The Comics Bureau

Alex Gard­ner writes up an inter­est­ing review of Refresh, Refresh an adapt­a­tion of a prize win­ning Ben­jamin Percy short story by Dan­ica Novgoro­doff and James Ponsoldt.

This is a book that pos­it­ively demands that I keep my big-fat-critic-mouth shut. Say any­thing to sug­gest that the book left me any­thing but emo­tion­ally drained, in fact, and this book will kick my god­dam ass. So I will try very hard to say noth­ing about the fact that I found the book emo­tion­ally manip­u­lat­ive and at times even bul­ly­ing. I won’t men­tion that I never came to care about these lost boys of W’s war, or that I found Novgorodoff’s visual adapt­a­tion of the story some­how hit­ting more wrong notes than not in its des­per­ate efforts to cap­ture the jagged anger and empti­ness of the place and the broken fam­il­ies left behind.