***Now appearing at the LHS Library***

May 9, 2011

Each week I will highlight one of the new books that we have received this year.
These books are available for checkout from our library.

This week’s book is titled:
The Eternal Smile
by Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kim

A collection of three graphic stories featuring Duncan, a charming prince hoping to win the princess’s hand; Gran’pa Greenbax, a greedy old frog who longs to find true happiness; and Janet, a busy working woman who thinks she has found true love with a Nigerian prince who contacts her through an email asking for her help in liberating his family.

Reviewed at: http://www.comicmix.com/news/2009/05/18/review-the-eternal-smile-by-gene-luen-yang-and-derek-kirk-kim/

The Eternal Smile collects Duncan’s Kingdom, along with two other stories – Gran’pa Greenbax and the Eternal Smile and Urgent Request – which seem to be new work, though the book never says that specifically. The three stories are held together only loosely by theme; they’re all about escapism and greed, in their own separate ways.

Duncan’s Kingdom is a medieval fantasy – Duncan is a young knight in the service of a king, who is killed by the agents of the (presumably evil, though the plot is so quick and straightforward that a lot of things are left as “presumably”) Frog King on the third page. The Princess declares that whatever knight can kill the Frog King and bring his head back to her will have her hand and be the next king, so Duncan sets out on the quest with his magic sword.

Gran’pa Greenbax starts off looking like a parody of Barks’s “Unca Scrooge” stories, with the characters transformed to frogs: Gran’pa Greenbax is a nastier, greedier version of Scrooge, Filbert his hapless Donald-esque minion (without even a hint of Donald’s temper), and Molly and Polly are his cute little kid-identification characters, with their own version of the Junior Woodchucks Manual. But it veers away from those expectations almost immediately, as Gran’pa’s newest scheme to make money involves what looks like a giant grin in the sky.

And then the third story, Urgent Request, is about a mousy office assistant, Janet Ho, whom no one respects at work because she’s a doormat. (The art for most of this story is in moody blue tones, with few panels scattered across the pages, to add to the depressed, isolated feeling.) But then she gets one of those Nigerian-prince scam e-mails, and gives her banking information to her “Prince Henry.”