SUPER POTATO'S GALACTIC BREAKOUT
From the Super Potato series, volume 2
by Artur Laperla ; illustrated by Artur Laperla
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)