F-Train to the Bronx TP
Publisher: Big Red Books
Release Date: October 2013
Price: $14.95
Creator(s): Written by Ira Weinstein & John Olsen; adapted and illustrated by Reggie Jones
Format: 124 pgs., Full-Color, Trade Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-6152-2333-9
Age Rating: N/A
ICv2 Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars
 
This reads like a rejected screenplay turned into a graphic novel out of desperation.  Reggie Jones, who had a modest career at Marvel back in the distant past, has combined with a dizzying array of colorists and an experienced editor who should have known better in order to create this mess.
 
The initial question that the book asks in its introduction is whether it is too soon to poke fun at terrorism or our responses to it.  Since that has been done in various media for some time, it's an odd straw man question.  The book's humor fails utterly in most sequences, the artwork is mediocre, the characters are annoying stereotypes more than seriously offensive, and the story makes no sense.  The oversized fake nose gag, though, should be seriously offensive to anyone from the Middle East.
 
Somehow a Trans-Atlantic tunnel is built over the next five years, including a hotel complex deep under the Atlantic Ocean.  The trains, for reasons of plot, can somehow drive directly onto the subways in both London and New York.  Terrorists want to destroy the tunnel and hotel, of course.  The two Indian or Pakistani [it varies from page to page] comic relief characters are too stupid to live, and an insult to comic relief characters anywhere.  The editing, by experienced packager Richard Ashford, was an "epic fail" at best.  The art could have been worse, but was still like a badly-printed issue of 2000 AD.  That's all that kept the book above a straight one star.
 
Adult humor, but not recommended for any audience.
 
--Nick Smith: Library Technician, Community Services, for the Pasadena Public Library