Customer Reviews

Luna Park (Vertigo Crime)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Having lived and worked in and around the South beaches in Brooklyn, I became intrigued with the title of this graphic novel. Reading this fast moving and realistic depiction of Russian mob influence conducted in New York, I sensed Kevin Baker's accurate detail and Danijel Zezelj's accurate nuance of Coney Island and of Russian culture.
In essence Mr. Baker combines Luna Park, Russian wiseguys and a long gone historical prospective all rolled into a gripping and realistic adventure. Zezelj's art work metaphorically represents the long gone darkness of "Cold War" Russia and also serves to depict the faded glory days of "old" Coney Island. Baker's main characters in Alik Strelnikov and his lover Marina tells of the desperate dichotomy this couple faces in trying to break away from the old ways.
In Baker's narrative, we see a new more brutal "Mafia" roaming the old haunts of Sicilian ghosts. The Russian mob spares nothing and gives absolutely no quarter. Russians of the "Cold War" era have no sense of "family" nor are restricted by the conscience of religion.
Weaving into this scenario, Baker brings in the old grandeur of 1910's New York. Along with Zezelj's subtle and beautiful dark art, we are taken to a place where Baker calls all the shots and we as readers go along for the ride. The narrative takes on a dreamlike quality with rapidly moving scenarios. In the end Baker gives an ending which represents a thought provoking extension to a time when in America the earth stood still.
Fantastic ride it is! I don't have enough stars for this one!!

Stories about ex-Soviet gangsters in Brooklyn are kind of a trope at this point (especially in film), but this graphic novel offers them up in a new format with some striking artwork. Alik is a Russian veteran of the war in Chechnya who has come to Brooklyn to try and escape his dark past, which includes the loss of his true love. However, he's found escape of the wrong sort in heroin, and works as an enforcer for a small time Russian hoodlum. He's also obsessed with a beautiful fellow Russian hooker/fortune-teller who is in thrall to a powerful Russian mobster. While this all sounds straightforward, there are also surreal shifts back in time to what seem to be previous incarnations of him and his lover/wife, which seem to all end in (and foreshadow) tragedy. These dark dreams alternate with the mounting feud between Alik's overconfident boss and the more ruthless mobster who owns his lover, all leading inevitably toward a Coney Island shootout. What might have been a well-told, but routine, crime story is made into something more lasting and mournful through the use of these flashbacks and the amazing artwork. The artist is Croatian and he brings a European sensibility to it that lends the story a distinctive quality perfectly in sync with the story New York novelist Baker (Dreamland, Paradise Alley) has created. Definitely worth checking out by those interested in very dark stories and artwork.

I'm a writer and illustrator of fiction myself and Coney Island is one of my favorite settings, so when I head the NPR interview with Kevin Baker I ordered "Luna Park" immediately and waited with anticipation for it to come. I was not disappointed. The story is compelling with unexpected twists brought even more to life by the dramatic artwork. I know I will keep coming back to it. Kevin Baker is also the author of "Dreamland," a more realistic depiction of Coney Island, (of a century ago) and another wonderful novel and inspiration for my work.

I am constantly amazed that Kevin Baker is not a household name in historical fiction. His New York City of Fire trilogy (Dreamland, Paradise Alley, and Striver's Row) should be required reading in any course on New York City history. It would certainly liven things up.
Being a fan of the Jack Kirby age of comics I'm a little at loss at the popularity at the modern day comic style. And what's with manga, or is it manta? I guess they may be stylistically cutting edge, but my older text-driven brain can't pick up much of narrative. Baker bridges the gap and does so with his extensive knowledge of history, obviously here bearing his Russian chops as well as his American ones. It's also a great marriage of art to text. Fantastic ending, truly a walk off homer. I should have seen it coming, but I didn't. Let's have more of these please.

Nice hardcover, and high quality printing.

The story is well written, an immigrant tale from Russia, set in New York, but meanders back and forth from Russia to NYC. Recommended to fans of Coney Island and history. Art is moody, stylized and definitely way higher than average. It was a steal for 7 bucks.

Its moody, atmospheric setting is perfect for the multiple flashbacks and dream like states the main character finds himself in so often.

This is one of those books that starts in one place and ends up in a place that makes absolutely sense but is seems worlds removed from the beginning. This tale of Russian immigrants in Coney Island has some great pieces of gangster despair in which mobsters and wise guys fight for turf that represents the scraps of the American Dream. Everything is deadly and fraught with danger, yet the overall benefit seems elusive.

In the center of this story is a gangster with a junky girlfriend who is set to betray him and yet Russian history keeps intruding. Somehow the late 21st century has decided that most Russian history is more of a Dostoyevski psychotic drama than a Tolstoy positivism. But the cliche works because Russia does tend to support stereotypes of psychotic drunks who work extremely hard for very little.

Then halfway through the book, the story opens up and creates a vision of Russian men and the women who betray them throughout history. I am doing a disservice to the book by describing it thus since there is a truly dark and surreal take upon the history of Russo-American relations full of violence and atrocity that cannot end any time soon.

Brilliant work that reminds the reader of the time of drinking vodka when the guts start twisting and the stomach acid is threatening to get revenge.

Reason for Reading: The Russian historical aspects and the publisher's summary had me intrigued.

This is a very difficult book to give a summary as nothing is as it seems but let me tell you what appears to be happening as the book starts. Alik Strelnikov is a Russian immigrant who made a deal back in Russia which got him his freedom in America. This 'freedom' lead him to working for a second fiddle Russian mob group in Coney Island as an enforcer. Here he lives an existence with his girlfriend in an apartment drinking, listening to old Russian records and shooting heroin to forget what he has become. But he is plagued with dreams, nightmares actually, the same ones over and over, which show him in various situations in different uniforms and he is always afraid. These nightmares will take us back in history to pre-revolutionary Russia, to WWI, to the Chechen Wars and back to 1910s New York.

This is an awesome, gripping story. The reader has no idea of what is really going on for some time. My mind contemplated these dreams as possible flashbacks to past lives, psychic visions of the past, a tortured man turning his real problems into symbolic messages and finally a simpler consideration, the raving dreams of a madman. Why he keeps having the dreams is not so important but the recurring themes that they carry are. With the ultimate one of betrayal being the most affecting on him. Then the book takes an extreme magical or psychedelic turn and one can possibly start to put things together until near the very end when the author hits us with a very subtle reveal we hardly notice it until the final page with it's shocking end. I actually stared at the last page for some seconds before the reveal sank in. A fabulous end!

The writing and the art combine to make a surreal, strange, semi-conscious type of plot. This is not going to be a book for everyone. Not for the type who like their plots to begin at A and end at Z. The plot is incongruous and where it is going the reader cannot grasp until a certain point 2/3s of the way through. This is not a bad thing though. I found the book utterly captivating to read. It's one of those few books that stand out alone as an "I've never read anything quite like it before!" book. The art is fascinatingly done mostly in a palette of terracottas, greys and purplish blues that turn into lavenders at more lighthearted scenes (not that there are many of those). If you've ever seen old Communist posters or postage stamps from the era, the art reminds me of that style at times. Otherwise it matches the mood of the story perfectly.

Luna Park, text by Kevin Baker, illustrations by Danijel Zezelj (160 pgs., 2009). This is one excellent and very weird graphic novel. It begins in the present in the Coney Island neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. A depressed man is working as an enforcer for a minor Russian mobster loan-shark. The rest of the novel switches back & forth between the U.S., Czarist Russia, the USSR, & the present Russian Republic. It switches between centuries, from the early 1900s to the present.
The man we meet on page one is reincarnated in different personas or ancestors of his with former wives & lovers. There is war. There is peace. There is crime. There is trying to save loved ones. There is death. There is failure. There is history. There is a twist ending no one expects; but, which makes perfect sense to the reader. Read this book & have fun.

I have never and I mran never have sent in a revieview. This book is fabulous and the storyline and artwork is the best I have ever seen The intense artwork brings the whole story to life After visiying Coney Island a few times in my life everything comes to life Keep on putting books like this out
Larry Yasgar CT

I was really looking forward to reading this after finishing"Dreamland". This is not in the same league. I was hoping for a storyline incorporating early 20th century Coney Island,but it turns out to be about modern day Russian mobsters. The art,while certainly professional, took some getting used to. Much too dark and unfocused for me! Very disappointed!