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
An original project worth watching as it shapes up to something that may be quite magnificent.
This black-and-white historical narrative, written and illustrated by Lutes, collects eight volumes of his ongoing comic book set in Berlin during the late ’20s. It’s a multilayered tale of love and politics at the beginning of the Nazi era, as Lutes follows the stories of three characters: a 20ish art student from the provinces, a textile worker, and a young Jewish radical. Their lives intersect in only the subtlest way—Lutes depicts them crossing paths at some great public events, such as the Mayday march that closes this part of his book. And Lutes plays with perspective in a visual sense as well, jumping from point-of-view frames to overhead angles, including one from a dirigible flying above in honor of the Kaiser. At street level, Lutes integrates his historical research smoothly, and cleverly evokes the sounds and smells of a city alive with public debate and private turmoil. The competing political factions include communists, socialists, democrats, nationalists, and fascists, and all of Lutes’s characters get swept up by events. Marthe, the beautiful art student, settles in with Kurt, the cynical and detached journalist; Gudrun, the factory worker, loses her job, and her nasty husband (to the Nazi party), then joins a communist cooperative with her young daughters; Schwartz, a teenager enamored with the memory of Rosa Luxembourg, balances his incipient politics with his religion at home and his passion for Houdini. The lesser figures seem fully realized as well, from the despotic art instructor to the reluctant street policeman. Cosmopolitan Berlin on the brink of disaster: Lutes captures the time and place with a historian’s precision and a cinematographer’s skill. His shifts from close-ups to fades work perfectly in his thin-line style, a crossbreed of dense-scene European comics and more simple comics styles on this side of the Atlantic.
An original project worth watching as it shapes up to something that may be quite magnificent.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-896597-29-7
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
