For those of us betting that Grady Klein will be recognized as a major force in graphic novels — these are days of early confirmation. The first reviews are coming in for The Lost Colony Book 2: THE RED MENACE.

BOOKLIST gave the first round of praise with Francisca Goldsmith‘s review, and I quote:

[...] Despite the pastel scenery, sometimes blotted with blood or crude song lyrics, this is neither children’s story nor adolescent fantasy.  Its ideal reader should have a solid grasp of nineteenth-century American history, including the mythology that inspired double-crossing native peoples and fostered bland naïveté in politically weak frontier towns. Willingness to suspend PC tsk-tsking comes in handy, too, for both enjoying and being horrified by Klein’s skewering reenactment of the bad old days by figures who could have walked out of Saturday-morning TV cartoons.

Then NEWSARAMA kicked in, with Michael May‘s excellent and thoughtful review of which here is an excerpt:

In the “Snodgrass Conspiracy” review, I briefly compared Klein to Mark Twain. I can’t predict where he’s going with The Lost Colony (though from the “Forthcoming” blurb, it isn’t going to be pretty), but as stylistically different as Klein is from Twain, The Lost Colony has the potential to approach Huckleberry Finn in importance. God, that sounds bold to say, but as I try to get my mind around how The Lost Colony makes me think and feel, I can’t convince myself that it’s an exaggeration.