PIZZASAURUS REX

Can a pizza-obsessed dino from another dimension help a hapless scientist?

Jeremy Duderman, a bespectacled scientist, may have a brilliant mind, but he is socially clueless: He is slow to recognize when he is bullied, he has difficulty recalling his female assistant’s name (Lexi), and he’s oblivious to her affection for him. When one of his experiments proves successful—an interdimensional portal called the Reality Alternative Dimensionator—it accidentally unleashes pizzasaurus Rex Raditude, a skateboarding reptile from another dimension, and the lame goons chasing him. With Emperor Buzzkill, a disembodied brain determined to make every dimension uncool, hot on their tails, will Rex, Jeremy, and Lexi be able to stop them? Told with lots of busy, action-driven panels and bathed in 1980s skater-dude lingo, the tale owes much to such retro cartoons as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, He-Man, and Jem for inspiration. However, this nostalgia takes an unfortunate turn; lab assistant Lexi only becomes “radical” when she is given a sexy makeover and a shortened hemline. Similarly, Jeremy’s transformation happens only when he loses his glasses and grows a set of bulging muscles, perpetuating hackneyed clichés; that Jeremy and Lexi are both white only reinforces the retrograde approach. While the concept is certainly lively, it’s not enough to lift the book above its flaws.

Pass.