This psychological thriller of digital discord has some relish, but the real meat may lie in future installments.
A federal agent goes undercover at a college to investigate a social media phenomenon gone out of control in Rahal’s graphic novel.
The opening of this thriller takes cues from a digital-era pastime—social media “challenges.” The one in question here is a seemingly harmless stunt in which wired-up young people eat hot dogs in odd or inappropriate circumstances while streaming the video. When a fatality results (a hot dog thief is shot by an angry store owner), the vengeful online “community” built around the gag (a faceless horde called the Hot Dog Party) spreads rumors that a major hot dog manufacturer uses tainted meat; the collapse of the corporation’s stock leads the government to intervene. Federal agent Cara Cole is tasked with infiltrating a college as a teaching assistant and gets close to a student named Paul Kovac; as a boy, Paul’s selfie showing him eating an oversized hot dog became a viral meme. Now, as a young adult (and secretly behind the Hot Dog Party), he claims that a hot dog maker “exploited his likeness for profit.” He recognizes Cara as law enforcement and seems to ask for her help in dealing with the bizarre cult he’s fostered. Or is the onetime internet phenom playing some kind of mind game? Cara befriends Charlotte, another student close to Paul and a self-anointed influencer. Soon there’s another fatality, and worse. Is Paul responsible, or are other malicious forces at work? Rahal’s timely premise, concerning the potential of an unleashed mob of glued-to-their-phone types (and of heavy-handed law enforcement reaction), recalls various real-life hashtag-boosted movements, from Black Lives Matter and #MeToo to Occupy Wall Street. The nimble, stylized artwork by Italian comics specialist Simeone has echoes of Japanese manga. A violent finale (aside from which the most explicit material is the frequent appearance of F-words) seems to wrap the case up, but the script drops enough hints and loose ends (including dark suggestions of trauma in Cara’s past) to set up a second volume.
This psychological thriller of digital discord has some relish, but the real meat may lie in future installments.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781952303777
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Mad Cave Studios
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2024
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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