What happens when you keep your emotions bottled up? They turn into monsters and terrorize the town! Publisher Oni Press releases another young reader's comic, Sketch Monsters Book One: Escape of the Scribbles from writer Joshua Williamson and artist Vincente Navarrete. This comic, originally previewed on Free Comic Book Day along with the super hero comic Power Lunch, introduces our artistic heroine, Mandy.
Mandy isn't a very emotional kid, so when her big sister moves out and goes to college she gives Mandy a new sketchbook. Mandy uses it to express herself by drawing monsters, but one night they all come to life! Now Mandy has to get them back in her sketchbook before the wreck havoc on the town, but the only way to do that is to take the emotions she feels on the inside, and show them on the outside.
Children's Comic Sketch Monsters by Joshua Williamson and Vincente Navarrette
Sketch Monsters is instantly appealing with brightly colored backgrounds and characters. Event though they're still on the page, Vincent Navarrete's lines are fluid, and the character expressions are bright. Even Mandy's emotionless face has some life behind it.
The actual monsters have a separate look from the human characters, with thick chalky-looking outlines and scribbled in colors. Some of their designs make immediate sense: the silly monster is a monkey with his tongue stuck out, and the happy monster wears a huge grin. Others are more unexpected, like the love green jagged-toothed love monster, or the bubbly purple octopus that represents her loneliness, showing off a kid's creativity.
There are plenty of funny moments throughout the comic, starting with Mandy's deadpan looks as she's supposed to be surprised, happy, or in pain. And kids will certainly get a kick out of the monsters' antics, as the lonely monster cries so much he creates an ocean in Mandy's living room, and the frightened twins stand horrified by a hose.
The ending is a little didactic as Mandy explains what she's learned about expressing her feelings. And even through the story the happy monster, Happster, leads Mandy along as she tries to figure out what emotion she needs to show in order to catch the monsters. What helps make that more satisfying is that we know that Mandy hasn't quite learned her lesson, and that more books with more accidentally created monsters are in the future.
Sketch Monsters from Comic Publisher Oni Press
Aside from leading us to the lesson, Sketch Monsters is a fun story about creativity and expressing yourself. And even though the main character is a girl, boys will be too distracted by the interesting monsters to care. Like with Power Lunch this comic is a bit pricey as a hardcover, but it'll be worth it as a book your children will want to go back to, or that may inspire them to create their own emotional monsters.
Sketch Monsters Book One: Escape of the Scribbles gets 4/5.
- ISBN: 9781934964699
- MSRP: $12.99
- Released October 19, 2011
- 56 pages
- Oni Press
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