Clockwork Game

More than two centuries before Deep Blue, IBM’s chess-playing computer, defeated world champion Garry Kasparov, the clockwork Mechanical Turk automaton played winning chess games against leading opponents, wowing the heads of state and the scientific community across 18th-century Europe. This fictionalized graphic novel focuses on the Turk, spotlighting the showmen who built, refined, and exhibited it. Irwin enlivens the tale with a good sense of drama and pace. As interesting as the narrative is, however, it doesn’t seem to support a full-length graphic novel; the story first appeared as a webcomic and, after a Kickstarter campaign, was released in this edition. The crosshatched black-and-white panels don’t offer much movement or depth, and they often seem crowded with talking heads and speech balloons, making some of the material slow going. The knowledge and skill that longtime self-published cartoonist Irwin brings to her subject is exemplified by the nonillustrated back matter, which contains extensive historical notes—suggesting that the story may have been better served in a different format. (Apr.)