A kinetic, knowing takedown of corporate greed.
A horror director clashes with a greedy producer in Irvin’s wickedly satiric illustrated novel.
The story opens with a stranger approaching spooky Frankenstein Castle. Inside, he meets Frankensam, who has Dr. Frankenstein’s brain inside his monster’s body. The visitor is revealed to be Ygor, the doctor’s former assistant. Sexual attraction builds between them until…the monster’s neck bolt falls off. That’s when it becomes obvious to the reader that this scene has been playing out on a movie set. This latest mishap gives producer Max Million, a Peter Lorre look-alike, the excuse he needs to shutter the production and take a tax write-off instead. Sam the director, who also plays Frankensam, stumbles onto an idea to save his movie when invoking the mumbo-jumbo phrase “Zhuzh time for the glam squad!” turns him into Captain Samouflage, “Waging all-out war against injustice, toilet paper shortages, and crimes of fashion – all while stylishly hiding in plain sight!” Samouflage sneaks into Max’s mansion looking for incriminating information; hijinks ensue during the cat-and-mouse action between the two throughout the volume’s second half. Irvin and illustrator Gallagher’s narrative has the madcap energy of an old-school Looney Tunes cartoon; it also offers a big basket of Easter eggs to pop-culture fans of all types. (Irvin even points these out in detail in his afterword so that the reader can enjoy the layers of this work.) The duo’s first topical storybook parody was 2020’s Sam’s Toilet Paper Caper!, released during the Covid-19 pandemic. This second spoof was inspired by the decision of David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, to kill three nearly-completed HBO Max movie projects and convert them into tax write-offs. The morality of such maneuvers makes a perfect target for Irvin, who has a knack for creating adult content that still manages to appeal to the kid in all of us. There’s a bonus of five additional cartoons included at the back of the volume.
A kinetic, knowing takedown of corporate greed.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2024
ISBN: 9798342698993
Page Count: 43
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.
Weir’s latest is a page-turning interstellar thrill ride that follows a junior high school teacher–turned–reluctant astronaut at the center of a desperate mission to save humankind from a looming extinction event.
Ryland Grace was a once-promising molecular biologist who wrote a controversial academic paper contesting the assumption that life requires liquid water. Now disgraced, he works as a junior high science teacher in San Francisco. His previous theories, however, make him the perfect researcher for a multinational task force that's trying to understand how and why the sun is suddenly dimming at an alarming rate. A barely detectable line of light that rises from the sun’s north pole and curves toward Venus is inexplicably draining the star of power. According to scientists, an “instant ice age” is all but inevitable within a few decades. All the other stars in proximity to the sun seem to be suffering with the same affliction—except Tau Ceti. An unwilling last-minute replacement as part of a three-person mission heading to Tau Ceti in hopes of finding an answer, Ryland finds himself awakening from an induced coma on the spaceship with two dead crewmates and a spotty memory. With time running out for humankind, he discovers an alien spacecraft in the vicinity of his ship with a strange traveler on a similar quest. Although hard scientific speculation fuels the storyline, the real power lies in the many jaw-dropping plot twists, the relentless tension, and the extraordinary dynamic between Ryland and the alien (whom he nicknames Rocky because of its carapace of oxidized minerals and metallic alloy bones). Readers may find themselves consuming this emotionally intense and thematically profound novel in one stay-up-all-night-until-your-eyes-bleed sitting.
An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science-fiction masterwork.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13520-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© 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.
