Men of God susceptible to human mistakes; profound, stimulating, and, best of all, entertaining.
In Walker (When the River Rises, 2015, etc.) and Dunbar’s (Dungeons & Dragons: Legends of Baldur's Gate, Vol. 1, 2015, etc.) graphic novel/thriller, priests hoping to save a parish find a less than legitimate way to get the money, only to stir up a whirlwind of misdeeds and bad decisions.
St. Stephen’s Parish in Philadelphia, along with its orphanage, is in danger of being shut down from lack of funds. Everyone’s likewise shaken by thuggish Luca Furio’s final confession to Father Tom Finn, which ended with Furio putting a gun under his own chin and firing. But Tom may know how to save the parish. In his confession, Furio mentioned burying money at his sister Evelyn’s place. Tom distracts Evelyn while two elderly priests, Ben and Cesar, dig through the woman’s backyard. What they uncover is a hefty duffel bag of drugs. When a second attempt to find the cash proves fruitless, the priests look for someone to buy the drugs, setting off a string of unintended consequences. Walker’s work is a never-ending series of twists and surprises. It certainly has its share of violence: multiple guns guarantee that characters will die, while a shovel is good for both digging and knocking someone over the head. The curvy plot, however, can be comical at times. Father Nathan, for example, voices his disapproval of illicit acts by quoting biblical verses, but he’s shockingly good at being a drug dealer when the men try pawning off their stash. The story’s four priests are riveting, willingly stepping into a life of crime for what they believe is the good of the parish. Walker alludes to a murky background for Tom, whose collar hides a sizable tattoo on the back of his neck. Ben and Cesar, meanwhile, are akin to wise grandfathers, making them entirely sympathetic despite their criminal shenanigans. Dunbar’s art is stark and robust, but the choice of black-and-white illustrations is the most revealing: even the most well-intentioned characters have some gray areas. The morally ambiguous ending is nothing short of extraordinary.
Men of God susceptible to human mistakes; profound, stimulating, and, best of all, entertaining.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-942734-01-7
Page Count: 126
Publisher: Mastermind Comics
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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