A comic—and esoteric—gangster story, full of bad choices and inevitable violence.
Residents of a dingy apartment building grapple with the meaning of life as violence unfolds in this pulpy noir tale.
A family urn is stolen and three armed gangsters set off to retrieve it. They trace the urn back to two thieves who live in a three-story, six-unit apartment building in a small town, but complications quickly arise, and what could have been a simple task quickly spirals out of control. As they drive into town, the three armed men should be organizing their strategy, going over their plan to get the urn back. But instead they argue about trivial things: Why would you name your gun after your first girlfriend? Why does the youngest of the three always have to sit in the back seat like a child? Violence is coming, but they’re blissfully distracted by completely irrelevant side topics. The distractions continue as they enter the building. Each resident they encounter steers them away from their task by posing simple yet existential questions like: What is good and what is evil? When bad decisions are made, who deserves to die? When is it okay to end a life? What does it mean to be a good neighbor? As the gangsters and tenants debate these issues, bullets quickly start to fly and the blood flows. Everyone in the apartment building finds themselves on one end of a gun barrel. And before the triggers get pulled, each person reckons with essential notions of fairness, righteousness, and loneliness. Aeschbacher draws the story like a modern-day Adventures of Tintin, with scrappy, hand-drawn lines; subdued shades of mahogany and aubergine maintain the deadpan gloom of the tale. He takes a Richard Scarry approach to detail: His sketches of the apartment building include small elements of ceilings and furniture that fill each panel. There are no new beginnings for the people in the apartment building. Death—and perhaps a brief moment of enlightenment—beckons for them all.
A comic—and esoteric—gangster story, full of bad choices and inevitable violence.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9783039640874
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Helvetiq
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
Even so, this remains Macbeth, arguably the Bard of Avon’s most durable and multilayered tragedy, and overall, this enhanced...
A pairing of the text of the Scottish Play with a filmed performance, designed with the Shakespeare novice in mind.
The left side of the screen of this enhanced e-book contains a full version of Macbeth, while the right side includes a performance of the dialogue shown (approximately 20 lines’ worth per page). This granular focus allows newcomers to experience the nuances of the play, which is rich in irony, hidden intentions and sudden shifts in emotional temperature. The set and costuming are deliberately simple: The background is white, and Macbeth’s “armor” is a leather jacket. But nobody’s dumbing down their performances. Francesca Faridany is particularly good as a tightly coiled Lady Macbeth; Raphael Nash-Thompson gives his roles as the drunken porter and a witch a garrulousness that carries an entertainingly sinister edge. The presentation is not without its hiccups. Matching the video on the right with the text on the left means routinely cutting off dramatic moments; at one point, users have to swipe to see and read the second half of a scene’s closing couplet—presumably an easy fix. A “tap to translate” button on each page puts the text into plain English, but the pop-up text covers up Shakespeare’s original, denying any attempts at comparison; moreover, the translation mainly redefines more obscure words, suggesting that smaller pop-ups for individual terms might be more meaningful.
Even so, this remains Macbeth, arguably the Bard of Avon’s most durable and multilayered tragedy, and overall, this enhanced e-book makes the play appealing and graspable to students . (Enhanced e-book. 12 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: The New Book Press LLC
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
Using modern language, McDonald spins the well-known tale of the two young, unrequited lovers. Set against Nagar’s at-times...
A bland, uninspired graphic adaptation of the Bard’s renowned love story.
Using modern language, McDonald spins the well-known tale of the two young, unrequited lovers. Set against Nagar’s at-times oddly psychedelic-tinged backgrounds of cool blues and purples, the mood is strange, and the overall ambiance of the story markedly absent. Appealing to what could only be a high-interest/low–reading level audience, McDonald falls short of the mark. He explains a scene in an open-air tavern with a footnote—“a place where people gather to drink”—but he declines to offer definitions for more difficult words, such as “dirges.” While the adaptation does follow the foundation of the play, the contemporary language offers nothing; cringeworthy lines include Benvolio saying to Romeo at the party where he first meets Juliet, “Let’s go. It’s best to leave now, while the party’s in full swing.” Nagar’s faces swirl between dishwater and grotesque, adding another layer of lost passion in a story that should boil with romantic intensity. Each page number is enclosed in a little red heart; while the object of this little nuance is obvious, it’s also unpleasantly saccharine. Notes after the story include such edifying tidbits about Taylor Swift and “ ‘Wow’ dialogs from the play” (which culls out the famous quotes).Pub Date: May 10, 2011
ISBN: 978-93-80028-58-3
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Campfire
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
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