Review: Michael D Kennedy – Milk White Steed

Title: Milk White Steed (2025)
By: Michael D Kennedy 
Published by: Drawn & Quarterly
Format: Graphic Novel

Michael D. Kennedy’s debut graphic novel, Milk White Steed (Drawn & Quarterly), is a gorgeous collection of stories exploring feelings of alienation, displacement, and dysmorphia. In Milk White Steed, Kennedy wrestles with feelings of estrangement—of existing within a society where one feels simultaneously at home and detached. Personal experiences intertwine with a sense of generational trauma as the book shifts across timelines, showcasing the jazz-like virtuosity of Kennedy’s storytelling and rendering.

Drawn over the course of two years on standard copier paper, Kennedy’s illustrations possess an immediacy and intimacy. His drawing style and character design reinforce the narrative, ranging from a chunky, almost carved-block aesthetic in Giddy Up Duppy to intricate, detail-laden etchings in My Love and even nods to The Beano and Peanuts in Red Snapper in the Rea. Multiple personalities are injected onto the page with a deft stroke of a Pilot pen; the work is tactile, allowing readers to grasp not just the characters’ experiences but their inner lives as well. Nowhere is this more evident than in Red Snapper in the Rea, where the linework and character style undergo a series of stylistic transformations in tandem with the protagonist’s journey. The colouring throughout is simple yet effective, with Kennedy mostly employing duotone, using bold hues with the page’s white space as a third tone. The linework is the star of the show here.

Intricate detail in 'My Love'

The opening story, Inglan, sets the tone: The 1990s – A Cold, Damp Alleyway Somewhere in the Black Country, UK. A female character, dressed seemingly as a nurse or midwife, emerges from a steel council bin in a scene reminiscent of Sesame Street’s Oscar the Grouch. She unfolds a newspaper, immediately scrunches it up, and exclaims, “Chronic! Same old story, England is a bitch.” Directly referencing dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson’s 1980 oeuvre for the marginalised, Inglan is a Bitch, this motif recurs throughout the book.

“Inglan is a bitch, theres no escapin it, Inglan is a bitch, there’s no runnin’ away from it”

In another story, Green Men, set in Coventry in the 1950s, we meet a recent immigrant (the Green Man), following his acquaintance Freddy, a Trinidadian folk singer and road sweeper, to England in hopes of selling apples from his father’s orchard. After the protagonist throws an apple at what appears to be the notorious British fascist and White Defence League leader Oswald Mosley, Freddy is falsely accused and later injured in an arson attack on his home. A poignant moment in the story highlights racial categorisation as experienced in Britain. The Green Man, confused as to why they would attack Freddy (who is noticeably lighter-skinned), says, “I thought they were looking for a black fella.” Freddy replies, “An East Indies man and a West Indies man is still a black man here. Are you even on the same planet as us?” Alien and sci-fi references occur throughout the story, serving as a reminder of how immigration feels as a lived experience—how it is to essentially land on and navigate a foreign world where everything is different. A strangeness that would have been all the more intense for the Windrush generation in the less globalised world of the late 1940s.

Duke Ellington on Mars

This theme of alienness reaches its most literal peak in Duke Ellington on Mars, where we follow the jazz pioneer through a series of vignettes bouncing between the Red Planet and Earth. Opening with a panel resembling a woodcut of Munch’s The Scream, we see the Duke drinking, eating, wandering deserts and beaches, picking alien flowers, resting, even sitting in a gym—but always sad, always alone. There is no music in this world. In the penultimate panel, Duke buries his head in his hands and laments, “Go to Mars, they said! Bring jazz to Mars, they said!”

The protagonist in Red Snapper in the Rea, Ken—a sci-fi writer—becomes consumed by his fiction, convinced that he was not born of his mother but rather gifted to his parents, mother and late father, “like Moses in a basket.” As he spirals into a world of fantasy and psychosis, his features and the linework morph into the characters his children have drawn for him. There are references to Brexit and the Windrush generation, as Ken later declares, “I came to Britain when I was one years old. The government wants to send me back to the West Indies. I’ve officially outstayed my welcome in Britain. Which means my time on this planet is over.”

Red Snapper in the Rea

This thread of disenchantment with the lived reality of Britain seems integral to Milk White Steed. It reminds me of an interview with the rent collector, Black revolutionary, and later convicted murderer Michael X (formerly Michael de Freitas), where he recalled arriving in Britain as a teenager: “When we came to this country, we were not travelling to a foreign country. We were taught—I was taught—that my country, Trinidad, was an extension of this one.” Time and again, Kennedy exposes the falsehood of this colonial narrative and its greater effect on the soul.

Given the period in which the book was created, the discourse around Brexit and the Windrush scandal appears to have catalysed much of Milk White Steed. Kennedy draws clear parallels between historical moments, using signage and graffiti to highlight past and enduring racial tensions: “Keep Britain White (K.B.W)”, “No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs”, and “No Deal Brexit = Jewish Mafia” all appear within the pages.

There are ten stories all told, covering everything from mythological ligahoos, space travel, bluesmen, hallucinogenic mushrooms, and much more. I have only written about four of the stories here. I strongly suggest you buy a copy immediately…

A sentiment I can agree with from Milk White Steed