Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant
Written by Tony Cliff
Published by First Second
Review by Stephanie Cooke
Over the past couple of years, I’ve heard the cries of women looking for better female characters in comics. Sometimes the stuff from the big publishers doesn’t always put women in the best possible way, but a lot of indie publishers are putting out works that do right by the fairer sex.
One such book is Tony Cliff’s Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant, which pretty well sums up the plot of the graphic novel. Selim is a Turkish guard in Constantinople. He isn’t very good at his job but he IS great at making tea. That doesn’t really help him much though. When Selim and his soldiers capture a young, voracious woman, it’s Selim’s job to extract information from her. He finds out that she is Delilah Dirk and during his “interrogation” he finds out all about her incredible life which all seems like an elaborate fiction.
During his report on Ms. Dirk to the Sultan, she breaks free of her shackles and cell and wreaks havoc on the palace. A misunderstanding gets Selim almost killed and with no place to go, he joins Delilah on her adventures, which turn out to be the farthest thing from fiction. The rest of the tale, divided up into five chapters, are about Selim and Delilah’s unlikely partnership.
For real everyone: this is a story that women can love and enjoy. Delilah Dirk is a film-worthy heroin that takes her fate into her own hands. The story is wonderful, charming and fun while the art is perfectly fitted to the tale. The colour palette is wonderful and the designs for the characters are delightful. Delilah isn’t portrayed as some gorgeous Mary Sue with blonde hair and blue eyes, but instead as a realistic woman with all her bits in the right places and proportions of a normal human being. Even Selim isn’t your typical “hero” and their chemistry in this just works wonderfully and will leave you with a smile on your face.
Everything about this story makes me want to run out and buy a bunch of copies to hand out to my lady friends.
VERDICT:
Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant hits store shelves this summer on August 27, but make sure to not forget about this title between now and then. Tony Cliff’s story is something that almost anyone can enjoy.
After doing a little research on the title, even though the physical copy of this book doesn’t come out in stores until late summer, you can still check out Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant ONLINE. The whole thing is available to read over at delilahdirk.com, so do that to get a look at a book that EVERYONE should be picking up in a couple of months.
It’s ALMOST a story I would recommend to all ages, save for a few violent scenes, but I guess it kind of depends on how you feel about your kids reading and viewing a story with a little light stabbing, but no gratuitous blood, or anything of the sort.
