Devour: A Graphic Novel

by Jazmine Joyner, Anthony Pugh (Illustrator)

In this horror graphic novel from award-winning writer Jazmine Joyner and illustrator Anthony Pugh,  American Gods  meets  Get Out  in a dark retelling of the West African legend of Anansi the Spider.
 
In the Deep South, something evil waits in the darkness . . .
 
Devour tells the story of the Turner family, who move to Alabama to care for their ailing matriarch, Vassie, when she begins suffering from dementia. But Vassie isn’t just any old lady; she’s the last of a line of powerful root women who have been caring for the community since her ancestors were first captured and enslaved by white plantation owners.

Patsy, the eldest daughter in the family, is immediately suspicious; the locals’ fear and superstition of her grandmother leads Patsy to take a closer look at the Turner family home, and what she finds is beyond her wildest nightmares.
 
Devour is a terrifying new fable that delivers thrills and chills in equal measure.

Genres: Horror, Graphic Novels, Comics, African American, Graphic Novels Comics, Folklore, Fantasy

Kindle Edition

Published May 7, 2024

Reviews

[Tina Haigler · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been a while since I've read a good comic so this was a breath of fresh air. The art was impressive and eye-catching, with rich colors and details. The story itself was intriguing and kept me turning the pages. I don't know much about African lore, but I've heard of Anansi and know a little about him. What an interesting premise to bring the trickster spider god to the New World and fast-forward to the modern day. If you are looking for an entertaining story involving the old gods and witchcraft then I highly recommend this one.

[Chelsea 🏳️‍🌈 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh.

I don’t know if there’s a new trend to do horror movie “final girl” bait and switch but it’s disappointing going into a story that’s 90% a story about a young Black girl being the “chosen one” just for her to die in the third act and have someone else carry on the torch.

The vast majority of this book is about Black women holding back an evil god. They even emphasize that men supposedly have no chance at the same powers. What’s the point in switching up last minute and killing Patsy off?

None of the characters were people I particularly wanted to root for. Vassie was just a kinda rude mentor character. The dad’s barely here. Patsy refused to heed virtually any warnings. Demetrius wasn’t present enough to make an impression. The neighbor kid spied on Patsy for his racist family. There was no one I really cared about.

The artwork handled some of the creep factor moments well, but characters were made to look like they were smirking at really odd times.

Overall, not a great start to spooky season for me. Not a recommend and I think there’s going to be a sequel. I’m not interested.

[Justine Naboya · Rating 3 out of 5]

yeah…idk about this one 😭 the graphics were beautiful but there were parts of it that felt like it jumped and parts of the story were missing — i had to double check several times that i hadn’t accidentally flipped over two pages instead of one. i was also very confused in the beginning about her having two brothers because they looked so similar lol also just some parts of the story didn’t feel fleshed out enough and the characters had almost no depth to them. it was also kind of annoying that the entire book is about the women in the family being the guardians with the magick…only for the main female character to die and have her brother end up being the “final girl” so to speak. literally what was the point of building her up and having the legend center around the women then 😭

[TIFFY ⭐️🥂 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a super cute spooky with some magic and I liked it the ending was definitely sad but good don’t trust a spider that’s a god

[Mindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5 stars!

Perfect read for Halloween with all the scary and horrifying drawings. Absolutely beautiful done! The story is well written, terrifying and executed really well.

[Neff's Reading Again! · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the take on Anansi and the overall story. Sometimes it felt like there was some disconnect between the graphics and dialogue/tone but overall it was a good story. I think it did a great job of setting the scene for potentially a Book 2 that I would definitely check out!

[Cornerofmadness · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rounded up from 3.5. I struggled with the twist at the end. Also this is rooted in gendered magic which is not my favorite trope (and the twist depends on it). The story is drawn from West African folklore which was cool.

CW - graphic violence at the end, racist bad guys, loss of family

The graphic novel opens with the story of Ansasi, the spider god and his pot of wisdom and how he harms a leopard family. It jumps to early/mid century Alabama with girls Patsy and Vassie and their friends that are never allowed over to their house because what the girls know is going on (magic).

The bulk of the story however is present day with Vassie being the last sister standing and is developing dementia (actually there's a cool twist on this that I don't want to spoil) Her son, his two sons, D(emetrius) and James and his daughter Patsy, moved back to Alabama from California (their mysterious mother doesn't come). Vassie latches on to Patsy as the last girl in the family and begins to teach her the story of Ansasi, their link to him and what their magic is good for.

Naturally Patsy is in a hurry to learn more than her grandmother is willing to teach at once. Her brother D. eventually is brought into the lore side of things because men can't work this magic (though D shockingly shows he miraculously has some ability). In the meantime, Patsy has made friends with Stu, a white boy in her class.

Stu doesn't like his very racist family (a bunch of dead beat Neo Nazis to boot) THey used to own the land Vassie's home is on and used to own Vassie's family until a turn of fortune back during the Civil War and they want everything they think Vassie's family stole from them.

Naturally bad things happen with both Ansasi and Stu's family. Without spoiling things, the end is violent, the gendered magic comes into play and either Stu was playing the long game and good at hiding his true feelings or Ansasi's magic turned him which was very disappointing.

Overall however the story was good. I particularly liked D (more than Patsy). The art is mostly very good but there are panels where bodies are foreshortened with big heads which was odd. It was certainly a book worth looking at.

[Maxine · Rating 1 out of 5]

This looked like a promising read, with a cool-looking cover and a premise about a young girl learning hoodoo from her grandmother in order to contain the god-gone-rogue Anansi, but I was sorely disappointed.

This reads like a rush job. The writing doesn't flow smoothly, and some moments feel like jump cuts for no reason. There were points where I noticed characters saying contradictory things across pages, almost like the author had forgotten what that character said a few pages ago.

The characters themselves were also very uninteresting to me. They were either very generic and forgettable (despite being the main characters, I couldn't tell you anything about Pat and her family, aside from "her grandmother is a witch" and "her mother left the family years ago.") or were cliched stereotypes (the antagonists are a "white trash" family who smoke and hate black people and decorate their trailer with confederate flags and abuse each other for sport. There are so many red flags that that's just a badly crafted caricature at this point.).

The art doesn't really help much. The character designs are serviceable, but very generic and forgettable. Several characters also look too much alike: for example, the main character has two brothers who are different ages and shouldn't look like carbon copies of each other but I couldn't tell them apart most of the time. Characters' actions are often not clearly depicted, and their facial expressions often don't match with their actions or dialogue.

The dialogue was also very jarring to me? The art style and plot of the story made me think this graphic novel was targeted toward middle-grade readers, but the language used throughout (constant swearing and use of racial slurs) was made of words most publishing houses reserve for adults. It was very strange.

I really liked the design/s for Anansi, though. And I enjoyed the parts where Pat's grandmother is explaining the history of hoodoo and the use of magick to her.. Those parts were interesting.

Overall, I thought it was a good idea for a story but really poorly executed. I would have loved to see more fleshed out versions of the characters and their world.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent Idea with a rough execution and a lot of room for improvement.

I grabbed this off the shelf thinking it would be intriguing black fiction…and it was for the most part. It had a solid idea with writing and art unfortunately felt rushed at points, over simplified at others, or outright disconnected from from the events of the book with characters feeling underdeveloped or inconsistent and other times feeling very cliched and uninteresting. We see just enough of things like the the character’s family life, the origin of the villain, and the history the villain and main characters family to establish the dynamic but not enough to truly be engaging.


Big spoiler: there is a third act twist where the female lead is killed and the Anansi gets away then her deuteragonist brother meets their mother and finds out that she is a similar god leopard in a manner that really comes out of nowhere except for a short story at the beginning of the book. The mother (who I guess is named )’Seb)’ (sic) because that is the Twi/akan word for leopard which they draw attention to like it’s important) is motivated to kill anansi because she blames him for her own mothers death and she seemed to plan to have a bunch of kids that she then abandoned in the hopes that they would kill anansi and now she wants to team up with the one surviving son in the sequel to finish the job which seems especially callous. I’m in no rush to read the sequel though I wouldn’t be surprised if I pick it off the shelf again in a few years time but unless there is some resolution to this plot of the mother leopards motivations and fighting up of the writing and art I don’t imagine it will be a very satisfying read.

[Sud666 · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Devour" was an interesting horror story. What makes it interesting is the use of African mythology (Ghanaian) to give us a slightly different horror story. The story starts with the tale of Anansi, a spider that looks after the path of wisdom. Anansi's advice to a Leopard Cub causes the cub to lose her mother. Anansi develops an ancient enemy.
When Anansi comes over with African slaves, the trauma of slavery drives Anansi slightly off his rocker. Anansi becomes a terrible creature that feeds on the memories and stories of humans. The African slaves know how to deal with such spirits, and thus, the protagonist's ancestors were able to bind Anansi into a house and appointed one of their wise-women to act as guardians.

This is the basis for the setting where Devour begins. The Turner family is the descendants of that line of spirit women. The magic is matrilineal, and Anansi's influence has whittled the Turners down to one daughter who can take up the torch when Vassie, their grandmother, passes away. Sadly, the entire Turner family that comes from California are a dislikable bunch, so I didn't feel anything for them. I did like Vassie. She has suffered and has wisdom, though she can be a difficult person as well-at least SHE has a good reason.

The rest of the story is rather dark. The typical trope of the racist white family is also present, and I can honestly say both of these families are unpleasant, and I was rather amused at their fates. An interesting and original horror story. The art is nothing amazing, seems to work well for this tale.

I would have given this a 4 star rating, save for the nebulous ending which presages more to come. I don't know if I'll be all in on the next volume, but it is a possibility.

[readandtellwithshantel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Devour: A Graphic Novel
Jazmine Joyner Anthony Pugh

Anansi loves a story, but he always has something up his metaphorical sleeves. This graphic novel is an adventure, a reckoning for generations to come. While in this iteration of the folktale, Anansi is the guardian of wisdom. He is also a trickster which poses a problem.

The general retelling for this version consists of a cub taking counsel from Anansi and something overwhelmingly devastating happens. This cub is set on seeking revenge for her loss. I didn’t understand why she was upset with Anansi. After I did some supplementary reading, I got a better understanding of the folktale.

I’ll try not to give away anything important.
The bulk of the story is fast -forwarded into sometime around current day. In general, the Turner family has a lot of family secrets. On this occasion, Marcus Turner has moved his family which are his two sons and a daughter (Demetrius, James and Patsy) into his mother’s home. Grandmother Vassie has been doing her best to keep everything in order, but the time has come for some truths to be told.

It’s all action packed. In conjunction to the family drama, there is a run in with a particular ain’t shit ass family. Due to the way the Turner’s acquired the home, there has been turmoil brewing for many years. I was so pissed that Marcus didn’t do more. Like he behaved as if he didn’t understand what would happen by bringing his family there. I felt so bad for James. He had no chance.

I liked the story telling and pacing. It gets crazy and the illustrations are so good. Graphic is an understatement.

#readandtellwithshantel #jazminejoyner #anthonypugh

[Rick Ray · Rating 2 out of 5]

Devour is the debut graphic novel from television writer Jazmine Joyner with art provided by Anthony Pugh. Set in the suburban South, the Turner family arrive to take care of their ailing matriarch, Vassie, who has developed dementia. The house itself has mysteries laden into it, and Vassie's granddaughter Patsy seeks to unravel some of them. Chief amongst them is a trapped little pocket dimension found in the Turner household basement, where the manifestation of a spider screams to be unleashed. Patsy must navigate the mythical aspects of her family legacy whilst also dealing with the harsh realities of colored folk in the South.

The story is effectively a modern retelling of the Anansi folktale, one that has been done in various ways before, but Joyner finds a new angle here that is fairly interesting. The comic moves along at a leisurely pace, allowing plot beats to marinate a little before the climax. Anthony Pugh's artwork is pretty nice, especially when capturing the fantastical elements, but for a lot of the more mundane depictions, his art does devolve into some stiffness. The backgrounds are always nicely done though, and the design on the spider is perhaps the highlight with respect to the artwork.

Decent enough, but disappointingly this does set up more story to come which I really didn't feel was necessary.

[Eric Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

“We bring our beliefs wherever we go.” The myths and lore from Africa came to America with the enslaved peoples. But it wasn’t just the stories that arrived in the New World; the gods came, too. One of these gods was the spider Anansi, who came to consume the stories of the captured Africans. The woman of the Turner family imprisoned Anansi before he could destroy people’s memories. When Vassie became ill, her son and his children came to Alabama to stay with the matriarch of the Turner family. Vassie must teach her only granddaughter, Patsy, the family hoodoo, to keep Anansi locked up. If Anansi is ever freed, he will devour the memories of anyone he comes across.

Devour is the debut graphic novel by award-winning comic journalist Jazmine Joyner. This grimdark horror graphic novel borrows from West African mythology but tells a dark story that could only come from America. Joyner uses their craft to focus on Black ancestral trauma. The tale of terror that Joyner weaves is punctuated with the brutal and bloody artwork of comic book artist Anthony Pugh. The grim yet captivating illustrations aid this book’s overall sense of dread and treachery. This horror novel, full of history and magic, is the story Anansi looks to devour.

his review was originally published at https://seattlebookreview.com/product...

[Elisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5⭐ rounded up. Content Warnings at the end.

I would advise if you have arachnophobia to avoid this book, although the art style makes Anansi look grotesque at moments where the spider form isn't very recognizable. Take that for what you will.

I am not familiar with the mythology that this graphic novel is based on. I feel like the author did a good job conveying the myth and how it is integral to this story.

However, I wasn't a fan of the art style although it pulled through during the more terrifying bits of the story. I think if you like Courage the Cowardly Dog's art style I think you'd like the art in this book.

Also if you want a different mythology to dive into, I'd say this would be a good jumping off point.

Content/Trigger Warnings:
Brief moments of racism/slurs
Death of parents/loved ones (on and off page)
Brief moments of gun violence

[Mickey Bits · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting enough with many elements of a horror tale. Spiders, legends, family-history, gore, murder, psychic powers. I was enjoying the story just fine right up until the author begins to ramp up to the climax of the book. It kinds of falls apart right there... turns out the white people are... wait for it... racist! And young people are resilient, quickly accepting the death of close relatives. I don't mind revealing that there are meant to be additional installments in this saga, but not something I'm likely to continue reading. Maybe, but not for sure.

[Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Devour had a great story but I wanted a better conclusion. I thought it was a stand alone but there's plot points that I still need resolved.

The women of the Turner family have been put in charge of taking care of a literal god, Anansi, the god of stories. The Everett family believes that the Turner family took their land and are out for revenge. How they reconnect and how their stories play out made for a great read and I'm yearning for more.

[Raaven💖 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ll start the review by saying idk about the Anansi folk tale. It seems like a very interesting story. The visuals in this were very creepy. Sometimes I didn’t like the way the faces sat but all in all it was very well done. The very end of this got crazy and the violence ramped up. I was not expecting the ending. Judging this as just a supernatural horror manga I enjoyed it. I always like seeing black MCs in horror.

[The Nocturnal Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the art style and how creepy they made the spiders. This was an impulse read as I wanted so thing easy and quick to give my brain a break. The dialog and pacing was sometimes clunky and a lot of things happened right at the end. I wish it was paced a bit different and a little longer. I would love a sequel as we were given a glimpse as to where the plot would go at the end and I would love to get more of this universe and folklore.

[Daphne99 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spannend verhaal met sterke karakters. Ik vond de onthulling van de oorsprong van de spin ook erg goed bedacht. En hoe die naar Amerika gekomen is.
Het einde was wel weer een beetje eng, zeker omdat er veel karakters ineens dood gingen door de spin. Nu ben ik wel benieuwd of die in deel 2 weer terug gebracht kunnen worden. Dus die wil ik ook wel gaan lezen als die als ebook beschikbaar is.

[Limber Lad · Rating 2 out of 5]

Genuinely didn’t realize the main girl had a second brother until they killed him, and I can’t tell if it’s an issue of the art or the exposition. The story itself has an interesting core but glosses over lots of things that seem quite important, and as a result feels rushed and not very enjoyable.

[Keanu Soto · Rating 4 out of 5]

My partner picked the book up for me at a comic book convention, and I am so glad they did. This graphic novel had a dynamic story that I would love to see as a tv series. There are enough edge-of-your-seat-moments to keep the pages turning all the way to the very end.

[Niina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Odotin sarjakuvalta jotain muuta kun sain. Todella pitkään pantattiin tapahtumia ja kolme neljäsosaa tarinasta oli kuin käsijarru pohjassa ja vain aivan lopussa kierrokset nousivat. Lopusta voi päätellä, että jatkoa olisi tulossa.

Olisi kiinnostanut Anansi ja hoodoo enemmänkin, mutta tässä oli keskitytty vähän eri asioihin. Liikaa perheriitoja, petoksia ja rasismia omaan makuuni. Harmillista, että näin kiinnostavista aineksista on raavittu kasaan näin tylsä teos.

[Orlando Rodriguez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not as familiar with the tales of Ananzi, but the author does a good job of letting you know what you need to know about the tale, at the same time that it explores a new version of the character. This was dark, twisted yet very relevant. Highly recommended for horror comic lovers.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome story 👏👏👏

Really loved the story, haven't read much in African mythology and this pulled me right in. Art work is great except at some points expressions didn't match the emotion

[Tonia Trippett-williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent Graphic Novel!
From page 1 until the last page, this kept me on my toes and aching with every page turn! The twist and turns kept me on the edge of my seat. Please, Please Jazmine Joyner give us more!
I grew up with the tales of Anansi and this one did not disappoint!

[Lora · Rating 5 out of 5]

First - warning! Cliffhanger! Second - Of course a Trickster God must turn into a Giant Bloodthirsty Spider God when brought from Africa to America with thousands of traumatized people forced into slavery. Tell me a story…..

[A.C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a horror movie in graphic novel form. The pacing worked. The story was tight. Also, it was legit gross at times. I cackled at some of the violence. Some of the race stuff was a little heavy handed, but the overall vibe was good (for a horror project). Great time had over here.

[alaysiah ´ཀ` · Rating 1 out of 5]

i'm disappointed honestly

the whole story is centered around women and their power, just for the focus to shift away from the FMC to a MC? besides that, there's too many convenient happenings—this story lost itself. good premise but not executed well

and why do the children look like adults

[Ally Feisel · Rating 2 out of 5]

maybe 2.5? premise was strong, but the pacing was choppy and i didn’t connect w the characters. some of the art was awesome (especially the panels w the spider) but i was let down by how many backgrounds were just solid block colors and the general character design

[Petraq · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now this was a nice surprise. I had a very fun time with this graphic novel and the ending kind of let some room for a sequel, which I would definitely read if it happened.