Gorgeously madcap and brutally inspiring.
Two misfits try to stay positive as they stumble through a series of outlandishly unfortunate events in this reissue of Beyer’s (Amy and Jordan, 2004) alt-comic classic.
Amy and Jordan are best friends, roommates, and cohorts in suffering. Their misfortunes begin mundanely enough—simultaneously fired from the same company, disappointed by the movie they hoped would lift their spirits—but quickly escalate to surreal with Amy’s beheading by “some hideous ghoul creature.” Jordan recovers Amy’s noggin inside the belly of a giant fish, though he loses his legs diving through the creature’s snapping jaws. Nevertheless, aquarium staff free Jordan and Amy’s head, and a few weeks in the hospital bring full recoveries to both. Next, the two travel to a remote island to live with its primitive inhabitants and hopefully never worry about jobs again—which results in wholesale slaughter and catastrophe. Amy and Jordan survive, thanks to the inexplicable help of a massive beast, but exposure to toxins during the catastrophe strips away Amy’s flesh, leaving her a ghastly—but living—“human skeleton.” Like a daisy chain of calamity the cycle stretches: Amy and Jordan strive for betterment only to be viciously struck down by capricious fate, whose same fickle finger ultimately flicks them back up—and onto the next mishap, from lame dinner party to prison sentence to a voyage across the sea. Beyer wastes no panels, propelling the story with the manic energy, abrupt transitions, and frank, expository dialogue of children’s doodles—an association underscored by his images’ flat, geometric appearance. But this simple aesthetic belies the work’s complexity, as Beyer packs frames with a riot of bold lines, stacked patterns, and rich stippling, ensnaring and rewarding the gaze wherever it falls. His pair’s earnest striving amid relentless, absurd tribulations strikes a universal chord: “We’ve just got to keep trying harder,” says Jordan. “It’s a struggle, but what else can we do?”
Gorgeously madcap and brutally inspiring.Pub Date: March 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59017-981-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: New York Review Comics
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
