A wildly original and fearless tale about a young hero’s clash with a demon.
In this graphic novel debut, the disappearance of a high priestess’s son mars an alien festival.
On the planet Vareenya, the town of Shepherd is about to celebrate the opening of the winter solstice festival. Ettan, son of High Priestess Giulia, doesn’t want to go. He loathes his people’s reliance on telepathy and would rather enjoy the company of his close friends Yinyin, a being of liquid thought, and Eggbeam, an ahmenor larva. While in the ancient sequoia forest with Yinyin, Ettan becomes worried about Eggbeam’s whereabouts. He contacts Gen. Lilly, who tells the boy he’s paranoid. But Ettan trusts his gut and “cogiports” with Yinyin through space to visit his friend Alice in a lab on the rogue planet 666. Meanwhile, the war goddess, Killjoy, has grown bored with combat. After finishing a battle on the planet Herpetol, she meditates and consults the Divine Mother, who reduces the goddess to spirit form to clean her karma. Killjoy then receives the chance to do good. She arrives in the 666 lab, where she witnesses Eggbeam being tortured by a Soul-phage. The scene is orchestrated by Kazundal, Killjoy’s demonic half brother. Yet before she can intervene, Ettan and Yinyin enter the lab’s cavern entrance. They fight Kazundal’s henchman, Hornhole, and rescue Eggbeam from the Soul-phage. Then Kazundal summons more advanced Soul-phages, which strip Ettan’s essence and organs from his body. While Ettan is trapped in hell, Killjoy’s spirit merges with the remains of his body. Back on Vareenya, Giulia begins her vocal performance only to feel the shock of her son’s anguish. For this innovative series opener, Peabody teams up with illustrator Soriani (The Magical Tale of Birthday Dust, 2017, etc.) to combine spirituality, classic sci-fi concepts like telepathy, and cultural motifs—such as Giulia having two husbands. The creators maximize their use of the graphic novel format, presenting a visually dazzling story that takes numerous cues from sci-fi (such as spaceships that look like jellyfish) but doesn’t fret over whether or not a race of feline humanoids has a believable backstory. The author and illustrator run hard and fast with so many oddball ideas—including a molecular realm populated by beings called Ed and Fred—that comic-book readers used to superhero fare should be entranced (even the telepathic word balloons, indicated by a wi-fi symbol, are clever). The inventive sense of humor matches the characters themselves, as when Hornhole is pinned to the ground, through the hole in his head, with a sword. Colors by Soriani and debut artist Zibordi are eye-popping, with a mostly cool palette for the backgrounds, allowing the warmth of Ettan, Giulia, and Yinyin to stand out. Most of the characters have attractive, expressive faces, conveying a friendliness that will draw in younger fans. But the content is mature, with lots of nudity, occasional cursing, and gory fight scenes. Overall, the narrative’s crisp art and lean script make for a sinfully quick read. The closing chapter brings the relationship between Ettan and Killjoy to an intriguing resting point; the sequel should be eagerly anticipated by readers.
A wildly original and fearless tale about a young hero’s clash with a demon.Pub Date: June 21, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-71910-599-6
Page Count: 200
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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