Not the easiest to follow but a properly percussive climax.
DOOM-studded battles continue in this all-action, manga-style sequel.
DO-OM! Compiling seven more segments originally published as webcomics, the ongoing adventures of Stud, a light-skinned, black-haired human lad, or Swirl, who comes with the ability to turn his extremities into enormous hammers, reach the end of an underwater story arc in which he helps dark-skinned merfolk allies bring a terrifying lawbreaker to bay. Though each chapter opens with a color tableau, the art then switches to small panels crammed with dizzying monochrome scribbles of lines around mighty blasts, grimacing faces, and thunderous noises crowding, or often drawn as bursting beyond, the page borders. The bad guy, Steele—a sort of monstrous shark-squid—in particular, seems too big to be visible all at once. But after his menacing minions are reduced to sushi and despite sporting giant, writhing tentacles and seemingly invulnerable ink armor, even he falls at last with a mighty DONG to his diminutive nemesis’s ultimate weapon, the awesome HAMMER HEADBUTT! Of course, hints of an even more powerful foe in Stud’s future drop (cue a final, melodramatic DOOM) in the last panel. The work is cluttered and confusing at times, but this volume may appeal to fans of the series.
Not the easiest to follow but a properly percussive climax. (Adventure comic. 10-13)Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-7603-7692-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Rockport Publishers
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
A muddled middle for a lagomorphic trilogy mired in gloom and doom.
Artist/magician Bridgebelle makes a dangerous bargain in hopes of saving her rabbit community from scheming foxes and supernatural threats.
Having set up a complex backstory and elaborately detailed animal societies in the opener, Secret of the Wind (2018), summarized here in a prose lead-in, the author more or less marks time in this follow-up with a fragmentary, disconnected set of events. When her first megathokcha, a magical talisman made from carrot extract, is stolen, Bridgebelle promises to make another for vengeful fox Hollow even as the religious authorities, or Windist Curatus, in her own settlement drive her away with a decree that all thokchas should be destroyed. Meanwhile, her friend Glee’s attempt to transport another megathokcha known as the Black Sun to the isolated Vale of the Clouds for safety falls afoul of trickster fox Sylvan’s nihilist scheme to summon the malign Broken Feather King from the land of the dead. If the many quick cuts, flashbacks, and scene shifts don’t leave readers bewildered, the cast of lookalike rabbits and foxes should do the trick—Arnhold’s efforts to individualize her naturalistically drawn and colored creatures with occasional accessories and subtle variations in facial features notwithstanding. In the end Bridgebelle is left holding a legendary white carrot that may free either her or her furry folk but not both. Stay tuned.
A muddled middle for a lagomorphic trilogy mired in gloom and doom. (Graphic fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-62672-061-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
An immersive ramble across a changing, yet somehow timeless, icy wilderness.
Human and polar bear worlds collide on melting ice in this Arctic odyssey, a reworking and expansion of Waluk, published by Graphic Universe in 2013.
The chemistry between a weary, wise, worn-down bear named Eskimo and his frisky younger bear companion, Waluk, animates a series of adventures and misadventures. These include negotiating a détente with a mother bear fiercely protective of her two cubs, amicable visits with a team of mindlessly loyal sled dogs, and less-friendly brushes with their viciously abusive human owner, a White man named Castor. (He later suffers a deservedly gruesome fate.) The two wandering bears pad and swim through vast icy expanses, searching for seals or other food made ever more elusive due to climate change. As they do, their encounters often take comical twists as, for instance, they come upon a shipping container fallen from a passing cargo vessel that turns out to be full of plush bear stuffies, or, later on, prove that an experimental observation drone isn’t made to be a polar bear toy. To go with the colloquial cast that Ruiz gives the dialogue (“Are we gonna walk there?” “Don’t worry, little buddy. Bears are born swimmers!”), Miralles gives the animals subtly human expressions but otherwise depicts both figures and settings with such a deft mix of naturalism and otherness that even the occasional supernatural animal fits right in. Human figures, rare on the ice, seem to be either White or Arctic Native. The questionable choice to name the older bear with what many consider a derogatory term for Arctic Natives threatens to distract from his otherwise strong characterization, and appropriations from Arctic Native cultures go unparsed and uncredited. (This book was reviewed digitally with 8.5-by-22-inch double-page spreads viewed at 55% of actual size.)
An immersive ramble across a changing, yet somehow timeless, icy wilderness. (Graphic animal fantasy. 10-13)Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-951719-05-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Magnetic Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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