Radiant characters electrify this sublime horror outing.
A woman who has lived for millennia feeding on life-energy battles an enemy she believed was long dead in Sniegoski and Acheson’s graphic novel.
Amara Delacourt lives a quiet life in a Miami retirement community. Though she looks to be about 70, Amara has actually been around for thousands of years. She’s the last of the Nehmer, a race of immortal beings whose sustenance is human life force. Although they’ve lived and fed among humans inconspicuously and peacefully, a relentless religious order called the Venatori has hunted them to near-extinction. After this “fanatical offshoot of the Catholic Church hellbent on wiping out all those they perceive as unholy” exterminated Amara’s kind, Amara retaliated by killing all of the Venatori—or so she thought. Two chemically enhanced henchmen arrive in Miami on a mission to take out the final Nehmer. But someone else is after Amara, too—Magnes Pharmaceuticals wants to procure the secret of her longevity. As she dodges the company’s attempts to grab her, she must also face off against a bloodthirsty Venatori soldier and a lab-created human Bloodhound engineered to track the Nehmer. Sniegoski and Acheson’s supernaturally powerful hero is not the usual comic-book fare: When she feeds, she resembles a fanged, long-fingernailed vampire, but she typically looks like a grandma and easily consumes life energy without killing or even hurting people. Engaging backstories spotlight Amara and the Venatori throughout the last millennium and in various countries, from France and Italy to the Old West. There’s a notable progression across this volume’s six collected issues; foes inch closer to Amara, who gradually realizes who’s targeting her and putting someone she’s grown close to in potential danger. Welcome narrative touches include an ultrachic cyber-cat and the unorthodox way another character has lived a shockingly long time. The story ends with not one but two unforgettable cliffhangers. Burzo and Lecce’s impressive artwork combines beautifully muted colors and heavy shadows with brutal violence and ferocious expressions. The collection also showcases illustrator Sta. Maria’s six vibrant covers for the individual issues.
Radiant characters electrify this sublime horror outing.Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781545816134
Page Count: 162
Publisher: Mad Cave Studios
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Lush visuals bring this thoughtfully constructed tale to life.
Wondrous visitors encounter a desperate pocket of humanity.
Lori, a white orphaned teen who’s finally been adopted after bouncing around various foster homes, awakens to discover that nearly everyone has disappeared. The rapture? Maybe. She runs into her classmate Annette, who has brown skin and curly black hair, and they partner up to scavenge for food. The pair tries to evade several threats, such as the large Wolves and a gang called The Dogs. Supernatural Giants arrive, seemingly from space, speaking an impenetrable language of “musical chiming and weird bass-rhythms.” Lori and Annette then meet Beatrice, an older white woman who shares important observations about the Giants and Wolves. The tone of the story then subtly shifts from post-apocalyptic desperation to one that’s somewhat playful. After a certain point, a visual element that appears early on takes on clear significance and meaning in the context of the story at large, offering a subversively humorous twist for readers to consider and a creative element that deviates from other alien invasion narratives. Hans’ artwork and paneling fill each scene with wonders. An interaction with a giant sees the red, violet, and pink figure standing against a bright, otherworldly white-and-blue backdrop with dark contours. Elsewhere, Lori and Annette pause at night as they behold ominous shadows, their foggy breath forming clouds, and they hear a “KRRNCH” sound. The quick-moving plot wraps everything up neatly.
Lush visuals bring this thoughtfully constructed tale to life. (character designs) (Graphic science fiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781534387072
Page Count: 104
Publisher: Image Comics
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
A Rand primer with pictures.
A graphic novel for devotees of Ayn Rand.
With its men who have become gods through rugged individualism, the fiction of Ayn Rand has consistently had something of a comic strip spirit to it. So the mating of Rand and graphic narrative would seem to be long overdue, with her 1938 novella better suited to a quick read than later, more popular work such as The Fountainhead (1943) and the epic Atlas Shrugged (1957). As Anthem shows, well before the Cold War (or even World War II), Rand was railing against the evils of any sort of collectivism and the stifling of individualism, warning that this represented a return to the Dark Ages. Here, her allegory hammers the point home. It takes place in the indeterminate future, a period after “the Great Rebirth” marked an end of “the Unmentionable Times.” Now people have numbers as names and speak of themselves as “we,” with no concept of “I.” The hero, drawn to stereotypical, flowing-maned effect by illustrator Staton, knows himself as Equality 7-2521 and knows that “it is evil to be superior.” A street sweeper, he stumbles upon the entrance to a tunnel, where he discovers evidence of scientific advancement, from a time when “men knew secrets that we have lost.” He inevitably finds a nubile mate. He calls her “the Golden One.” She calls him “the Unconquered.” Their love, of course, is forbidden, and not just because she is 17. After his attempt to play Prometheus, bringing light to a society that prefers the dark, the two escape to the “uncharted forest,” where they are Adam and Eve. “I have my mind. I shall live my own truth,” he proclaims, having belatedly discovered the first-person singular. The straightforward script penned by Santino betrays no hint of tongue-in-cheek irony.
A Rand primer with pictures.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-451-23217-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2010
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