Hellishly hilarious.
High school in Hell? Not so different from high school anywhere else.
Playing his premise for all it's worth, Guarente fills the halls of St. Lucifer’s Academy for the Hopeless and Damned with heavy-lidded teen dead and demons. There, the former serve as lab subjects in dissection class, are forced to watch sex-ed films featuring their own parents and otherwise endure like high-pain activities. For Trevor, the thick protective shells of ennui and self-loathing that he brought with him after being electrocuted by a crappy guitar amp begin to break down when slavering vice principal Cerberus promises a transfer to Purgatory if he can pull his “soul point average” up past 3.0 (it’s currently negative 2.8 billion). But then leaving starts to look less attractive when hot new goth student Persephone Plumm shows signs of interest. That interest leads to a clinch after Trevor crashes the school’s angst rally to play a “neo thrash core” ballad…but the course of true love is unlikely to run smooth, as Persephone has yet to share some significant information about her parentage. Being replete with disfigured students, terrifying monsters and scenes of gruesomely explicit torture, the art is as much fun as the broadly tweaked school-story tropes. (Said art is supplied by a rotating team, leading to some visual discontinuity from section to section.)
Hellishly hilarious. (Graphic fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62873-592-5
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
A trilogy opener both rich and strange, if heavy at the front end.
Riggs spins a gothic tale of strangely gifted children and the monsters that pursue them from a set of eerie, old trick photographs.
The brutal murder of his grandfather and a glimpse of a man with a mouth full of tentacles prompts months of nightmares and psychotherapy for 15-year-old Jacob, followed by a visit to a remote Welsh island where, his grandfather had always claimed, there lived children who could fly, lift boulders and display like weird abilities. The stories turn out to be true—but Jacob discovers that he has unwittingly exposed the sheltered “peculiar spirits” (of which he turns out to be one) and their werefalcon protector to a murderous hollowgast and its shape-changing servant wight. The interspersed photographs—gathered at flea markets and from collectors—nearly all seem to have been created in the late 19th or early 20th centuries and generally feature stone-faced figures, mostly children, in inscrutable costumes and situations. They are seen floating in the air, posing with a disreputable-looking Santa, covered in bees, dressed in rags and kneeling on a bomb, among other surreal images. Though Jacob’s overdeveloped back story gives the tale a slow start, the pictures add an eldritch element from the early going, and along with creepy bad guys, the author tucks in suspenseful chases and splashes of gore as he goes. He also whirls a major storm, flying bullets and a time loop into a wild climax that leaves Jacob poised for the sequel.
A trilogy opener both rich and strange, if heavy at the front end. (Horror/fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: June 7, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59474-476-1
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A charming adaptation.
A miscommunication leaves Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert responsible for a plucky, effusive orphan girl instead of the boy they’d expected to help maintain their farm.
Retold in traditional manga format, with right-to-left panel orientation and detailed black-and-white linework, this adaptation is delightfully faithful to the source text. Larger panels establish the idyllic country landscape while subtle text boxes identify the setting—Prince Edward Island, Canada, in the 1870s. The book follows redheaded Anne Shirley from her arrival at Green Gables at 11 to her achievement of a college scholarship. In the intervening years, Anne finds stability, friendship, personal growth, and ambition in Avonlea and in the strict but well-intentioned Cuthbert siblings’ household. The familiar story is enhanced by the exciting new format and lush illustrations. A variety of panel layouts provides visual freshness, maintaining reader interest. Backmatter includes the floor plan of the Green Gables house, as well as interior and exterior views, and notes about research on the actual location. A description of the process of adapting the novel to this visual format indicates the care that was taken to highlight particular elements of the story as well as to remain faithful to the smallest details. Readers who find the original text challenging will welcome this as an aid to comprehension and Anne’s existing fans will savor a fresh perspective on their beloved story. All characters appear to be White.
A charming adaptation. (Graphic fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-947808-18-8
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Manga Classics
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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