A fun, socially conscious graphic novel that keeps both eyes on the near future.
A future society taps into magnetic energy with disastrous results in debut author Dent’s graphic novel, illustrated by veteran artists Freire and Berkenkotter.
It’s the year 2222, and many people use special contact lenses to communicate and purchase things over a “psychic-ID” network, presided over by government agencies. Bill Glen, the creator of the tech and head of New York City–based Formula Media, was shot and killed two years ago by someone he knew. Now his best friend, Ledge Carver, runs the company, and Formula Media performs research for the International Department of Defense—something Bill never wanted. Ledge has also grown closer to Molly Glen, Bill’s widow, and her 10-year-old son, Matthew. Over dinner, Ledge asks Molly if she knows a man named James Chase, who’s applied to work at Formula and claims Bill as his mentor. Molly doesn’t know the man, who’s a dead ringer for Bill; even Jill, the lens wearers’ AI assistant, notes that James’ “psychic residue” is familiar. When Ledge is called to Washington, D.C., to speak with representatives of the Department of Defense, James visits Molly and Matthew at home. The boy has been emotionally distant since his father’s death, not quite believing that his dad is in heaven; James knows that Matthew sneaked into his father’s lab two years ago and stole special lenses that can cut through government security protocols. Meanwhile, Ledge learns that two mysterious domes have appeared near the Earth’s poles. Could they be connected to magnetic storms that are rendering the world uninhabitable?
Dent, Friere, and Berkenkotter create a future that’s reminiscent of the 1920s; buildings, trains, and hovering cars all feature art deco flourishes. Overall, the art is roughly photorealistic, ably merging elements of the past and future in a style that’s similar to Brent Anderson’s work on the comic book Astro City. Some characters seem modeled on celebrities, such as Jill, who looks like actor Kristen Stewart, and Ledge, who resembles rocker Lenny Kravitz. Colorists Andrade and Mohan’s work aids the story, too, as most everything is dark and earthy aside from the lenses’ blue glow. (When Matthew wears his father’s special contacts, they glow green, indicating the bypassing of government strictures.) The narrative’s main thrust is a pointed commentary on the distracted modern age, in which many people are glued to smartphone screens. Augmented reality via contact lenses, a real-life technology on the horizon, is shown to be ripe for abuse, as in one subway-station scene: As citizens go about their business, a lensless man is accosted by black-clad agents nicknamed “cockroaches,” who are literally invisible to those wearing lenses. Another major theme is humanity’s attempts to wean itself off fossil fuels; a government memo calls worry over solar storms “left-wing hysteria,” echoing cultural battles regarding climate change. The book’s overall structure—essentially a grave, twisty murder mystery—may also remind comic-book fans of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ 1980s classic Watchmen.
A fun, socially conscious graphic novel that keeps both eyes on the near future.Pub Date: May 17, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5241-1943-0
Page Count: 174
Publisher: Dynamite Entertainment
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Loyal King stans may disagree, but this is a snooze.
A much-beloved author gives a favorite recurring character her own novel.
Holly Gibney made her first appearance in print with a small role in Mr. Mercedes (2014). She played a larger role in The Outsider (2018). And she was the central character in If It Bleeds, a novella in the 2020 collection of the same name. King has said that the character “stole his heart.” Readers adore her, too. One way to look at this book is as several hundred pages of fan service. King offers a lot of callbacks to these earlier works that are undoubtedly a treat for his most loyal devotees. That these easter eggs are meaningless and even befuddling to new readers might make sense in terms of costs and benefits. King isn’t exactly an author desperate to grow his audience; pleasing the people who keep him at the top of the bestseller lists is probably a smart strategy, and this writer achieved the kind of status that whatever he writes is going to be published. Having said all that, it’s possible that even his hardcore fans might find this story a bit slow. There are also issues in terms of style. Much of the language King uses and the cultural references he drops feel a bit creaky. The word slacks occurs with distracting frequency. King uses the phrase keeping it on the down-low in a way that suggests he probably doesn’t understand how this phrase is currently used—and has been used for quite a while. But the biggest problem is that this narrative is framed as a mystery without delivering the pleasures of a mystery. The reader knows who the bad guys are from the start. This can be an effective storytelling device, but in this case, waiting for the private investigator heroine to get to where the reader is at the beginning of the story feels interminable.
Loyal King stans may disagree, but this is a snooze.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781668016138
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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