An assertive, endearingly deranged take on the well-known tale from a writer-artist duo readers will want to keep their eyes...
In Fuller and Baijnath’s debut graphic-novel reimagining of L. Frank Baum’s classic, Dorothy returns to an Oz corrupted by evil in a tale of bloody retribution.
Dorothy Gale returns home to find Uncle Henry and Aunt Em dead, their hearts cut from their chests. She clicks her silver shoes together, grabs an ax, and rides a tornado back to the land of Oz for vengeance. But something’s terribly wrong in Oz: the Munchkins have turned into vicious creatures with sharp teeth, and Dorothy’s friends, including the Tin Man, aren’t quite as genial as they once were. It seems that Glinda the Good Witch, who’s taken over the Emerald Throne, is no longer good and has allowed Oz to fall into ruin. Dorothy, the self-proclaimed “Witchkiller,” follows the yellow brick road to stop Glinda’s reign and find her loved ones’ murderer. Writer Fuller and artist Baijnath’s collaboration is unquestionably adult, opening with cops at a bloody crime scene. The bare-bones story focuses mostly on Dorothy’s revenge, leading to pages of nothing but action; Dorothy’s fighting off aggressive Munchkins (who literally munch) is essentially a massacre. Fuller, however, does ensure that readers see recognizable faces, including the Wizard, as well as unexpected consequences of Dorothy’s first visit, like the Cowardly Lion’s no longer having fear and becoming a beast. Baijnath’s bold artwork is impressive: images are full of atmospheric swirls, including the incessantly curving yellow brick road, as if characters are caught inside a cyclone. There are also plenty of flying body parts and loads of blood, so much that Dorothy’s silver shoes resemble the more popular shade of ruby. But Baijnath’s best visuals are the story’s calmer moments, as in the unmistakable elegance of Dorothy’s wordlessly trekking through the rain in a desolate Oz and approaching the blinding light of the Bright City. The writer and author take the story seriously, none of it tongue-in-cheek. Still, it’s hard not to smile when Dorothy declares, “I will not leave until the yellow brick road runs red with the blood of my enemies.”
An assertive, endearingly deranged take on the well-known tale from a writer-artist duo readers will want to keep their eyes on.Pub Date: April 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4935-1704-6
Page Count: 108
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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