Superhero fans won’t be surprised once, but they’ll laugh many times.
Superhero stories can easily break your heart.
Batman has never found lasting love, and Bruce Banner has never been able to prevent himself from turning into the Hulk. In the third Super Potato graphic novel, the hero has a chance to go back in time and avoid the tragic circumstances that changed him into a potato in the first place. He’s clearly doomed to fail, but he proves that he’s not afraid of a time paradox. A group of scientists gives him access to a device called the small-time machine, teaching readers about the importance of hyphens. But he’s distracted by mutant sewer reptile Archibald the Scaly and by his first ever love interest, Olivia Olson, who, in comic-book tradition, is immediately kidnapped. The artwork is as charmingly eccentric as ever. The characters look like the Rugrats, if the Rugrats had grown up to be superheroes and mad scientists. The new book doesn’t add much diversity to the very white cast, but one of the scientists is a tall black woman. The jokes are slightly better than in the first two books, though, even if the humor relies a bit too much on vomit jokes. No spoilers are required. Super Potato doesn’t change his destiny or get the girl. But “the girl” is snarky enough to make readers love her, too.
Superhero fans won’t be surprised once, but they’ll laugh many times. (Graphic humor. 7-11)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5415-7287-4
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Graphic Universe
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This kid-friendly satire ably sets claws into a certain real-life franchise.
A trip to the Love Love Angel Kitty World theme park (“The Most Super Incredibly Happy Place on Earth!”) turns out to be an exercise in lowered expectations…to say the least.
When Uncle Murray wins a pair of free passes it seems at first like a dream come true—at least for Kitty, whose collection of Love Love Kitty merch ranges from branded underwear to a pink chainsaw. But the whole trip turns into a series of crises beginning with the (as it turns out) insuperable challenge of getting a cat onto an airplane, followed by the twin discoveries that the hotel room doesn’t come with a litter box and that the park doesn’t allow cats. Even kindhearted Uncle Murray finds his patience, not to say sanity, tested by extreme sticker shock in the park’s gift shop and repeated exposures to Kitty World’s literally nauseating theme song (notation included). He is not happy. Fortunately, the whole cloying enterprise being a fiendish plot to make people so sick of cats that they’ll pick poultry as favorite pets instead, the revelation of Kitty’s feline identity puts the all-chicken staff to flight and leaves the financial coffers plucked. Uncle Murray’s White, dumpy, middle-aged figure is virtually the only human one among an otherwise all-animal cast in Bruel’s big, rapidly sequenced, and properly comical cartoon panels.
This kid-friendly satire ably sets claws into a certain real-life franchise. (Graphic satire. 8-11)Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-20808-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Funny, scary in the right moments, and offering plenty of historical facts.
Catfished…by a ghost!
Harry Mancini, an 11-year-old White boy, was born and lives in Harry Houdini’s house in New York City. It’s no surprise, then, that he’s obsessed with Houdini and his escapology. Harry and his best friend, Zeke, are goofing around in some particularly stupid ways (“Because we’re idiots,” Zeke explains later) when Harry hits his head. In the aftermath of a weeklong coma, Harry finds a mysterious gift: an ancient flip phone that has no normal phone service but receives all-caps text messages from someone who identifies himself as “HOUDINI.” Harry is wary of this unseen stranger, like any intelligently skeptical 21st-century kid, but he’s eventually convinced: His phone friend is the real deal. So when Houdini asks Harry to try one of his greatest tricks, Harry agrees. Harry—so full of facts about Houdini that he litters his storytelling with infodumps, making him an enthusiastic tour guide to Houdini’s life—is easily tricked by his supportive-seeming hero. Harry, Zeke, and Houdini are all just the right amount of snarky, and while Harry’s terrifying adventure has an occasionally inconsistent voice, the humor and tension make this an appealing page-turner. Archival photographs of Harry Houdini make the ghostly visitation feel closer. Zeke is Black, and Harry Houdini, as he was in life, is a White Jewish immigrant.
Funny, scary in the right moments, and offering plenty of historical facts. (historical note, bibliography) (Supernatural adventure. 9-11)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4515-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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