Customer Reviews

The Wild Kingdom

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The Wild Kingdom examines our modern day food chain that pits beast against man's inventions and civilization. Animals are observed in their suburban habitat where cars are predators and nature seems a little less wild than before.

Huizenga's book reads like a cable TV wildlife show, with commercials and rabid marketing interspersed throughout the story. The layout is irregular, but it's what makes his take on the current state of nature into a kind of dark satire on our modern society.

This is definitely one of those books where it is hard to understand every detail after the first read, but it isn't too dense so as you wouldn't want to pick it up and re-examine bits of it again. The hardcover edition is a beautiful book, almost a pocketbook, that really fits well in your hands.

"The Wild Kingdom" is a reprint of a series of strips Kevin Huizenga compiled in 2000 and reprinted again in 2006. This time they're given the deluxe edition as they're collected in hardback, though the book is almost pocket sized.

Inside the strips revolve around the theme of the natural world and humanity's correlation to it. About half of the book features no words as we see Glen Ganges go about his daily life but seeing animals do the same. He encounters squirrels, birds, his cat and whatnot forage for food, wander about, follow things.

It's difficult to make sense of the second half. Advertising is criticised, Huizenga talks about Nobel Prize winning author Maurice Maeterlinck who won the 1911 Literature prize and wrote about the natural world. There are several pages of made up birds and then a silent strip involving a dead bird and the destruction of a small town.

Like his previous book "Curses", Huizenga mixes some pleasant strips with abstract works and experiments with text and layout. Also like "Curses" it's difficult to see what the purpose is. It's an interesting read and has some moments in the short book that hold your attention but ultimately it's somewhat pretentious approach is a bit exhausting and the book suffers because of it. Not a bad comic book but not one I would say is essential reading.

Kevin Huizenga is one of the smartest, most talented cartoonists working today. Don't just buy this book, buy ALL his books.