Month: May 2010

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A Home for Mr. Easter

By Brooke A. Allen
200 pages, black and white
Published by NBM

There’s no way around it: A Home for Mr. Easter is one of the strangest comics I’ve seen all year. It’s a book that starts about a girl who’s picked on by her classmates at school as well as her mother, and then transforms into a bizarre chase through the woods involving environmental activists, a lying pet store owner, a failed magician, and the police. And the whole time, it just gets odder and odder as the tone of the book shifts and twists around. For that reason alone, it’s hard to ignore A Home for Mr. Easter.

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Adventures of Daniel Boom AKA Loud Boy: Grow Up!

Written by D.J. Steinberg
Art by Brian Smith
96 pages, color
Published by Grosset & Dunlap/Penguin Books

I’d never heard of this series of children’s graphic novels until one randomly appeared in my mailbox, and for about a week I somehow forgot all about it. Then I was at a large family get together where, after dinner, my partner and I were attempting to entertain a 6-year old, a 5-year old, and a 4-year old. Well, it’s been a week and my ears are still ringing a bit from all the shouting at their end, and all of the sudden a graphic novel series about a kid who is incredibly loud made perfect sense to me, and turned into required reading. Once I found out that another superhero in the book’s power was throwing tantrums, well, I was hooked.

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Free Comic Book Day: Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom/Magnus, Robot Fighter

Written by Jim Shooter
Art by Dennis Calero and Bill Reinhold
32 pages, color
Published by Dark Horse

If you were reading comics in the early ’90s, you almost certainly knew about the last time Jim Shooter revamped Magnus, Robot Fighter and Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom. The first two titles at the now-defunct Valiant Comics, Shooter had bought publishing rights for the old Gold Key characters from the ’60s and turned them into the cornerstone of the Valiant Comics line. After Shooter left, the characters got revised several times at Valiant and then new-owners Acclaim, but soon after Acclaim’s publishing division folded the rights reverted back to Random House. Dark Horse has now signed up for publishing rights for the characters, and has brought Jim Shooter back to take another crack at the characters. But can lightning really strike twice a second time? So far, I’d have to say no.

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