THE DIVMULTI RAY DILEMMA

Endowed with awesome powers thanks to an Arithmetic Meteor, three young friends work to defend the “math-centric city of Computropolis” from evil in this series kickoff.

First villains up: Null Void (and her “vile cohorts”), who snatch the newly invented Divmulti Ray—which allows users to multiply or divide anything—for their nefarious purposes. The Solvers—Leo, Shahi, and Moe—multiply their powers, calculate their way out of numerous pickles, and, bottom line, send their nemesis packing after cleverly foiling her schemes. Along the way, there are frequent pauses so that their sidekick Duncan (they also have a feline assistant, Rosy, who minds the Math Mansion when they’re out) can explain topics such as factors, skip-counting, and long division. Action takes a distant backseat to instruction here, but Chad depicts both clearly and puts Leo, Shahi, and Moe at the head of a cast notably diverse of species as well as race. Along with demonstrating that there are usually multiple ways of arriving at correct answers, he also repeatedly challenges the invidious notion that multiplication and division aren’t useful in daily real life. Leo, Duncan, and Null Void are light-skinned, Shahi is dark-skinned, and Moe is tan-skinned; Moe uses they/them pronouns.

Adds up to a promising, challenging start.