An ambitious, fast-paced, but flawed debut.
A reunion of college friends turns deadly in a graphic novel that spans decades and continents.
Olmos (A Modular Approach to Fault Tree Analysis, 1979, etc.) and debut illustrator Nichols pack a lot into their first graphic novel, which centers on members of Jabberwocky, a rock band formed in the 1970s by college friends in Boston. In 1996, a reunion concert takes place when former band members Esteban and Jonah, both Californians, visit Montreal, the home of the former lead singer, Celia Suarez. She used to go by “Leticia Mendez,” her middle names; following college, she returned to her native Central America, where she came from great wealth. She went on to acquire both a husband and a lover, the latter calling her “a corrupt rich little girl.” After leaving both men, she moved to Europe before settling in Canada. When the reunion concert in Montreal ends, she plans to move west with ex-lover Esteban. Instead, she winds up dead under suspicious circumstances in his hotel room. Esteban claims innocence but skips town, leaving Jonah to help solve the case by investigating Celia’s past. He discovers that the singer supported a revolutionary group—and that her rich family hated revolutionaries. The book repeatedly skips back and forth in time, and Nichols handles the sequential art skillfully. However, the quality of the art is inconsistent; many panels are stunning, but others look incomplete in comparison. It’s also jarring that some characters look like real-life celebrities; Esteban, for example, is a ringer for musician Jackson Browne, and police detective Martin Courant is the doppelgänger of actor Ben Kingsley. However, there are occasional renderings that make identifying a character a challenge, especially when a person errs and refers to him by the wrong name. The dialogue balloons often look misshapen and clunky, and there are occasional misspellings (“strickly”; “sevices”), uneven line spacing, and a continuity error that has the band reuniting after 22 years in one panel and after 25 in another.
An ambitious, fast-paced, but flawed debut.Pub Date: June 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5215-1839-7
Page Count: 101
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
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