Decelerate Blue - Softcover

Rapp, Adam; Cavallaro, Mike

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1596431091 ISBN 13: 9781596431096

Publisher: First Second, 2017

Synopsis

The future waits for no one.

In this new world, speed and efficiency are everything, and the populace zooms along in a perpetually stimulated haze. Angela thinks she's the only person in her family―maybe the only person on the planet―who sees anything wrong with this picture. But the truth is she's not alone.

Angela finds herself recruited into a resistance movement where the key to rebellion is taking things slow. In their secret underground hideout, they create a life unplugged from the rapid-fire culture outside. Can they free the rest of the world before the powers that be shut down their utopian experiment?

From revolutionary and award-winning playwright Adam Rapp and veteran cartoonist and animator Mike Cavallaro comes Decelerate Blue, a dark, breath-taking new vision of an all-too-plausible future for America.

About this title

About the Authors

Adam Rapp is an OBIE Award-winning playwright and director, as well as a novelist, filmmaker, actor, and musician. His play The Purple Lights of Joppa Illinois had its world première last month at South Coast Repertory. His other plays include Red Light Winter (Citation from the American Theatre Critics Association, a Lucille Lortel Nomination for Best New Play, two OBIE Awards, and was named a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize), Blackbird, The Metal Children, Finer Noble Gases, Through The Yellow Hour, The Hallway Trilogy, Nocturne, Ghosts in the Cottonwoods, Animals and Plants, Stone Cold Dead Serious, Faster, Gompers, Essential Self-Defense, American Slingo, and Kindness. For film, he wrote the screenplay for Winter Passing; and recently directed Loitering with Intent. Rapp has been the recipient of the 1999 Princess Grace Award for Playwriting, a 2000 Roger L. Stevens Award from the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, the 2001 Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights, and Boston’s Elliot Norton Award; and was short-listed for the 2003 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, received the 2006 Princess Grace Statue, a 2007 Lucille Lortel Playwriting Fellowship, and the Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Mike Cavallaro is from New Jersey and has worked in comics and animation since the early 1990s. His comics include Eisner Award–nominated Parade (with fireworks), The Life and Times of Savior 28 (written by J.M. DeMatteis), Foiled and Curses! Foiled Again (written by Jane Yolen), Decelerate Blue (written by Adam Rapp), and the Nico Bravo series.

Reviews

Gr 10 Up—Welcome to a brave new world that is marketing-forward and tech-heavy. Culture has been reduced to snippets of perfectly packaged and abbreviated elements. It's a world run by the Guarantee Committee (GC), and the inhabitants are "protected" and monitored to ensure that they are keeping everything short. Students at Hyper High no longer study the classics; instead, they take Brief Lit, which abridges the classics and simplifies the language. It's a world that 15-year-old Angela hates. She wants to revel in language and luxuriate in art, so it isn't difficult for her to commit to an Underground community that she discovers by accident in Blackhawk Caves. In the Underground, Angela falls in love with Gladys and becomes an active part of the resistance. As with all great tragedies, it is a love destined for heartbreak. Rapp and Cavallaro successfully rely on the problem play format and use it to weave a cautionary tale about our fast-paced world. Cavallaro's choices of predominantly black-and-white artwork complement this gripping, thought-provoking narrative. Frames are employed to create unique panels that propel readers to the conclusion, and the spare use of full color heightens the emotion of the piece. VERDICT Fans of George Orwell's 1984 and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 will find much to ponder in this notable graphic novel.—Jodeana Kruse, R. A. Long High School, Longview, WA

Edition details

• Publisher: First Second
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1596431091
• ISBN 13: 9781596431096
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208