THE ODDS

In this first installment in Stanton’s new graphic-novel series, a young girl is forced to deal with repressed memories and emotions when fantasy and reality collide.

Kip, a quirky and insecure introvert, lives in an apartment in a noisy city with her cartoonist dad who is also a widower. One day, she wakes up to find a slew of strange visitors in her bedroom. There’s a rabbit, a ninja, a pigtailed soccer girl, a dinosaur, a unicorn, and a rooster with a pitchfork, to name a few. Kip recognizes them as fictional characters from TV shows, video games, her dad’s comic strips, and even her nightmares. She introduces the characters to her dad—who is distracted and struggling with a creative block—much to his alarm. Leaving the unusual visitors at home, Kip goes to school, where her teacher drops a reminder—next Thursday will be Kip’s turn to get up in front of the class and talk about what makes her unique. Kip doesn’t think there’s anything particularly special about her, but she has bigger things to worry about. As she and her dad deal with the fictional characters’ shenanigans and try to figure out how to get them back to their worlds, they find themselves opening up to each other about her mother’s death, and Kip comes to realize exactly what makes her special. Stanton writes with a fine balance of humor and pathos and uses simple geometric shapes to render his large-eyed characters. Kip and her father are brown skinned. Other characters are racially diverse, and one of Kip’s classmates wears a hijab.

Nuanced explorations of grief and self-discovery temper all the weirdness in this odd—and oddly satisfying—story.