SPEED READER

Reading isn’t all that a 12-year-old underachiever can do at super speed after pocketing a mysterious crystal and then being struck by lightning.

Cape City having been without superheroes for years, it’s time for a new one to rise—and who more unlikely a candidate than Zander Fast, the grandson of vanished super scientist Felix Fast and grand-nephew of retired sidekick Whizzy the Whiz? Nonetheless, a lightning bolt later, Zander is going from world record speeds around the school’s track and snatching a reading challenge trophy away from brainy classmate Tanya May to saving his mom’s doughnut shop from burglars and being strapped to a chair listening to a chortling supervillain monologue a fiendish scheme to switch minds. It’s “like something out of a comic book,” he marvels before setting out to put things right. Better yet, to judge from the final pages, this won’t be the last we hear from the speedy sixth grader. Stay tuned. Giallongo makes the action easy to follow in his cleanly drawn panels and gives light-skinned Zander, dark-skinned new ally Tanya May, grizzled Whizzy aboard his armed and motorized wheelchair, and the rest of the racially diverse cast distinct characters or at least character types.

Tongue-in-cheek super-fun.