Some New Kind of Slaughter

Powerful and gorgeous, this graphic novel looks at catastrophic floods and the stories we tell about them. In the framing story, the Sumerian king, Ziusudra, guides his people through a massive flood. As the water rises and his wife lies in a coma, he has visions of other floods and flood victims in other lands, such as the biblical Noah a modern ecologist trapped in a Katrina-like hurricane and flood myths from around the world. mpMann's simple, expressive character art and endless swirling waters are a perfect fit for the hallucinatory, dreamlike quality of the story. His work on the Chinese creator goddess Nuwa, guarding her clay children from the flooded world, is particularly beautiful and evocative. Lewis is a Ph.D. student in religious and theological studies, and it shows—for good and for ill. He blends myth with myth and his own work with an intuitive assurance, and from this, the book draws much of its momentum and raw emotional power, but a bibliography at the end explaining where to find more information or even a simple list of the myths' countries and cultures of origin would have been invaluable to the curious reader. (Aug.)