A quick, breezy read through a cornerstone of literary tradition.
The renowned illustrator and graphic designer continues his series of classic adaptations, with diminishing returns.
When Chwast, a very influential stylist in visual communication, published his adaptation of Dante’s Divine Comedy (2010), he set the bar very high, with an irreverent triumph of the imagination that was somehow both true to the spirit of the source material and totally original. The next year’s similar transformation of The Canterbury Tales was less revelatory, and this third in the series fails to fulfill the epic’s promise. It is playful but slight, like a cross between Flash Gordon (complete with space ships and rocket burners) and fractured fairy tales. He concentrates on two set pieces: The hero’s romantic island idyll with Calypso (in her beach chair and bikini) and the repeated efforts by his wife and son to fend off suitors—who multiply alarmingly, like cockroaches. Penelope and Telemachus hope that Odysseus has been long delayed in his return but fear he is dead. Eventually, he does return, in disguise, with help from the gods (and goddesses), and virtue triumphs. Otherwise, the narrative is both skimpy and fast-paced, barely pausing to take a breath for such dramatic staples as the Sirens and Scylla and Charybdis. The artistry (especially the larger scale panels that dominate a page) continues to dazzle, but most of the moral of the story is left to the framing. “The Odyssey is more about what happens after battles end,” explains Homer in the Prologue. “In those days, only men fought in wars. But this story shows how they affected everyone—women too. My story tells you a lot about human nature.” And then, at the end of the tale, his listener realizes, “Getting into trouble and out of it again is really everyone’s story, isn’t it?” And so the universality of the age-old epic asserts itself.
A quick, breezy read through a cornerstone of literary tradition.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-60819-486-5
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author of Why I Hate Saturn, best known for his long-running strip “Bad Publicity” in New York magazine, attempts an “urban romantic comedy——but his disparate influences and preposterous plot suggest something altogether different. Visually, Baker brings together a noirish, hard-boiled look for his foregrounds (one bad guy looks just like Robert Mitchum in “Cape Fear—), with backgrounds that would make the animators at Disney proud—full of cute animals, pretty trees, and stunning sunsets. The two “looks” reflect the convergence of narrative lines: Noel, a former Manhattan jewel thief, has spent the past year living upstate in bliss with his trippy, sensual girl friend, an “aura cleanser” by trade, who knows nothing of his checkered past and who loves to commune with nature. When she follows Noel back to the city, she finds herself in the middle of a nasty revenge tale, resulting in the death of Noel’s buddy Oscar, who bears a striking resemblance to the father in “Bad Publicity.” Baker, no gritty realist himself, mocks the street cred of a nameless movie director (read: Tarrantino), but would better attend to his own implausibilities, though a clever epilogue almost redeems the sillier aspects of the narrative. Baker’s computer-generated backgrounds—while cinematic in style—also result in much visual murkiness: his heroine has a mush of red hair and a smudge of lips. Warts and all, though, this full-color production deserves attention for DC’s effort to entertain adults for a change.
Pub Date: Jan. 19, 1999
ISBN: 1-56389-442-4
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Vertigo/DC Comics
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
French comics artist Juillard, best known for his graphic novel, The Blue Notebook, here picks up a few characters from that work, and spins off a full-color narrative that’s best when he relies strictly on wordless frames. Juillard’s cinematic simplicity and his amazingly detailed backgrounds overwhelm the intrigue in the foreground—a commonplace thriller with few surprises. Abel Mias, a chubby Parisian schoolteacher, spots in a local gallery a photographic portrait of his old friend Tristan, a sculptor who disappeared a year earlier. The recent photo confirms that Tristan has indeed run off with the stunning Clara, an enchanting—and married—beauty whose desperate husband enlists her sleazy brother in an ill-fated plot to find her. Abel spends his vacation near Florence, tracking down the slim leads, and proves more efficient than the police. The final violent sequences, with murders and an attempted rape, display Juillard’s stunning visual skill. Elsewhere, he enhances his story with thugs straight from the film Diva and a splendid sequence worthy of Hitchcock—Abel witnesses a crime through binoculars. Only the final, wordy denouement detracts from this otherwise taut and sophisticated tale.
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-56163-223-6
Page Count: 56
Publisher: NBM
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
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