiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-545-80316-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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