The Banks

Roxane Gay's The Banks is a heist thriller in comic book form. The Banks are a family of thieves from the South Side of Chicago and include married couple Melvin and Clara, their daughter Cora and their granddaughter Celia, an investment banker.  Their philosophy is to get in, get out, get paid and don't get greedy.  They are the most successful thieves in the city.  When Celia, who has long turned her back on her family, comes across a great idea for the heist of all heists it brings together three generations to determine whether it is feasible.

The Banks is a fun read. I especially loved the illustrations and coloring. The story begins in 1972 and I remember the fashions and hair styles well. It's what made me read the comic twice before writing a review. Ming Doyle drew the illustrations and Jordie Bellaire did the coloring. The colors that Bellaire used are all cool jewel tones which I found attractive. 

The Banks family accurately reflects the the time and place of the story. All three of the Banks women are products of the era in which they were born. Clara and Celia have a particularly rough relationship as Celia wants to be an honest worker in a high paying career while Clara didn't feel she had many options for a career. Celia is an investment banker and her grandmother tells her that being a thief is not as bad as being an investment banker.  Cora tells Celia that Celia steals from more people than Clara and steals much more money. Thus, Clara is more honest than her granddaughter. While the heist itself is prominent, these three characters are a major part of the story. 

Highly recommended!  5 out of 5 stars. 

Reckless

Reckless is part one of a new comic book series by Ed Brubaker. Part 2, Friend of the Devil, was published last month and the third and final part will be published later this year. Reckless follows a man named Ethan Reckless. He has a home business where he fixes your problems, for a price. If someone owes you money, he will get you the money. If someone stole your artwork, he will get it back. It is something that he fell in to after helping out a few friends. His jobs increased due to the spread of word of mouth and after 2 years Ethan decided that it would be his career. The setting is 1980s Los Angeles where sex and drugs were rampant. However, Ethan's past as a radical in the 1960s comes back to haunt him when a former girlfriend, Rainy, asks for his help. She has been running from the law ever since she took part in a bombing for the Weathermen group. It's funny that Ethan Reckless is considered the good guy in this comic.  When compared to some of the people he does business with Ethan seems likable but he is clearly breaking the law just as his clients are.  

The artwork was drawn by Sean Phillips and colored by Jacob Phillips. The dark color palettes used are monotone. For me, it was a little depressing. There are a few pages colored in oranges which I liked better. I prefer that the artwork be lighter but I must admit that the Phillips duo matched the feel of the story.  

Having come of age in the 1960s, Reckless was a trip down memory lane. I enjoyed reading about the chaos of the times and even was proud of the "work" the Weatherman group was doing. Today, I view their activities as domestic terrorism but back in the day, they were cool. Also, I hate to admit that I used to dress the way Rainy dressed.  

All comic fans are going to love this graphic novel. I highly recommend it.  5 out of 5 stars.

Redfork

The advertisement that I read for Redfork went as follows:  "Ex-con Noah McGlade returns to find his coal mining hometown of Redfork to be blighted by opioid use and economic decline. But there is something even darker draining the life from this town. As Noah digs deeper he unearths a dormant horror that threatens to consume what little he has left to live for." I was not expecting to read a dark supernatural horror comic but that's what I got. Obviously I missed the clues in the description.

Tragedy follows Noah upon his return to his hometown. His younger brother gets trapped in a mine and his daughter, who suffers from asthma, cannot get medical attention becauseshe is not insured. When a scab miner, Gallowglass, rescues Noah's brother during a strike, he sets up the townspeople against Amcore. Amcore is an energy giant in the country and owns the mine. 

This comic has alot of foul language, even too much for me. The artwork  reflects the horror story that is Redfork. The pages are colored in dark blues, greens and purple and supernatural creatures abound. This type of comic is not my cup of tea but other readers may enjoy it. It had a detailed plot and character development so I hate to give the book a poor rating just because Redfork is not the type of book I enjoy.  I will leave that up to other reviewers.

Superman Smashes the Klan

I don't read superhero comics very often. When one of my favorite comic writers publishes one, I read it. I have loved all of Gene Luen Yang's books. Previously he published the Boxers and Saints volumes, American Born Chinese and last year's Dragon Hoops. With this Superman volume Yang takes on the Klan of the Fiery Kross, a pseudonym for the Ku Klux Klan.  

The story takes place in 1946 when teenagers Roberta and Tommy Lee move with their parents from Chinatown to Metropolis, the home of Superman. Tommy makes friends easily but Roberta wants to go back to Chinatown where she was comfortable. One night the Lee family awakens to find that their house is surrounded by the Klan of the Fiery Kross and see a burning cross in their yard. Superman leaps into action but his exposure to a mysterious green rock leaves him feeling nauseous and weak. He is only able to defeat the Klan later with the help of Roberta and Tommy. During this conquest, Superman sees visions of his deceased parents asking why he is only using half of the powers he was born with. Superman works through his memory to figure out what is holding him back.

While this was an enjoyable story of good versus evil, the poisonous remarks of the Klan members against this Chinese family gave it a bad tone. I found it difficult to overcome the hate that sprung from its pages. I presume that this was the effect that Yang was going for and that he presented an Asian family as the victims due to the AAPI discrimination that has been ongoing since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The comic is advertised for young adult reading and I would agree with that. It would be helpful to present the realities of hate to youths, but not those too young for the message.

5 out of 5 stars.

Sentient

Sentient is a science fiction story set in a comic book format. It is the story of the U. S. S. Montgomery, a space ship with both adults and children on board. The ship is traveling from an earth that is almost uninhabitable due to climate change to a colony located somewhere in deep space. One of the adults is secretly a separatist and she kills all the adults on board in a surprise attack. The separatists are a group that want the new colony to be completely disassociated from the earth's government. When the children find out that they have been left to finish the mission, they rely on their AI Valarie to learn new skills so that they can fly the ship to its expected destination. The kids have just barely learned their new skills when they are confronted with a dangerous force that threatens to doom them. They need to rely on Valarie in order to fight these forces but Valarie has only been programmed to complete minor tasks.

This is an awesome story. It has all the tension and character development that you would see in a novel length book within its 163 pages. The pace was fast and the plot premise was fascinating. The main characters are Val and the two oldest kids, Lill and Isaac. All three have tremendous growth in the story. Val becomes more of a parent than a machine but her machine capabilities allow her to learn the particular language that the kids speak. Lill is the most stubborn character and she gets the group into some trouble when she wants to leave the ship to explore a docking station where the Montgomery stops to refuel. Isaac is a tech prodigy who learns more and more about how the ship operates as the needs of the space ship develop as each day goes by. 

Great comic!  5 out of 5 stars.

Credo

Credo is a graphic biography of Rose Wilder Lane. I thought it would be about a suffragette but Rose Wilder Lane is the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Wilder wrote the Little House on the Prairie books. I was not aware that she wrote these books with her daughter making huge edits. The books were written mainly by Lane but the ideas for the stories came from Wilder. 

Lane was an accomplished 20th century writer, feminist, war correspondent, and one of the  founders of the Libertarian Party in the U. S. She was anti-government and anti-marriage and did not believe that gender should hold anyone back from experiencing all that the world has to offer. Lane was one of the highest paid female writers in America, traveling all over the world in search of a story. She even traveled to Korea and Vietnam to cover those wars for the newspapers that she wrote for. However, she is mainly known as being the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder. There are several different opinions on how much Lane contributed to the Little House books but the original manuscripts have survived and there is no doubt that Wilder did not know how to write. Lane rewrote the stories so that they were readable. What most people do not know is that she wrote biographies and fiction on her own. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and read it twice in succession. It is amazing to me that she was friends with President Herbert Hoover, writer Dorothy Johnson and Johnson's husband Sinclair Lewis. With these people as friends, I would expect that Lane's name would be easily recognizable. Unfortunately, it isn't. She was lucky in her career, raising the glass ceiling for women in succeeding generations.  Her credo was an article she wrote concerning her political opinions. It was marketed as her credo, hence the name of the book.

Credo was a great history lesson for me and I highly recommend the book. 5 out of 5 stars.