A bold, messy conflagration that revels in all of the trespasses and heroism of which only human beings are truly capable.
What’s black and white and red all over? This harrowing revenge piece that blends globalization anxiety and the Sino-American struggle for global dominance with acute violence and technology run amuck.
Debut creators Roman and DeWeese use the teachings of the ancient Chinese general, Sun Tzu, as the foundation for an epic dystopian story of brotherly love and corporate greed set in a nightmarish American wasteland circa 2032. Our nominal hero, Kelly Roman, has come home from the military prison where he served time for a friendly-fire incident that has scarred him body and soul. Worse, Kelly discovers that his brother, Shane, has died in the service of a resurrected Sun Tzu, whose mastery of warfare now extends into a heavily armed global financial market controlled by his company, Trench. To get things started, Trench’s human resources manager neatly snips off Kelly’s hands just to prove that he won’t succumb in battle. (Lots of things get sewn back on in the future, apparently.) In Manhattan, Kelly mentors under Sun Tzu and clashes with the general’s daughter, Qing, all while maneuvering against a mysterious competitor, Vespoid, whose leader, The Prince, competes fiercely against Trench. There are also enough sci-fi high-concept ideas to fill a kitchen sink, from genetically-engineered soldiers to militarized black holes to the integration of insect biotech to produce more accurate algorithms. Much like James O’Barr’s bestselling graphic novel The Crow, the art here is purposefully rough, incendiary and ugly at times, with a provocative style that dares readers to keep flipping to the end. It would fit in well with the likes of Vertigo’s Army @ Love or even the black-and-white visions of Brian Michael Bendis’ Torso or Goldfish graphic novels, but there’s something about the immediacy and volume of the single narrative that lends this martial nightmare a little something extra.
A bold, messy conflagration that revels in all of the trespasses and heroism of which only human beings are truly capable.Pub Date: July 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-210394-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
Gorgeous and troubling.
Cartoonist Kuper (Kafkaesque, 2018, etc.) delivers a graphic-novel adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s literary classic exploring the horror at the center of colonial exploitation.
As a group of sailors floats on the River Thames in 1899, a particularly adventurous member notes that England was once “one of the dark places of the earth,” referring to the land before the arrival of the Romans. This well-connected vagabond then regales his friends with his boyhood obsession with the blank places on maps, which eventually led him to captain a steamboat up a great African river under the employ of a corporate empire dedicated to ripping the riches from foreign land. Marlow’s trip to what was known as the Dark Continent exposes him to the frustrations of bureaucracy, the inhumanity employed by Europeans on the local population, and the insanity plaguing those committed to turning a profit. In his introduction, Kuper outlines his approach to the original book, which featured extensive use of the n-word and worked from a general worldview that European males are the forgers of civilization (even if they suffered a “soul [that] had gone mad” for their efforts), explaining that “by choosing a different point of view to illustrate, otherwise faceless and undefined characters were brought to the fore without altering Conrad’s text.” There is a moment when a scene of indiscriminate shelling reveals the Africans fleeing, and there are some places where the positioning of the Africans within the panel gives them more prominence, but without new text added to fully frame the local people, it’s hard to feel that they have reached equal footing. Still, Kuper’s work admirably deletes the most offensive of Conrad’s language while presenting graphically the struggle of the native population in the face of foreign exploitation. Kuper is a master cartoonist, and his pages and panels are a feast for the eyes.
Gorgeous and troubling.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-393-63564-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
Chwast and Twain are a match made in heaven.
Design veteran Chwast delivers another streamlined, graphic adaptation of classic literature, this time Mark Twain’s caustic, inventive satire of feudal England.
Chwast (Tall City, Wide Country, 2013, etc.) has made hay anachronistically adapting classic texts, whether adding motorcycles to The Canterbury Tales (2011) or rocket ships to The Odyssey (2012), so Twain’s tale of a modern-day (well, 19th-century) engineer dominating medieval times via technology—besting Merlin with blasting powder—is a fastball down the center. (The source material already had knights riding bicycles!) In Chwast’s rendering, bespectacled hero Hank Morgan looks irresistible, plated in armor everywhere except from his bow tie to the top of his bowler hat, sword cocked behind head and pipe clenched in square jaw. Inexplicably sent to sixth-century England by a crowbar to the head, Morgan quickly ascends nothing less than the court of Camelot, initially by drawing on an uncanny knowledge of historical eclipses to present himself as a powerful magician. Knowing the exact date of a celestial event from more than a millennium ago is a stretch, but the charm of Chwast’s minimalistic adaption is that there are soon much better things to dwell on, such as the going views on the church, politics and society, expressed as a chart of literal back-stabbing and including a note that while the upper class may murder without consequence, it’s kill and be killed for commoners and slaves. Morgan uses his new station as “The Boss” to better the primitive populous via telegraph lines, newspapers and steamboats, but it’s the deplorably savage civility of the status quo that he can’t overcome, even with land mines, Gatling guns and an electric fence. The subject of class manipulation—and the power of passion over reason—is achingly relevant, and Chwast’s simple, expressive illustrations resonate with a childlike earnestness, while his brief, pointed annotations add a sly acerbity. His playful mixing of perspectives within single panels gives the work an aesthetic somewhere between medieval tapestry and Colorforms.
Chwast and Twain are a match made in heaven.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-60819-961-7
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
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