Wild Cards: Ante Up: a graphic novel by Kevin Andrew Murphy and John Jos. Miller with art by Jon Sanchez (graphic novel review)
A third ‘Wild Cards’ graphic novel from Random House. This time, ‘Wild Cards: Ante Up: a graphic novel’ by Kevin Andrew Murphy and John Jos. Miller with art by Jon Sanchez. Miller died in 2022 so there’s no real idea how long this book was in the works or how much he contributed to this story.
I did my usual art page flick before reading and my face dropped a little. Sanchez does the pencil, ink and colours according to the credits. A key problem is all the even linework, which is technical pencil and the same with pen. Hence none of the characters have any facial shadows and, there are a lot of heads, none of which is created by the colouring. Perspective is also a bit wobbly for a similar reason. You do get to accept it while reading but it does present an argument to divide the work up than rely on one person.
When it comes to people who’ve been affected by the wild card virus, the leads have moved towards fantasy than elements of Science Fiction. Rosa Loteria, one of the stars of the TV show ‘American Hero’ can metamorph into one of characters in a pack of ancient loteria cards providing she does this at random. Matryosha is an odd one, dividing his body into smaller versions of himself with variable intelligence although this isn’t very explicit in his representation. When I first saw him, I thought he was walking around with different sized people. I looked him up in the Wild Cards database and this ability only kicks in when he’s struck by lightning and each size becomes dumber until they rejoin together. A bit hard to do graphically.
I wasn’t aware that the Blythe van Renssaeler Memorial Clinic needed medical insurance for the wild cards infected to be treated there. I doubt if many jokers have the type of work that would give them that. The Clinic is a charity function. It’s also odd that Doctor Bradley Finn himself is treating some patients with normal human problems than other members of the medical profession. All right, so there might be copyright issues but Finn can’t be everywhere.
Rosa has to find money to help pay for her grandmother’s health care at the clinic and even takes some work from Charles Dutton at his museum, which contains waxworks of famous aces and jokers. While there, the waxworks comes to life and go on the attack. Although she contributes to stopping them in one of her shapes, Rosa is also accused of causing it to happen in one of her other shapes. It’s not her but Doctor Daedalus, an ace who can make odd clockwork devices materialise in the waxworks amongst other things. Rosa then has to seek him out and stop him which is spoiler.
The story structure works but I doubt if it would reach a novelette in text only. For ‘Wild Cards’ book fans, you’ll automatically buy it like I did but it does little to add to the continuity.
GF Willmetts
August 2025
(pub: Random House Worlds, 2025. Page graphic novel hardback. Price: varies. ISBN: 978-0-8041-7706-1)
check out website: www.randomhousebooks.com/books/235264/
