Reviewed by Cord Scott, UMGC Okinawa
Queen Kodiak by Christopher Greenslate (w) and Riccardo Faccina (a). Maverick Publishing, 2025. ISBN 9781545821015. $14.99 US/18.99 CAD. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Queen-Kodiak/Christopher-Greenslate/9781545821015
Graphic novels have evolved to serve as a way for authors to pay homage to art which has inspired them, as well as providing readers with coping skills suggestions. These themes are front and center in Queen Kodiak as the creators show their influences, but also expand the comic to incorporate their own interests.
The story starts with Joey Fox, a seventeen-year-old living at home with her single mom. Early on, we are given the information that her dad Doug is not in the picture, having left ten years ago. Joey shows an interest in photography, as well as exploration, while her mother runs a cleaning company. As they plan a trip north of Seattle, her mother comments on feeling ill. She soon dies of a virus, which makes her immediate burial impossible, a clear reference to the COVID outbreak in 2020. This death reintroduces Joey’s father, a law enforcement officer on Kodiak Island in Alaska. He is also a member of one of the indigenous tribes of Alaska, but is not noted which specific clan. The two travel by ferry up to Kodiak, where Doug hopes to reconnect with Joey and help her cope with the loss of her mother.
While investigating a report of a finding of bones (a fear to fuel local myths), Joey and her dad run across Queen Kodiak, an abnormally large grizzly bear, hearkening to the legend of Nanurluk, a spirit bear the size of an iceberg. They leave the bear alone, but Joey is obsessed with seeing it, and takes her dad’s boat back to the island, where she is lost in a storm. This gives her the chance to bond with a young “Little Bear” she finds - which turns out to be the offspring of the large immortal Queen Kodiak. Hunters come across Little Bear and kill him; Joey, hurt by this (to her) senseless killing, somehow steals the corpse, and heads back to Seattle.
At this point, the story turns to the supernatural. Characters are illustrated with their auras shown. The enormous mother of Little Bear follows her and begins doing damage to Seattle. Any weapons against this kaiju-sized bear are useless. But as a genre reader expects, in the end, the mother and cub are reunited while Joey and her dad come to recognize that they need to connect with each other and cope with the death of Joey’s mother.
A theme of grieving and loss comes from both from the humans as well as the bears. While Joey mourns the seemingly senseless killing of Little Bear, her dad notes the hunters may be rich and insensitive, but it was permitted and legal. A variety of attitudes are towards hunting, fishing, and environmentalism, which may not be for everyone, but if law and culture allow it, so be it.
In the interview at the back of the book, Greenslate fully acknowledges his love of kaiju movies and how they have influenced him. He also noted how he put a lot of Easter eggs into the story, from influential bands to the local myths of the natives in Alaska. Overall, the graphic novel was an engagingly fast read although it doesn’t clearly fit into a genre. Is it a kaiju story, a ghost story, or something else? Greenslate wrote this in such a way that it could be continued, which may in turn change how this book is perceived.
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