A thoughtful, charming comic that pays tribute to works of the past.
A boy inherits a very special stuffed bear in Kunkel’s superhero graphic novel, originally published in 2003.
After young Tyler’s grandpa dies, the boy, his parents, and his younger sister, Katie, move into their inherited new home in the small town of Simpleton, which comes with the services of a butler named Henry. Katie and Tyler also receive smaller inheritances; for Katie, it’s a strange mechanical device, and, for Tyler, it’s a broken pocket watch and a stuffed polar bear. Disappointed, Tyler puts the gifts away, unsure what to do with them. The next day, he misses his school bus, and things continue to go badly from there, as his quick, wry wit causes trouble with the class bullies, the Bullio brothers. Tyler knows that, often, his “mouth gets waaay ahead of [his] brain,” yet he continues to goad the bullies until they beat him up at recess. Frustrated, the youngster takes his anger out on the stuffed bear, smacking it in the nose—which grows into a real, life-sized, talking polar bear with a cape. The boy soon learns that the animal is, in fact, a superhero named HeroBear. Tyler, using a secret identity (“The Kid”), starts fighting crime with HeroBear after the “broken” watch alerts them to a robot terrorizing Simpleton. During his adventures, the boy struggles with speaking before thinking and learns the power of belief. The story and art style are reminiscent of classic newspaper comics, such as Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts and Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes, which also feature precocious children with animal companions. Kunkel tackles serious, weighty themes, such as grief, but packages them in an accessible and charming grayscale art style that’s heavy on linework. The only color in the book is the red of HeroBear’s cape, accentuating the fun and fantastic nature of the character. Some aspects feel dated, such as comments on Tyler’s friend Elmo’s weight. For the most part, though, it’s an enjoyable work that will appeal to kids today as much as it did some two decades ago.
A thoughtful, charming comic that pays tribute to works of the past.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781545820339
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Papercutz
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
More trampling in the vineyards of the Literary Classics section, with results that will tickle fancies high and low.
Recasting Dog Man and his feline ward, Li’l Petey, as costumed superheroes, Pilkey looks East of Eden in this follow-up to Tale of Two Kitties (2017).
The Steinbeck novel’s Cain/Abel motif gets some play here, as Petey, “world’s evilest cat” and cloned Li’l Petey’s original, tries assiduously to tempt his angelic counterpart over to the dark side only to be met, ultimately at least, by Li’l Petey’s “Thou mayest.” (There are also occasional direct quotes from the novel.) But inner struggles between good and evil assume distinctly subordinate roles to riotous outer ones, as Petey repurposes robots built for a movie about the exploits of Dog Man—“the thinking man’s Rin Tin Tin”—while leading a general rush to the studio’s costume department for appropriate good guy/bad guy outfits in preparation for the climactic battle. During said battle and along the way Pilkey tucks in multiple Flip-O-Rama inserts as well as general gags. He lists no fewer than nine ways to ask “who cut the cheese?” and includes both punny chapter titles (“The Bark Knight Rises”) and nods to Hamiltonand Mary Poppins. The cartoon art, neatly and brightly colored by Garibaldi, is both as easy to read as the snappy dialogue and properly endowed with outsized sound effects, figures displaying a range of skin colors, and glimpses of underwear (even on robots).
More trampling in the vineyards of the Literary Classics section, with results that will tickle fancies high and low. (drawing instructions) (Graphic fantasy. 7-10)Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-545-93518-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
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