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9781631491061

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Jules Feiffer's Kill My Mother is a tribute to film noir and detective fiction...But Kill My Mother isn't mere pastiche. The story is a thoughtful meditation on female identity and whether the not-so-simple art of murder can ever be defended as a moral necessity. It is a story about stories, the myths we have to create in order to keep putting one foot in front of the other... I know what I think: Kill My Mother is terrific. -- Laura Lippman - New York Times Book Review, front page review The book is full of the stock characters of the classic noir detective genre-there's the drunken loser of a private eye, a long-suffering but resourceful widow and her plucky teenage daughter (who also happens to hate her), prize fighters, tough guys chewing on cigars and, of course, a beautiful and mysterious woman. But the characterizations, relationships and, notably, the dialogue he's created-a Feiffer specialty-are anything but stock in what is shaping up (PW got a sneak peak of the first 60 pages) as a lively and personal recreation of the noir genre in comics form. -- Calvin Reid - Publishers Weekly The most astonishing plot twist in this hard-boiled musical melodrama chock-full of shifting identities and relationships involves seeing Jules Feiffer-the old master who reinvented the newspaper comic strip in the middle of the twentieth century-now reinvents himself as an ambitious young graphic novelist! -- Art Spiegelman Kill My Mother stretches the long-form graphic novel into formidable textures of compact expression, daring to try things that film noir could only dream of. -- Chris Ware Nobody moves like a Feiffer character, and no graphic novel has ever moved like Kill My Mother. Feiffer uses the page like the multimedia genius he is: the camera storytelling of a filmmaker, the body language of stage actors, and the power of punch lines that define his people. Seven decades of pent-up love of noir pours out in these panels. -- Paul Levitz Multitalented Jules Feiffer has done it all. Winner of a Pulitzer Prize, an Academy Award, an Obie Award, among many others, he's now turned his spectacular talent to a graphic novel. Nobody writes like Jules! Nobody draws like Jules! Nobody in their right mind would miss reading this monumental milestone of his incredible career! -- Stan Lee The story is wickedly imagined and deftly plotted, drawing on numerous classic noir influences while including charmingly unique flourishes... Feiffer's illustrations have a rough-hewn quality, with the jumbled lines of his figures and faces clumping evocatively like Giacometti sculptures, while his human forms move with the fluidity of Degas' horses across open panels of dancing and boxing. The entire work feels pulled from an earlier time yet explosively modern, a madcap relic animated by an outrageous mind. An unusual, unforgettable, incomparable pulpy punch. -- Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review Feiffer's expressive inking seems made for full-length graphic novels, with inventive page layouts and action that practically leaps from panel to panel as the story jumps from the Great Depression to WWII... The 85-year-old legend fixes his material with a fresh and youthful eye, transforming familiar tropes into a crazy kaleidoscope of toxic family history that makes The Big Sleep look like forty winks. You'll need to read it twice to follow the story-and you'll want to do it, too. -- Keir Graff - Booklist, Starred review A fantastic read... Very funny and genuinely moving. Feiffer's layouts owe much to his mentor, Will Eisner, but his spidery art and absurdist prose are all his own. -- School Library Journal

What's striking about this new graphic novel from the 85-year-old cartoonist is its ferocious energy. -- The Herald Kill My Mother...his[Jules Feiffer's] first foray into the graphic novel form (at the age of 86), is perfection of its kind. -- Neel Mukherjee - New Statesman

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Jules Feiffer is a cartoonist, playwright, children's book author and illustrator, and member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He teaches a humor writing class at Stony Brook Southampton College. He lives in East Hampton, New York, where he is completing the Kill My Mother trilogy.

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