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The Eternal Smile: Three Stories by Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim
Requirements: CBR Reader, 86 MB.
Overview: A fantastical adventure through the worlds we live in and the worlds we create. From two masters of the graphic novel -- Gene Luen Yang (American Born Chinese) and Derek Kirk Kim (Same Difference and Other Stories) come three magical tales –

The story of a prince who defeats his greatest enemy only to discover that maybe his world is not what it had seemed.
The story of a frog who finds that just being a frog might be the way to go.
The story of a women who receives an e-mail from Prince Henry of Nigeria asking for a loan to help save his family – and gives it to him.

With vivid artwork and moving writing, Derek Kirk Kim and Gene Luen Yang test the boundaries between fantasy and reality, exploring the ways that the world of the imagination can affect real life.

The Eternal Smile is the winner of the 2010 Eisner Award for Best Short Story.

The Eternal Smile: Three Stories

Gene Luen Yang, Derek Kirk Kim story, writer, artist
Published by First Second, 2009.


Three Short Stories from The Eternal Smile:

"Duncan's Kingdom,"
"Gran'pa Greenbax and the Eternal Smile," and
"Urgent Request."

This collaboration between multiple-award winners Yang (American Born Chinese) and Kim (Same Difference and Other Stories) is an eagerly awaited event that actually pays off. Yang writes and Kim illustrates in a medley of different styles united by meticulous detail, almost throwaway beauty and riveting storytelling. All three stories deal with levels of fantasy and how humans use it to escape or transcend everyday tedium and suffering. In Duncan's Kingdom, a fairy tale about a brave youth, beautiful princess and dastardly frog king is played out; the fantasy is so note perfect that the truth of the situation comes as a shock. In The Eternal Smile, Gran'pa Greenbax is an avaricious frog whose moneymaking schemes are first boosted then dashed by the appearance of a mysterious, peaceful smile in the sky. Riffing off classic Disney comic books and evangelical clichés, it's a sharp satire far more complex than it first appears. In Urgent Request, Janet, a schlumpy drone at a tech company, answer a Nigerian scam e-mail to liven up her drab life. However, her motives are not as they originally appear. Shattering the borders between our real and fantasy lives, these bold, masterfully crafted fables have real staying power.

The Eternal Smile, Reviewed by GreenBeanTeenQueen on July 20, 2009

I really enjoyed American Born Chinese when I read it after it won the Printz award, so I was excited when I came across this one at my library. It combines Gene Leun Yang's storytelling with Derek Kirk Kim's artwork (who I know from his Minx comic, Good As Lily). The result is a great collection of short comics that are fun to read.

What I really like about Yang's writing is that there's always a little twist that I never see coming, but still totally fits with the story. It works in each one and I'm never disappointed. Kim's artwork stands out and he makes each story have a different feel-you can see samples of the panels on the Amazon page. I love the way everything blended together and each story flowed well with the art.

I enjoyed all three stories and how each one had a deeper story than what first appears on the surface, but my favorite had to be "Urgent Request," the last story in the collection. There was something about Janet that made her a sympathetic character and I really liked how Kim drew her and was able to get her emotions across the page. Her story was bittersweet and I really liked it.

If you need a way to convince someone that graphic novels and comics aren't all about superheroes and cute Japanese girls, give them The Eternal Smile. It's a graphic novel for non-graphic novel fans, and for those who have long enjoyed the format.

Great for the comic fan and for the non-comic fan, Reviewed by Casey on May 8, 2009

A good short story is hard to find. The writer doesn't have a lot of pages to make the reader care about the characters and in these same pages, a complete story also has to be told. There is nothing like finishing a good short story and just getting this great feeling of content. This book collects three short graphic stories that leave me feeling complete and really shows what a great storyteller both these creators are. Each story has a few twists and turns and they all have enough emotional impact to make you think after you finish each one.

Gene Yang's debut book, American Born Chinese, was such a great book. The interwoven stories in that book made it perfect, and I recommend that book to a lot of non-comic fans that want to give comics a try. I believe this book can also be recommended to anyone. The three short stories will appeal to anyone and I don't think it could be told as well in any other format except as a graphic novel.

The Eternal Smile, From http://theenglishist.com/2010/03/11/book-review-the-eternal-smile/ on Mar 11th, 2010.

In three very different stories, master storytellers Gene Yang and Derek Kirk Kim pit fantasy against reality, for good or for ill. Subtle, surprising, and entirely entertaining. The Eternal Smile delves into our dreams, and the unexpected places they lead.

That’s from the inside flap of The Eternal Smile by Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim. It’s a short story collection in graphic novel format, and, as the description says, all three are about how fantasy affects reality and vice versa. The three stories are “Duncan’s Kingdom,” “The Eternal Smile,” and “Urgent Request.”


What I Liked

- If I had to pick a favorite story, it would probably be “Urgent Request.” The artwork is amazing, and the storyline is quietly affecting from beginning to end. Janet is empowered by her online experience, even though we know from the beginning that she’s responding to a scam (it’s the Nigerian prince dealio). It just went in an interesting and unexpected direction.

- The twists of all three stories are pretty ace. That moment when it’s clear what they’re doing and what the message is just really hit it. All three got me right in the gut, they were so heartbreaking.

- I like that all three have different things to say about how reality and fantasy go together. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s not. But it’s not all good or all bad or any extreme really.

What I Didn’t Like

- The drawings in “Duncan’s Kingdom” and “The Eternal Smile” are kind of garish, but they make sense in the story. For both, though, it wasn’t until the end that it became clear why they were drawn the way they were.

- I didn’t really connect with the narratives (except for “Urgent Request”). I appreciate them as art, and I liked the endings, but I was just reading to see what would happen without really caring about the characters.

In conclusion:

It’s a fast read, and the endings pack a wallop, but I’d probably only really call one out of the three stories a good story that I would want other people to read.

Note:

See another story by Gene Luen Yang here: American Born Chinese

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