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
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
Though classified as a graphic novelist, Delisle has claimed territory all his own as a graphic-travel memoirist.
Insightful, illuminating memoir of a year under a totalitarian regime.
In 2005-06, Delisle (Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China, 2006, etc.) accompanied his wife, who works as an administrator for Doctors Without Borders, to the country recognized by the United Nations as Myanmar. The United States and other democratic countries, however, still call it Burma, refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the military junta that seized power in 1989. As in the illustrator’s previous adventures in China and North Korea (Pyongyang, 2005), the focus is less on politics and more on the lives of the people he encounters—though such lives are profoundly shaped by politics. He comes to accept checkpoints and censorship as routine, and he does his best to find a suitable home, survive with intermittent electricity and Internet access and take care of his toddler son Louis, whose charm transcends cultural borders. The author also fears malaria, bird flu and poisonous snakes, though the DWB medical community provides more comfort than much of the Burmese citizenry enjoys. Delisle writes and illustrates a children’s booklet on HIV, an important contribution to a country in which heroin and prostitution are rampant. As in previous volumes, his eye for everyday detail combined with droll, matter-of-fact narration humanizes his 14-month experience in a country that might seem traumatic, even intolerable, in other hands. “There were no demands and no uprisings either,” he writes. “Things are always very calm here, thanks to a regime that creates paralysis by fomenting fear on a daily basis.” The undercurrents of Buddhism throughout the book culminate in his visit to a temple, where his meditation proves transformative.
Though classified as a graphic novelist, Delisle has claimed territory all his own as a graphic-travel memoirist.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-897299-50-0
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2008
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