A quick read for fans.
A high school senior works to reinvent himself and inadvertently discovers his mutant superpowers.
Garfield Logan is a self-deprecating 17-year-old with green-streaked hair and an obsession with working out and eating so he can bulk his way up to becoming popular with girls. It’s almost the end of the school year, and nothing on his bucket list has been accomplished: He doesn’t have the girl, he doesn’t have the income from the pizza job he wants, and he is very much on the outside of the in crowd. Fed up with being alternately ignored and bullied by the cool kids, Gar completes an outrageous dare that instantly gains him a following and new nickname, Beast Boy. Precariously balancing his new popularity and some unexpected physical transformations with maintaining his true, close friendships, Gar successfully goes with the flow until things get dangerously out of hand. This follow-up to Teen Titans: Raven (2019) serves its purpose in providing an origin story for Beast Boy and connecting the series storylines with recurring characters but without the high-stakes action, intrigue, and depth of the former. Although the visuals are dotted with bursts of brightness and creative framing, the story is weakened by outdated language, insufficient character development, and a scattered plot. A neurodivergent character is identified within the text while racial diversity is represented in illustrations.
A quick read for fans. (author and illustrator forewords) (Graphic fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4012-8719-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: DC
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
Hinds adds another magnificent adaptation to his oeuvre (King Lear, 2009, etc.) with this stunning graphic retelling of Homer’s epic. Following Odysseus’s journey to return home to his beloved wife, Penelope, readers are transported into a world that easily combines the realistic and the fantastic. Gods mingle with the mortals, and not heeding their warnings could lead to quick danger; being mere men, Odysseus and his crew often make hasty errors in judgment and must face challenging consequences. Lush watercolors move with fluid lines throughout this reimagining. The artist’s use of color is especially striking: His battle scenes are ample, bloodily scarlet affairs, and Polyphemus’s cave is a stifling orange; he depicts the underworld as a colorless, mirthless void, domestic spaces in warm tans, the all-encircling sea in a light Mediterranean blue and some of the far-away islands in almost tangibly growing greens. Don’t confuse this hefty, respectful adaptation with some of the other recent ones; this one holds nothing back and is proudly, grittily realistic rather than cheerfully cartoonish. Big, bold, beautiful. (notes) (Graphic classic. YA)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7636-4266-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
A triumphant queer coming-of-age story that will make your heart ache and soar.
A 17-year-old struggles to navigate friendship and finding herself while navigating a toxic relationship.
Biracial (East Asian and white) high schooler Freddy is in love with white Laura Dean. She can’t help it—Laura oozes cool. But while Freddy’s friends are always supportive of her, they can’t understand why she stays with Laura. Laura cheats on Freddy, gaslights and emotionally manipulates her, and fetishizes her. After Laura breaks up with her for a third time, Freddy writes to an advice columnist and, at the recommendation of her best friend Doodle, (reluctantly) sees a psychic who advises her that in order to break out of the cycle of her “non-monogamous swing-your-partner wormhole,” Freddy needs to do the breaking up herself. As she struggles to fall out of love and figure out how to “break up with someone who’s broken up with me,” Freddy slowly begins to be drawn back into Laura’s orbit, challenging her relationships with her friends as she searches for happiness. Tamaki (Supergirl, 2018, etc.) explores the nuances of both romantic and platonic relationships with raw tenderness and honesty. Valero-O’Connell’s (Lumberjanes: Bonus Tracks, 2018, etc.) art is realistic and expressive, bringing the characters to life through dynamic grayscale illustrations featuring highlights of millennial pink. Freddy and her friends live in Berkeley, California, and have a diversity of body shapes, gender expressions, sexualities, and skin tones.
A triumphant queer coming-of-age story that will make your heart ache and soar. (Graphic novel. 14-adult)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62672-259-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
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