RaveThe Boston GlobeThe art in Cartoon County is as lovingly reproduced as the anecdotes, showcasing the strips as well as the artists’ preliminary drawings, war sketches, and other pieces. The senior Murphy’s loose, expressive watercolors are particularly striking and a surprising contrast to the realistic renderings of his strips ... Murphy acknowledges that the Connecticut School was something of a bubble — nearly all-male, all-white, and largely insulated from the anti-war and civil rights movements that were challenging the country’s status quo. But he appreciates the artists’ bonds, bonds that extended to filling in for each other when illness or accident kept one of them from the drawing board. Most of all he relishes the father-son connection as they collaborated on Prince Valiant...The book is a testament to the strength of that partnership.
Guy Delisle
RaveThe Boston GlobeIt took Delisle and André 15 years to hone the narrative of Hostage and an intensive two years of drawing for Delisle to realize the narrative in graphic novel form. Their collaboration is seamless. From the first page, the reader is yanked into André’s overwhelming fear, uncertainty, and sudden confrontation with himself ... Delisle’s rendering is masterfully simple, drawn in a loose flowing line and shaded with muted blocks of gray and green. His drawings of André, shackled by the wrist, staring out into a strange room, evoke the terror and tedium of captivity ... The graphic novel format lends itself beautifully to the pacing of this story. Through carefully sequencing subtly shifting panels, Delisle evokes the incremental changes in André’s surroundings and the looping monologues that trace his battle to stay sane.
