Originally posted November 11, 2002. Excerpted from Cinescape online. Click pic for full review.

Published last year and now in a second printing, James Sturm’s THE GOLEM’S MIGHTY SWING garnered critical attention outside the comics arena and in the light of Sturm’s upcoming gig scripting the FANTASTIC FOUR for Marvel in a series titled UNSTABLE MOLECULES, this book deserves a review.

THE GOLEM’S MIGHTY SWING is set in the 1920s and tells the story of an itinerant baseball team (think “Bingo Long And The Traveling All-Stars”) whose primary ethnicity is Jewish; the team takes their name from this and are known as the Stars of David. They are approached by a huckster to add a gimmick to their play: the only African-American member of the team might don a costume to emulate the appearance of the Golem in the silent movie of the same name, a current hit. He does, it’s an audience draw, and the team makes out – until they roll into Putnam. Things get ugly, but telling more would offer spoilers, so I shan’t.