Comes close but doesn’t quite meet its potential.
After her sudden death at home, 19-year-old Marnie, now a ghost, learns to work with otherworldly beings in the Department of Spectral Affairs.
X’lakthul, or Xel, is the upbeat, optimistic case manager who tries to place Marnie in a “post-life assignment.” When Xel finds that Marnie isn’t particularly attached to any location from her home dimension, she isn’t sure where to place her, so she suggests an unconventional move: appointing Marnie DSA intern. As an intern, Marnie works with other case workers, office managers, and supervisors in the disorganized and barely functional office. She judges and speaks to them harshly, all the while assuming they will dump her somewhere when she’s too much trouble. But eventually Marnie comes to appreciate each of them, with all their faults, because they care about her. This comic uses humor to address serious questions of mental illness (particularly depression), acceptance, and belonging, an approach that will work for some readers but may rub others the wrong way. While the developments of relationships between characters are portrayed well, Marnie’s characterization is superficial, leaving the ending without the emotional power the story deserves. The colorful illustrations are clean and clear, making for a pleasant visual experience. The few scenes involving humans feature ethnically diverse groups of people.
Comes close but doesn’t quite meet its potential. (Graphic fantasy. 14-18)Pub Date: July 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-945820-52-6
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Iron Circus Comics
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
In the end, this story attempts to tackle serious issues but fails to grasp the gravity of its subject matter. Disappointing.
A novel with graphic elements chronicles a girl’s mental and emotional journeys as she works through a childhood trauma while in a coma.
Fifteen-year old Zara is in a coma as a result of the motorcycle accident that took the life of her brother, Jem. The first-person narration shifts between comatose Zara, as she hears and mentally responds to the people in her hospital room, and her adventures in the world of her brother’s favorite comic book, Hoodman. Strangely, Zara does not appear to know that she is in a coma, despite her immobility and blindness and the fact that no one responds to her. Much of the action within the comic-book world feels similarly disconnected as, Harold-like, Zara draws herself in and out of various situations, searching for Jem and evading the comic’s villain, Morven. Morven’s depiction, distressingly, borrows from stereotypical tropes of the Other, with dark skin and a hooked nose, a stark contrast to the blonde, fair-skinned protagonist. As Zara’s back story unfolds, readers learn that in order to come out of her coma, she must confront the demons from her childhood—a fictively tidy solution that feels both illogical and contrived, given the coma’s cause.
In the end, this story attempts to tackle serious issues but fails to grasp the gravity of its subject matter. Disappointing. (Graphic hybrid fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7624-5004-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Running Press Kids
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
While out playing one fateful day, brothers Sherwood and Orson stumble upon a horrible and mysterious cave. Inside, the boys...
Children must fight a complicated evil in this dark, disturbing sci-fi tale.
While out playing one fateful day, brothers Sherwood and Orson stumble upon a horrible and mysterious cave. Inside, the boys encounter a demon that will forever alter the paths of their lives. In a parallel universe, a motley crew called the Wrenchies band together in a violent, futuristic wasteland trying to survive numerous foes, especially the Shadowsmen. In yet another place/time, a comics-loving misfit named Hollis (who takes to running about in a scarlet superhero costume) finds himself immersed—literally—in the pages of an enigmatic, purloined comic. These three tales twine together in a somewhat confusing fashion, full of reaching sci-fi leaps into other times and dimensions, creating a brain-aching nonlinear plot. Couple this with a handful of epilogues and an esoteric “fotogloctica” that kind of but not really wraps things up, and expect readers’ brains to be smoking. Dalrymple’s art is impeccable, capturing the horrors of demons that routinely spear eyeballs and great swarms of parasitic insects that can crawl into ears and need to be killed by swords and/or knives; it’s beautiful, dreamy and nightmarishly violent. Think of this as an insidiously macabre Coraline-esque tale meets Charles Burns.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59643-421-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
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