Rating: WORTHY!
This graphic novel commendably takes on the tragedy of police shootings of African Americans in New York City, but to me it cheapened the real tragedy by ascribing it to a weird vudu cult. I'm not sure why the author went this way because there's drama aplenty in the reality without having to tart it up with whack religious cults, but this is what we have here, so let's go with it on that basis.
While Tim Smith 3's art work was wonderful (using a Norman Rockwell style two-color printing process), Deborah Creighton, the editor, is apparently somewhat less than fully illiterate. I found errors of spelling and grammar which any editor worth his or her salt ought to have caught. There were errors such as "...if you have too" on page five, where 'too' should have been 'to', or on page eleven, where the grammar is totally screwed up: "And it is not like I have ever had any real choice in these matters is there?"
The reason I pulled this off the library shelf is that it appeared to have a strong black female main character, which is far too rare in books, and she intrigued me. She was well-worth the read. Her name is Rene DuBoise, and she's going up against Gangleos, a powerful vudu practitioner. Note that vudu is nothing more than a religious death cult like Christianity, Islam, or Judaism, and I have no time for meaningless mythology, but sometimes these religions, with their stories of the eternal battle between good and evil, can make for entertaining reading. This one did.
The story begins with two police officers shooting what they claim was a man trying to break into a store, whereas it was a woman, Rene's mom August, who was closing up her vudu paraphernalia shop for the night. I think we're supposed to perceive from this that the police officers were under some sort of vudu spell and were hallucinating so that perhaps the bad guy could take out a rival or someone who opposes his evil, but this isn't exactly crystal clear from the opening panels. Note that all of the incidents portrayed here have their roots (if not their detailed accuracy) in real life events in NYC.
Anyway, with this woman's death, her daughter Rene is brought back to NYC, and she moves into the shop which has been trashed by the police in a desperate search to find something incriminating to try and ameliorate what they're referring to as an 'accident'. I loved the way they're brought back to reality by the woman's sister highlighting the fact that seventeen shots fired into an unarmed victim cannot be dismissed as a mere accident.
The story touches on several religions such a Santeria, which originates from Yoruba in west Africa, and Palo Mayombe, which originates in the Congo, as well as Vodun, which originates in Ghana. Rene is a practitioner herself, and is forced to put wards upon her mother's grave to prevent agents of Gangleos from disinterring her body. This is all stuff and nonsense, but there are people who believe in it. In NYC itself, as this novel reports in the notes, there was an elderly woman who claimed to be a vudu witch. Her powers evidently didn't prevent her from being struck by a vehicle and killed when she was walking close by her apartment, but when cops went in there after the accident, they found masses of vudu paraphernalia and a newborn child preserved in formaldehyde in a large jar in her closet. I don't know if they ever did determine who the child was or how she died.
But the story takes real events and adapts them to make them fit this vudu plot, and it does it quite well. Within its framework, the worry makes sense and is entertaining. I enjoyed it and I recommend it.
