These super sons deserve better than this drab outing.
The super duo of Jon Kent and Ian Wayne make their middle-grade debut.
The friendship/rivalry of Jonathan Kent (son of Lois Lane and Clark Kent) and Damian Wayne (son of Talia al Ghul and Bruce Wayne) has led to many silly and thrilling comic-book adventures, most notably in Peter J. Tomasi and Jorge Jimenez’s heartfelt and emotionally honest Super Sons series. Fans won’t find much resemblance here: Pearson has drastically reimagined Damian and Jonathan and moved the story to an alternate timeline with little to offer lovers of DC Comics lore. This is a book designed for newcomers, but it doesn’t make any exciting choices or craft thrilling action sequences to draw readers in. Jon and Damian (now going by Ian) live in a world haunted by the specter of climate change. Superman is dispatched on a mission to retrieve some dust from an asteroid that may help save the Earth. With Superman gone for months Jon is left to attend school in Wyndemere, where he’s quickly drawn into Ian Wayne’s orbit, and the teens bicker as they uncover a global conspiracy and partner with the mysterious Candace, a classmate with secrets that may be relevant. The dialogue is flat, the compositions are bland, and while the colors pop, there doesn’t seem to be much thought to how they contribute to the art as a whole. (Jon presents white; Ian has beige skin; and Candace is black.) The book lurches forward with little dramatic propulsion and ends on an infuriating cliffhanger.
These super sons deserve better than this drab outing. (Graphic adventure. 8-12)Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4012-8639-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: DC Comics
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
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
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style.
A summer vacation turns out to be anything but relaxing for Greg and a teeming horde of Heffleys.
Gramma declines the offer of a grand birthday celebration, saying that “what would make her REALLY happy is if everyone else went to Ruttyneck Island”—though she prepares individual packs of her legendary meatballs. (“You knew exactly how much Gramma likes you by how many meatballs you got.”) A gaggle of Heffley relatives and a dog stuff themselves into a small beach house, where overcrowding, personality conflicts, and simmering resentments become just some of the ingredients in a rolling boil of sitcom-style catastrophes, not to mention questionable decisions ranging from leaving the kids to make dinner unsupervised to labeling a cooler “HUMAN ORGANS” to keep random passersby from helping themselves. As usual, Greg supplies the setups in poker-faced journal entries interspersed with black-and-white drawings of slouched figures bearing frowny expressions of dismay or annoyance to cue the laffs. Gramma, it eventually turns out, not only (unsurprisingly) has plans of her own, but is also keeping a shocking secret about those meatballs. To go with the knee-slapping set pieces, Kinney slips in a tasty bit of family lore about how Greg’s parents met, plus droll takes on such low-hanging comedy fruit as restaurant manners, viciously competitive board games, and social media influencers (Greg being one, albeit with zero followers, and his Aunt Veronica’s little dog being another, with 3.8 million).
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781419766954
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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