An artfully composed and compelling dive into life and death in Soviet Russia.
Writer Fawkes and artist Fuso present a graphic-novel murder mystery set in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.
The story, which was first published as five separate comic-book issues, begins like most murder whodunits—with a dead woman found on the street. It’s New Year’s Day in Leningrad,and Det. Smirnoff assigns the case to his underling, the struggling Det. Dimitrovich, who has a history of getting lost in details and “could use a solved case” in his file. From the moment Dimitrovich sees the woman and discovers a torn napkin with a star symbol stuck to her shoe, he has “the oddest feeling” that he’s “seen it all before.” As he investigates further, he learns that she was not a sex worker or a drunken reveler, as others on the scene suggested, but a ballet dancer. He’s convinced that she was murdered, and that she wasn’t the killer’s first victim. Fuso ably ratchets up the intensity with quick cuts between Dimitrovich’s investigation and a shadowy, menacing figure who begins to intrude on the story, as the artist shows him stalking outside of scenes and getting closer to the detectives and their families. By the time Smirnoff begins to worry that Dimitrovich is repeating his past mistakes, readers will be equally unsure about whether the younger man is a capable detective, or unraveling under pressure. Still, Smirnoff can’t ignore the growing sense that there’s more to the case than meets the eye. Later in the story, Fawkes effectively shifts the narrative into a deeper exploration of institutional corruption and denial, when the detectives are told by a police captainthat “murderers like this do not exist in Leningrad,” and it moves far beyond a standard serial killer plot into a commentary on power structures of Soviet Russia in its later years. By this point, readers will be racing through the pages, eager not only to find out the solution to the mystery, but also to understand the hints of a broader conspiracy.
An artfully composed and compelling dive into life and death in Soviet Russia.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781960578624
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Mad Cave Studios
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A Rand primer with pictures.
A graphic novel for devotees of Ayn Rand.
With its men who have become gods through rugged individualism, the fiction of Ayn Rand has consistently had something of a comic strip spirit to it. So the mating of Rand and graphic narrative would seem to be long overdue, with her 1938 novella better suited to a quick read than later, more popular work such as The Fountainhead (1943) and the epic Atlas Shrugged (1957). As Anthem shows, well before the Cold War (or even World War II), Rand was railing against the evils of any sort of collectivism and the stifling of individualism, warning that this represented a return to the Dark Ages. Here, her allegory hammers the point home. It takes place in the indeterminate future, a period after “the Great Rebirth” marked an end of “the Unmentionable Times.” Now people have numbers as names and speak of themselves as “we,” with no concept of “I.” The hero, drawn to stereotypical, flowing-maned effect by illustrator Staton, knows himself as Equality 7-2521 and knows that “it is evil to be superior.” A street sweeper, he stumbles upon the entrance to a tunnel, where he discovers evidence of scientific advancement, from a time when “men knew secrets that we have lost.” He inevitably finds a nubile mate. He calls her “the Golden One.” She calls him “the Unconquered.” Their love, of course, is forbidden, and not just because she is 17. After his attempt to play Prometheus, bringing light to a society that prefers the dark, the two escape to the “uncharted forest,” where they are Adam and Eve. “I have my mind. I shall live my own truth,” he proclaims, having belatedly discovered the first-person singular. The straightforward script penned by Santino betrays no hint of tongue-in-cheek irony.
A Rand primer with pictures.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-451-23217-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2010
Even so, this remains Macbeth, arguably the Bard of Avon’s most durable and multilayered tragedy, and overall, this enhanced...
A pairing of the text of the Scottish Play with a filmed performance, designed with the Shakespeare novice in mind.
The left side of the screen of this enhanced e-book contains a full version of Macbeth, while the right side includes a performance of the dialogue shown (approximately 20 lines’ worth per page). This granular focus allows newcomers to experience the nuances of the play, which is rich in irony, hidden intentions and sudden shifts in emotional temperature. The set and costuming are deliberately simple: The background is white, and Macbeth’s “armor” is a leather jacket. But nobody’s dumbing down their performances. Francesca Faridany is particularly good as a tightly coiled Lady Macbeth; Raphael Nash-Thompson gives his roles as the drunken porter and a witch a garrulousness that carries an entertainingly sinister edge. The presentation is not without its hiccups. Matching the video on the right with the text on the left means routinely cutting off dramatic moments; at one point, users have to swipe to see and read the second half of a scene’s closing couplet—presumably an easy fix. A “tap to translate” button on each page puts the text into plain English, but the pop-up text covers up Shakespeare’s original, denying any attempts at comparison; moreover, the translation mainly redefines more obscure words, suggesting that smaller pop-ups for individual terms might be more meaningful.
Even so, this remains Macbeth, arguably the Bard of Avon’s most durable and multilayered tragedy, and overall, this enhanced e-book makes the play appealing and graspable to students . (Enhanced e-book. 12 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: The New Book Press LLC
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
© Copyright 2025 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.
