Not the best volume with which to start this first-rate series, but rousing reading for comics fans who like their heroes...
The sea god steps up to tell his own side of the story in O’Connor’s latest, and least coherent, Olympian portrait.
Sporting a Fu Manchu mustache and rippling thews that would put Conan the Barbarian (never mind Hercules) to shame, the blue-skinned narrator also outdoes even the Dark Knight for grim, hulking presence. A natural storyteller he is not, though, opening his grab bag of reminiscences with the aftermath of the war with the Titans. He relates the gory encounters of Odysseus with Polyphemus and Theseus (portrayed as a thoroughgoing villain) with the Minotaur in support of his half-proud observation that “my children have always tended to be monstrous.” He goes on to tally defeats he has suffered at the hands of Athena and his other Olympian relatives, then closes by flashing back to a vague, abortive rebellion against Zeus and, further back yet, to horsey dreams after being eaten by his father Kronos. Jumbled as the overall plot may be, the immediate action is easy to follow in the crisply drawn sequential panels, and O’Connor’s animated, well-researched closing notes help to clarify his scenery-chewing subject’s nature and attributes.
Not the best volume with which to start this first-rate series, but rousing reading for comics fans who like their heroes heavily muscled, unhappy and occasionally splashed with blood. (resource lists, Olympian family tree, study questions) (Graphic mythology. 8-14)Pub Date: March 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59643-738-8
Page Count: 80
Publisher: First Second/Roaring Brook
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style.
A summer vacation turns out to be anything but relaxing for Greg and a teeming horde of Heffleys.
Gramma declines the offer of a grand birthday celebration, saying that “what would make her REALLY happy is if everyone else went to Ruttyneck Island”—though she prepares individual packs of her legendary meatballs. (“You knew exactly how much Gramma likes you by how many meatballs you got.”) A gaggle of Heffley relatives and a dog stuff themselves into a small beach house, where overcrowding, personality conflicts, and simmering resentments become just some of the ingredients in a rolling boil of sitcom-style catastrophes, not to mention questionable decisions ranging from leaving the kids to make dinner unsupervised to labeling a cooler “HUMAN ORGANS” to keep random passersby from helping themselves. As usual, Greg supplies the setups in poker-faced journal entries interspersed with black-and-white drawings of slouched figures bearing frowny expressions of dismay or annoyance to cue the laffs. Gramma, it eventually turns out, not only (unsurprisingly) has plans of her own, but is also keeping a shocking secret about those meatballs. To go with the knee-slapping set pieces, Kinney slips in a tasty bit of family lore about how Greg’s parents met, plus droll takes on such low-hanging comedy fruit as restaurant manners, viciously competitive board games, and social media influencers (Greg being one, albeit with zero followers, and his Aunt Veronica’s little dog being another, with 3.8 million).
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781419766954
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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