A few of the jokes are worth repeating to friends, but very few kids would want to read the book more than once.
Super Potato returns for a second outing following series opener The Epic Origin of Super Potato (2018).
No one will complain that this story, a Spanish import, is difficult to follow. Almost every plot point is explained, immediately after it happens, by the narrator. When Super Potato is kidnapped by the Slug King, the king’s assistant shouts, “WE HAVE CAPTURED AN EARTHLING! WE HAVE CAPTURED AN EARTHLING!” and a caption notes, “The hunting craft, of course, is headed for the dreaded royal ship of the slug King,” and, “Super Potato is in trouble of a cosmic dimension!” The story isn’t quite novel enough to require that degree of analysis: Super Potato is held prisoner in a galactic zoo. (Even the art repeats itself. There are pear shapes everywhere: classically pear-shaped cartoon ETs, in diverse pastel colors, and a pear-shaped rocket ship. There are, interestingly, no human characters.) But some plot twists are loopy enough to be surprising, as when the robot assistant discovers the joy of singing. And one gag, in which the robot repeatedly changes its mood by pushing its own panel of emotion buttons, improves the more it’s prolonged. But that’s just one.
A few of the jokes are worth repeating to friends, but very few kids would want to read the book more than once. (Graphic humor. 6-11)Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5415-2646-4
Page Count: 60
Publisher: Graphic Universe
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Pictured in a long spate of silkscreen tableaux bound up in a small, bricklike volume, a bored child’s daydream zigzags its way into an increasingly wild fantasy adventure.
Printed (seemingly) on rough denim, the grainy, stylized scenes are designed to be understood at a glance and paged through quickly. Staid opening images of a school, a road and a house are transformed by both increasing detail and the appearances of new characters. These range from a pair of bandits and a witch to a duster-wearing stranger, police officers, soldiers, a dragon and others. Even as both characters and visual complexity multiply, readers are further shaken up by scenery occasionally being turned upside down and later sideways. Ultimately, the stranger becomes a protagonist who escapes various dangers, discovers treasure and rescues a princess from a sorcerer. With her, he defeats the witch amid bolts of spell-cast lightning…and comes home at last. Aside from allusive chapter heads—“A hero is revealed. During a long and perilous journey several scores are settled. In the forest, night itself is an enchantress”—the narrative is entirely composed of one- or two-word identifiers beneath each picture that are strung into sequences (“The school, / the road, / home”) while, occasionally, themselves turning upside down or even vanishing in part: “the .” Despite an unconventional presentation and dizzying twists, the tale ends up on a classic course. The delicious temptation to take an active role in the surreal adventure by adding details or even whole subplots will be hard to resist. (Picture book. 6-9)
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59270-137-7
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Enchanted Lion Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
This stimulating mix of hard information and prehistoric hijinks bodes well for subsequent volumes.
Kicking off a new comics series, over a dozen smart-mouthed dinosaurs strut their stuff amid added disquisitions on reptilian relatives, fossil bones, continental drift, coprolites and other topics of dino-interest.
For the most part, each page is an individual miniepisode framed in small, squared-off cartoon panels. Along with occasional appearances by paleontologist “Indino Jones,” the cast includes a range of toothy carnivores, from T. Rex to Velociraptor, and vegetarians, like Diplodocus and Triceratops. The dinos exchange wisecracks (“HEY, TYRANT! YOU’RE SO UGLY YOU LOOK LIKE MY BUTT!”) while demonstrating offensive and defensive features, distinctive crests or other decorations and (usually) messy eating habits. Along with the snarky dialogue, some amusing byplay is provided by a diminutive Compsognathus who recurrently pops up to get stomped or come to some other bad end. Despite the seemingly casual plotlines and comical cartoon art, distinctions between reptiles and dinosaurs, dinos that actually lived in different eras and other fine points of dinosaurology are carefully laid out. Moreover, boxes in the lower corners contain specific summary facts about each creature that are repeated in the closing glossary.
This stimulating mix of hard information and prehistoric hijinks bodes well for subsequent volumes. (Graphic fiction/nonfiction. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59707-490-2
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Papercutz
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
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