A superb noirish tale with otherworldly glimpses and a gruff, likable detective.
A crooked cop inexplicably suffers others’ physical pain while hunting kidnappers in this supernatural graphic novel.
New Orleans cop Leo Guidry revels in his own seediness. He’s a perpetual drunk who steals and sells evidence and proceeds to have an affair with another cop’s wife. But lately, he’s seeing things he can’t explain, such as people who appear as glowing creatures. Things really take a turn when a fellow detective dies in the line of duty—a gunshot to the head—and Guidry suffers an identical injury simultaneously. Guidry survives with a hole in his head that never stops bleeding, though only he can see this dreadful wound. He doesn’t know what’s happening even as the detective’s apparent ghost materializes before him. Perhaps it’s time for this dirty cop to “settle up,” which he attempts to do by looking into the abduction of a drug addict. He later witnesses the same kidnappers grab a young Honduran man. Guidry tracks down the victims while facing an especially huge obstacle. When certain individuals suffer injuries, like a savage pistol-whipping, the detective feels the same thing and sees the results on his increasingly battered mug. Along the way, he encounters people he’s let down and deals with the guilt caused by the loss of his son. But his dangerous, graphically psychedelic journey seems to revolve around his choices that have hurt others and a newfound chance to clear his conscience. And Guidry soon realizes he’s only a small part of a much bigger fight and a much larger world.
Buccellato’s novel—based on a story by Robert Johnson and John Alvey—moves at the pace of a Hollywood action film. That’s hardly surprising, as it was also developed by movie producer Jason Spire and actor Oscar Isaac. Guidry is the quintessential world-weary detective hiding in a dark city’s squalid underbelly. As he sees more and more bewildering things, a mystery slowly creeps into the narrative that couples well with such familiar sights as cops chasing baddies. Despite his flaws, Guidry is an appealing hero who eventually strives to do what’s right. Most of the police, meanwhile, see him as a peculiar guy with “mummy bandages” pointlessly covering his head; they can’t see the bloody and bruised agony on his face that he and readers spot. No one else in the cast gets as much focus, though Suzie, Guidry’s paramour, stands out as a woman who craves an emotional connection. Some characters are intentionally enigmatic, from a biker gang to the truck driver transporting the abductees. Ward’s richly hued artwork complements this somber detective story with blue-gray nights and glaringly bright lights. But the most striking visual is Guidry’s head wound, as its mesmerizing blood floats in the air and sometimes even covers the panels with spatter. As to what’s going on, there are few answers until the final act rolls around. While the creators provide a good deal of clarity, questions remain, and it’s clear they have planned this as the start of a series.
A superb noirish tale with otherworldly glimpses and a gruff, likable detective.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68116-090-0
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Legendary Comics
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A not-very-illuminating updating of Chaucer’s Tales.
Continuing his apparent mission to refract the whole of English culture and history through his personal lens, Ackroyd (Thames: The Biography, 2008, etc.) offers an all-prose rendering of Chaucer’s mixed-media masterpiece.
While Burton Raffel’s modern English version of The Canterbury Tales (2008) was unabridged, Ackroyd omits both “The Tale of Melibee” and “The Parson’s Tale” on the undoubtedly correct assumption that these “standard narratives of pious exposition” hold little interest for contemporary readers. Dialing down the piety, the author dials up the raunch, freely tossing about the F-bomb and Anglo-Saxon words for various body parts that Chaucer prudently described in Latin. Since “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” and “The Miller’s Tale,” for example, are both decidedly earthy in Middle English, the interpolated obscenities seem unnecessary as well as jarringly anachronistic. And it’s anyone’s guess why Ackroyd feels obliged redundantly to include the original titles (“Here bigynneth the Squieres Tales,” etc.) directly underneath the new ones (“The Squires Tale,” etc.); these one-line blasts of antique spelling and diction remind us what we’re missing without adding anything in the way of comprehension. The author’s other peculiar choice is to occasionally interject first-person comments by the narrator where none exist in the original, such as, “He asked me about myself then—where I had come from, where I had been—but I quickly turned the conversation to another course.” There seems to be no reason for these arbitrary elaborations, which muffle the impact of those rare times in the original when Chaucer directly addresses the reader. Such quibbles would perhaps be unfair if Ackroyd were retelling some obscure gem of Old English, but they loom larger with Chaucer because there are many modern versions of The Canterbury Tales. Raffel’s rendering captured a lot more of the poetry, while doing as good a job as Ackroyd with the vigorous prose.
A not-very-illuminating updating of Chaucer’s Tales.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-670-02122-2
Page Count: 436
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
PERSPECTIVES
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
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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