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Summary
Summary
With the New York Times bestseller Kill My Mother, legendary cartoonist Jules Feiffer began an epic saga of American noir fiction. With Cousin Joseph, a prequel that introduces us to bare-knuckled Detective Sam Hannigan, head of the Bay City's Red Squad and patriarch of the Hannigan family featured in Kill My Mother, Feiffer brings us the second installment in this highly anticipated graphic trilogy.
Our story opens in Bay City in 1931 in the midst of the Great Depression. Big Sam sees himself as a righteous, truth-seeking patriot, defending the American way, as his Irish immigrant father would have wanted, against a rising tide of left-wing unionism, strikes, and disruption that plague his home town. At the same time he makes monthly, secret overnight trips on behalf of Cousin Joseph, a mysterious man on the phone he has never laid eyes on, to pay off Hollywood producers to ensure that they will film only upbeat films that idealize a mythic America: no warts, no injustice uncorrected, only happy endings.
But Sam, himself, is not in for a happy ending, as step by step the secret of his unseen mentor's duplicity is revealed to him. Fast-moving action, violence, and murder in the noir style of pulps and forties films are melded in the satiric, sociopolitical Feifferian style to dig up the buried fearmongering of the past and expose how closely it matches the headlines, happenings, and violence of today.
With Cousin Joseph, Feiffer builds on his late-life conversion to cinematic noir, bowing, as ever, to youthful heroes Will Eisner and Milton Caniff, but ultimately creating a masterpiece that through his unique perspective and comic-strip noir style illuminates the very origins of Hollywood and its role in creating the bipolar nation we've become.
Author Notes
Jules Feiffer was born on January 26, 1929. While working as a cartoonist, his work appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Playboy, The Nation, and The New York Times. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorial cartooning in The Village Voice in 1986. His other awards include a George Polk Award for his cartoons; an Obie Award for the play Little Murders; an Oscar for the anti-military short subject animation, Munro; and Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Writers Guild of America and the National Cartoonist Society.
He is currently focusing on writing and illustrating books for children and young adults including The Man in the Ceiling, A Room with a Zoo and Bark, George! He has been a professor at the Yale School of Drama, Northwestern University, Dartmouth, and Stony Brook Southampton College.
Feiffer has been honored with major retrospectives at the New York Historical Society, the Library of Congress and The School of Visual Arts.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Master cartoonist Feiffer has crafted a worthy noir thriller prequel to the critically acclaimed Kill My Mother. The year is 1931. Det. Sam Hannigan is a proud American and a member of fictional Bay City's finest. When he and his partner aren't fighting crime or getting their "Red Squad" to suppress the local trade unions, he's off to do the bidding of the mysterious Cousin Joseph, an unidentified bigwig who wants to rid Hollywood of what he considers anti-American propaganda films. Soon, Sam finds himself in over his head and on both sides of the law as he tries to keep track of the various forces at work against him. Feiffer's strength as a graphic novelist is in creating a range of fascinating characters, from Sam's partner, Neil Hammond, who's planning to retire from the force and become a PI, to Valerie Knox, the daughter of the local factory owner, who has a pathological interest in young men. This complex series of character studies forms a densely woven narrative that is deftly written and expertly illustrated. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
In this prequel to his graphic novel, Kill My Mother (2014), Feiffer delivers another noir fever dream, sending America right to the top of the flagpole with a hard-boiled, lyrical punch of immigrant stories, labor relations, and the almighty dollar.Detective Sam Hannigan is the biggest fist in the Red Squad, a crew of heavy-handed cops charged with breaking up a labor union at a cannery in Prohibition-era Southern California. On the side, Sam makes special deliveries to some of Hollywood's biggest producers on behalf of the mysterious Cousin Joseph, who fears the corruption of audiences by a "tribe of tricksters." Through payoffs and intimidation, Cousin Joseph steers "problem movies" away from subjects like the plight of the downtrodden and toward more wholesome fare with small-town values. On the other side of the anti-Semitic divide from Cousin Joseph, the oversexed daughter of the cannery owner finds her first Jewish penis to be absolutely charming, standing out as it does among the genitals of her many partnersfrom underage boys to union brutes. Things come to a head when the Red Squad is called upon to break a massive strike led by Sam's old high school chum while Sam and Cousin Joseph clash over creative differences. This second installment of what will be a trilogy answers the question that haunted the first bookwho killed Sam Hannigan?while also delivering early looks at major Kill My Mother characters (though the book stands perfectly well on its own). This new tale captures the frenetic energy and kitchen-sink attitude of the original, and Feiffer's gracefully chunky illustrations mesmerize. Even when his crumpled, balletic figures twist and lurch into a splash of bold lines, emotion cuts straight through the jumble with telltale flourishes: a striker's panicked eyes, the interlaced fists of a strikebreaker's haymaker raised high.Expertly off-kilter. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Maybe it's a good thing we didn't know Kill My Mother (2014) was part one in a trilogy. Otherwise, how could we have survived the two-year wait for part two? Taking us back to 1931, this one lays the foundations of Mother's delightfully convoluted plot, and while the terrific women characters still play their parts, this one focuses more on Detective Sam Hannigan, Elsie's husband, whose unsolved murder looms large over the later book. A seeming straight shooter who's a hero to the neighborhood kids, Sam is really a red-baiting, strike-breaking thug who volunteers on the side to help the mysterious Cousin Joseph quash unpatriotic Hollywood films. Who kills him and why? You'll never guess. This latest act in Feiffer's illustrious career continues to amaze and delight. His lines and movement are like nobody else's, and if anything, his page layouts have gotten better. A perfect candidate for pure black-and-white, it's subtly colored in an ocher palette of green and brown. The story itself doesn't equal the epic weirdness of its predecessor, but it's still a terrific tale, right up until its perfectly shaded noir ending. Though Feiffer's a late arrival to noir comics, he's top of the heap.--Graff, Keir Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
AT ONE POINT in Jules Feiffer's new graphic novel, "Cousin Joseph," a movie producer, being dangled by his feet over the edge of a cliff, makes the pitch of a lifetime. "Don't drop me!" he begs. "Listen to my story! My story loves America! Pull me up! Give me five minutes - 10 minutes! Is that too much to ask? You'll love it!" It's a bargain worth striking. "Cousin Joseph" is the second in a noir graphic novel trilogy Feiffer kicked off back in 2014 with "Kill My Mother." Set in 1931, the plot explores anti-Semitism, union busting, Red baiting and dirty cops. It's classic noir narrative to its bones, with all the required accouterments: the ceiling fans, the shadows, the tough guys, the morally ambiguous protagonist and the femme fatale, all drawn in Feiffer's signature dancing scribble. Like a lot of characters swept along by the events of noir fiction, Sam Hannigan is no hero. But he does have a badge. A detective with the Bay City Red Squad, a corrupt police force that seems concerned mainly with union busting, Sam is a sanctimonious big galoot on a self-described "mission of mercy." He wants to save America from Communism, even if it means he has to "beat the crap out of" most of the people he meets. Sam has a chip on his shoulder, a fedora, a partner with one foot out the door, and a wife who uses too many exclamation marks. He's a true believer and a buzzkill, but he's not much of a philosopher. He prefers to let others do the thinking for him, namely in the form of a mysterious mentor known as Cousin Joseph. Cousin Joseph sees un-American influences brewing right in Bay City's backyard (a nod to Chandler; you may know Bay City as Santa Monica). "It's these immigrants!" Cousin Joseph counsels Sam. "Their fault! First, nobody wanted them in their own countries, so we let them in here.... "We looked for some place out of the way. Our mistake, we gave them Hollywood. Nobody wanted it, no water, a desert. Far away from anyone or anything that counted. "But clever, that tribe, full of surprises. For over a thousand years they became practiced at being unwanted, and making the best of it. So what do they do out there, in exile? They invent the Film business.... What America needs, Cousin Joseph concludes, is happy movies, not all these depressing ones about problems, which are clearly some sort of conspiracy to lower national morale (or sweep the Oscars). So Sam is dispatched to Beverly Hills to bully producers (Mr. Ackerman, Mr. Kornblum. ... You get the picture) into withdrawing scripts from production. As Sam juggles his various thug obligations, his job brings him into the orbit of a dozen other characters, including Valerie, a teenage girl who pays Jewish boys a dollar to drop their pants ("Jesus, do I love that little thing!" ); Archie Goldman, a kid whose mother works at the local cannery that's about to strike; Hardy Knox, the blustery fat-cat owner of said cannery; and various union organizers, head honchos, dirty cops, bums and lackeys. Feiffer skates around characters, circling closer, retreating and returning to them, weaving the plot tighter until the pieces fall into place. This is pulp at its best. The book is subversive in a lot of ways - from its occasional bursts of unflinchingly awkward content to its neat commentary on the graphic novel form itself, but it embraces its popular culture influences without irony or apology. That may be the most subversive thing about it, actually. And the most romantic. Feiffer's fluid style - what some people call "kinetic" and others call "I just drew this" - works particularly well here; everyone looks rumpled and in motion. Feiffer, for his part, takes full advantage of the form, using the comic book toolbox to make very cool choices. There are no captions in this book, and almost no thought bubbles. We are left to rely on dialogue to drive the story, like a film. The exceptions are spare and smart. Sam is introduced in an introspective mood. Thought bubbles trail him as he stows his crucifix in the bedside table and holsters a weapon in the predawn silence of his apartment. "Too much ... thinking," he muses. "Where did America go?" It's Sam's wife who breaks the silence, calling his name. Feiffer doesn't let us inside Sam's head again until almost the end of the book. Too much thinking. By removing the thought bubbles, Feiffer makes it literal. "What are you thinking?" Sam's wife asks him. "You're a funny kid," Sam says. "You're always asking me that." "And you never give me an answer," she says. "Sure, I do," Sam says. "My answer is, 'I don't think.'" Two books in and Feiffer's noir graphic novel trilogy is starting to feel like a life's work. Smart, weird, political, engrossing; it's exactly the kind of morally complex story Cousin Joseph would have hated. But Feiffer knows better. Back on the cliffside, the frantic producer wraps up his pitch, a patriotic story of struggle and unity. "I don't go to the movies," one of the thugs admits. "All the actors look queer. But if I went to movies - this is one I'd wanna see." Feiffer draws a strange collection of characters: unionists, head honchos, dirty cops, bums, lackeys. CHELSEA CAIN'S thrillers include the Kick Lannigan series. She also writes Mockingbird, a monthly comic book, for Marvel.
Library Journal Review
Strike-breaking, corrupt cops, anti--Semitism, and sexual precocity all figure in -Feiffer's juicy prequel to 2014's Kill My Mother. Good cop Sam Hannigan is happy to rough up suspected "Reds." But when he sees he's been manipulated against his ideals, Hannigan switches sides and confronts his nastier partner on the force, the entire police hierarchy, and the mysterious Cousin -Joseph. Amid minimal backgrounds, the characters predominate, including greedy industrialist Hardy Knox, his difficult daughter Valerie, barkeep Addie-whom Sam underestimates, to his peril-and resourceful kid Archie Goldman. All come across as relatable and realistic while still unpredictably goofy as the plot lurches in unexpected directions. Feiffer keeps his loose-limbed, elastic style honed through his Village Voice work, fight scenes choreographed in the form of his famous dancer figure, and all with pale color enhancements. The message here-how people with the best intentions can go astray-and Feiffer's writing remain excellent. -VERDICT This fresh serving of classic noir with a social justice flavor is larded with Feiffer's trademark wit and neurosis, which will captivate his many fans. The forthcoming Archie Goldman and the Decline of the West concludes the trilogy.-MC © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.