This well-connected vagabond then regales his friends with his boyhood obsession with the blank places on maps, which eventually led him to captain a steamboat up a great African river under the employ of a corporate empire dedicated to ripping the riches from foreign land. 10 & up)Ĭartoonist Kuper ( Kafkaesque, 2018, etc.) delivers a graphic-novel adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s literary classic exploring the horror at the center of colonial exploitation.Īs a group of sailors floats on the River Thames in 1899, a particularly adventurous member notes that England was once “one of the dark places of the earth,” referring to the land before the arrival of the Romans. (editor’s notes, contributors’ bios) (Graphic folklore. Packaged in a chunky, square-shaped volume, this unique collection of Native American folklore invites readers to sample and savor each colorful, wily tale. Each tale is illustrated by a different artist in strikingly different styles, some comic and some realistic but all surprisingly suited to their stories, while the graphic sequencing provides action and emotional detail only suggested by the storyteller. Relying on cunning and craft to survive, outwit and amuse, the tricksters include coyote, raven, rabbit, raccoon, wolf, beaver and dog as well as human tricksters like Moshup, Ishjinki and Waynaboozhoo.

Told in the words of Native American storytellers from many nations, these tales use the trickster to teach moral lessons and explain such natural events as how the rabbit got its puffy tail, why the buzzard has no feathers on its head, why the owl guards burial sites or why geese fly in a V formation. Vigorously rendered in striking graphic format, this robust anthology of 21 Native American folktales features a bevy of wily rascals in a veritable smorgasbord of trickster tales.

Trickster by Matt Dembicki