A zany, entertaining tale about a Brooklyn baseball team and Theodore Roosevelt.
A down-on-its-luck, lowbrow baseball team may find salvation in a talented new player in this graphic novel set in the late 19th century.
Skip and Kingston are two players for the Brooklyn Bridegrooms, a perpetually beaten baseball team owned by swindling businessman Van Der Klam (who sets a poor example of following the law that several of his players duplicate). When Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt shows up to quell a riot at Bridegrooms Field, he threatens to shut the team down if any of the players get out of line. Sadly, Skip doesn’t have anything in his life but the team. When new player Rube Shaw shows up with more talent than the rest of the players combined, Skip hatches a plan to save the Bridegrooms. But then three players run afoul of Roosevelt, only narrowly escaping his wrath. Back at the field, Rube leads the team to victory, and Van Der Klam decides to keep the Bridegrooms playing rather than engineering a stadium “accident” and collecting the insurance money. Unfortunately, Roosevelt is still after the team, and it’s only a matter of time before everything explodes. McKeon and Fletcher craft a humorous story aimed at adult readers (there’s plenty of sexual innuendoes and references to sex workers throughout). The madcap tempo of the story, with the bullying Roosevelt as the bellowing antagonist, works to keep the pages turning quickly. Scammers Skip and Kingston seem unlikely to ever get their just deserts, especially with the honest-to-a-fault Rube as their friend, and readers are likely to cheer their successes despite their irresponsible ways. Still, the satire about how public opinion and the press form policy, rather than ideals of right and wrong, is sometimes a bit on the nose. Reporters’ assertions (“What a scandal!”; “Roosevelt crushes symbol of hope for city’s poor and downtrodden!”; “I can see the headlines now!”) are what ultimately put the Bridegrooms back in the game. The color choices tend toward muted, reinforcing the story’s cyanotype-photography era, and Flood’s art ably captures the absolute mayhem and the off-color remarks and gestures of the engaging characters.
A zany, entertaining tale about a Brooklyn baseball team and Theodore Roosevelt.Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 9781639691531
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Scout Comics
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A cute premise best experienced in small bites.
The sweet and sour(dough) sides of life for anthropomorphic baked creatures.
This collected edition of the original online WEBTOON comic follows the daily adventures of three breadcats who live in a bakery. There’s Cat Loaf, the friend-seeking adventurer; Rye Loaf, the quiet loner; and Tabby Loaf (“Tabs”), the scaredy-cat. Stories are mostly driven by encounters with other dough-based animals, such as nefarious cinnamon bunnies and competitive doughnut cats. The narrative stretches to include heartfelt moments about a creative mousse mouse staying true to their creative roots and lonely cat Potato having a reflective moment after chasing others’ friendship. Characters’ faces largely resemble living emojis, and dialogue heaps on the food-based puns, but something is lost in the transition to print. Uniformity in the panel layouts sees walls of panels and text that can become numbing where the original vertical format was more carefully paced. Visual gags like a Pokémon battle parody and a soap opera TV show acted out by actual bars of soap briefly change up the format in fun ways, but some readers may feel stuffed on all the bread.
A cute premise best experienced in small bites. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2026
ISBN: 9798225019631
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
This too-ambitious graphic adaptation of the beloved childhood tale falls extremely short of the mark. In this reworking of Carroll’s great tale of whimsy and imagination, readers will be transported to a very clumsy, wonder-less Wonderland. Though Helfand hits most of the memorable points in the original story—the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts, the caterpillar, the Cheshire cat—the combination of the awkward art with text proves to be distracting. Nagulakonda’s maladroit art is ultimately this adaptation’s weakest spot; the strained, rough-hewn faces are nothing short of disconcerting. Alice’s face, in particular, is troubling in many panels, looking pained or vacant instead of possessing a look of wonder at her curious surroundings. The clunky adaptation and clumsier art will leave its readers cold. Given these flaws and comparing it to the development and sophistication of many of the graphic novels currently available, this feels like an amateurish work in desperate need of refinement. (Graphic classic. 9-12)
Pub Date: July 20, 2010
ISBN: 978-93-80028-23-1
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Campfire
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
© Copyright 2026 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.
