A playful and immersive portrait of a man who stopped time.
Getting off the ground.
Eadweard Muybridge led a cinematic life. The English photographer journeyed throughout the American West and Central America, heavy equipment in tow. For years, he toiled away at photographic techniques that led to patents. Most dramatically, he fatally shot his wife’s lover. And so it is fitting that he is the subject of a graphic novel whose suspense-filled panels zip by, adding up to an engrossing account of the “father of motion pictures.” Delisle, a Canadian cartoonist whose globe-spanning books include Jerusalem: Chronicles From the Holy City (2011) and Pyongyang (2003), begins his sweeping narrative with an adventure-hungry Muybridge departing London for America in 1850. Ten years of bookselling in New York and San Francisco lose their appeal, however, and in heading back east, he barely survives a stagecoach accident that puts him in a coma for nine days. After six years of recovery in England, he returns to San Francisco, determined to make it in the burgeoning field of photography. He succeeds. His grand landscape portraits bring him attention, as does his “Flying Studio,” a horse-drawn darkroom he rides around town. Here begins the story that makes the eccentric famous: Leland Stanford, the railroad magnate (and future university co-founder, along with his wife, Jane), hires the photographer to prove that a horse leaves the ground when galloping. Six years later, after much experimenting—ultimately achieving a shutter speed of one-thousandth of a second—Muybridge has the answer. A lot of this history is well known, but Delisle succinctly relates it in lively images done in a muted, old-timey palette. Guiding readers through the early days of photography and cinema, he shows how Muybridge, determined and intense—his brow furrowed, his hair wild, his beard long and pointy—led the way for future artists to make their own work come alive with the magic of movement.
A playful and immersive portrait of a man who stopped time.Pub Date: April 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781770467729
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
An accessible, informative journey through complex issues during turbulent times.
Immersion journalism in the form of a graphic narrative following a Syrian family on their immigration to America.
Originally published as a 22-part series in the New York Times that garnered a Pulitzer for editorial cartooning, the story of the Aldabaan family—first in exile in Jordan and then in New Haven, Connecticut—holds together well as a full-length book. Halpern and Sloan, who spent more than three years with the Aldabaans, movingly explore the family’s significant obstacles, paying special attention to teenage son Naji, whose desire for the ideal of the American dream was the strongest. While not minimizing the harshness of the repression that led them to journey to the U.S.—or the challenges they encountered after they arrived—the focus on the day-by-day adjustment of a typical teenager makes the narrative refreshingly tangible and free of political polemic. Still, the family arrived at New York’s JFK airport during extraordinarily political times: Nov. 8, 2016, the day that Donald Trump was elected. The plan had been for the entire extended family to move, but some had traveled while others awaited approval, a process that was hampered by Trump’s travel ban. The Aldabaans encountered the daunting odds that many immigrants face: find shelter and employment, become self-sustaining quickly, learn English, and adjust to a new culture and climate (Naji learned to shovel snow, which he had never seen). They also received anonymous death threats, and Naji wanted to buy a gun for protection. He asked himself, “Was this the great future you were talking about back in Jordan?” Yet with the assistance of selfless volunteers and a community of fellow immigrants, the Aldabaans persevered. The epilogue provides explanatory context and where-are-they-now accounts, and Sloan’s streamlined, uncluttered illustrations nicely complement the text, consistently emphasizing the humanity of each person.
An accessible, informative journey through complex issues during turbulent times.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-30559-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.
The Book of Genesis as imagined by a veteran voice of underground comics.
R. Crumb’s pass at the opening chapters of the Bible isn’t nearly the act of heresy the comic artist’s reputation might suggest. In fact, the creator of Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural is fastidiously respectful. Crumb took pains to preserve every word of Genesis—drawing from numerous source texts, but mainly Robert Alter’s translation, The Five Books of Moses (2004)—and he clearly did his homework on the clothing, shelter and landscapes that surrounded Noah, Abraham and Isaac. This dedication to faithful representation makes the book, as Crumb writes in his introduction, a “straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes.” But his efforts are in their own way irreverent, and Crumb feels no particular need to deify even the most divine characters. God Himself is not much taller than Adam and Eve, and instead of omnisciently imparting orders and judgment He stands beside them in Eden, speaking to them directly. Jacob wrestles not with an angel, as is so often depicted in paintings, but with a man who looks not much different from himself. The women are uniformly Crumbian, voluptuous Earth goddesses who are both sexualized and strong-willed. (The endnotes offer a close study of the kinds of power women wielded in Genesis.) The downside of fitting all the text in is that many pages are packed tight with small panels, and too rarely—as with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—does Crumb expand his lens and treat signature events dramatically. Even the Flood is fairly restrained, though the exodus of the animals from the Ark is beautifully detailed. The author’s respect for Genesis is admirable, but it may leave readers wishing he had taken a few more chances with his interpretation, as when he draws the serpent in the Garden of Eden as a provocative half-man/half-lizard. On the whole, though, the book is largely a tribute to Crumb’s immense talents as a draftsman and stubborn adherence to the script.
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-393-06102-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
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