Reviews

The Banks by Roxane Gay

rainbowrnb's review

medium-paced

2.5

captwinghead's review against another edition

3.0

This was a basic heist comic. I enjoyed the family aspect of it, though!

This story is about 3 generations of Banks women serving in the family heist business. Yaya (the grandmother), Cora (the mother) and Celia (the granddaughter). Yaya was brought into the life by her husband, she taught her daughter and her daughter taught her daughter. However, Celia grew up with the privilege of her relatives' hard work and was able to go to nice schools and get a degree and decided not to be a thief... through criminal means anyway. Her boyfriend refers to investment bankers as legal thieves, in a way.

After Celia gets passed over for a promotion to partner, she joins in the family business. They then find another, more personal reason to pull of their biggest heist yet.

Overall, the story was pretty basic. This wasn't my favorite art, but I liked the vibe, I enjoyed the representation and the family angle made for a heist story that was more entertaining than some of the others I've seen.

ewg109's review against another edition

2.0

There is a lot of disbelief to suspend with this one. Namely, the entire heist. I’m not sure if this was supposed to be next level campy, but it just rang false.

rbreade's review

While the art works well enough, its the writing by Gay, which I was looking forward to, that disappointed. These Southside Chicago thieves rarely use contractions, making their dialogue sound oddly stiff and formal. Worse, the dialogue is often explanatory and expository, bottoming out in a panel where the youngest of the three thieves, left alone in a target's apartment, is shown with the target's phone in her hands and is given this dialogue: "I just need to leave this code in his phone and we will be able to track Mencken, wherever he goes, whatever he does."

Why is she narrating her action when there's no one around to hear it? Answer: she's doing it for the reader's benefit, the worst sort of expository dialogue. Why didn't Gay use a thought balloon, which would have mitigated the obviousness of the exposition, though not entirely eliminated it? Or, better, a voice-over caption, carrying dialogue from an earlier, off-page scene where the trio are planning the mission? That would have been the elegant solution. So puzzling.

sparklemaia's review against another edition

2.0

Fantastic premise, clunky execution. I really wanted to like this (multigenerational Black family heist with queer moms!), but the dialogue was awkward and stilted, the pacing was rushed and choppy, and (I'm so sorry) the art was stiff and I couldn't easily tell two of the (unrelated) main characters apart. Honestly I think this would have worked better as a prose novel, where the characters and plot could have been given a lot more space and depth. It took me months to get through this and I had to start over more than once. Also it was just hard to emotionally invest in any of the characters or their relationships.

zoemaja's review

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

mtksnd's review

2.0

Not bad in and of itself, just a little too cliched to me. Felt more like a collection of tropes than a coherent story.

usethesidedoor's review

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

readthisprof's review

adventurous fast-paced

5.0

carrienation76's review

5.0

Look... Roxane Gay could sell a scrapbook of used makeup remover wipes and I would give it five stars. But this collection deserves more hype --- the illustrations are phenomenal! The storyline is pretty basic but the wrapper is new - three badass generations of women robbing garbage whyt men? Yes, please! Several funny lines in this made me snort. Overall, I dig this.