Jane Irwin

Clockwork Game by Jane Irwin is a historical graphic novel about Wolfgang von Kempelen and his chess playing machine which was the hoax of the eighteenth century. Von Kempelen made a career for himself by putting his machine against different chess players, usually defeating them. But even from his early days, he had his naysayers who could see it was a hoax but couldn't figure out how exactly the trick worked.

The book opens after Kempelen's death as a man in Boston has taken possession of the machine and hopes to restore it. As he tries to figure out how the machine works (it doesn't, and never did) we are treated to its history.

It's eventually revealed that the trick is an elaborate blending of puppetry and contortion. The chess playing Turk was essentially the same set up as modern day Oscar the Grouch. Everything that Kempelen did was misdirection from the man or woman hiding inside playing on behalf of the machine.

While the book isn't 100% historically accurate, the author includes an afterword outlining the changes she made in adapting the story to a graphic novel format.… (meer)

An original fairy tale about a 300-year-old clockwork fairy who relies on a human protector to keep ticking and preserve her memories. After her latest human dies, Voegelin (Little Bird, in German) tries to find another person to wind her. In the process she encounters a "real" fairy, who takes an instant dislike to this human-made machine fairy. The drawings in this graphic novel are fine and detailed, the characters more than mere sketches. The arcane bits of folklore -- German, Irish, Romany -- are explained in endnotes. (This isn't the first graphic novel I've read with notes that embellish and explain the work, but I wonder how many readers in the target audience take the time to read them or notice they are there before they reach the end of the book.)… (meer)