Cub - Cynthia L. Copeland

Cub - Cynthia L. Copeland

In 1972, fifth-grader Cindy, a somewhat nerdy and intelligent girl, navigates the scary waters of mean girls and outcasts.  Meanwhile, on the advice of a favorite teacher, Cindy starts to work with a local reporter, covering stories such as school board meetings or Earth Day celebrations.  When one of the cool (and cruel) girls starts moving in on her BFF and her crush, Cindy feels lost, but takes refuge in new and old friends as well as her burgeoning writing and photography.  Highly autobiographical, this is both a terrific time capsule of the early '70s and a (somewhat toothless) look at the vicissitudes of middle school girl drama.  [4]

Cardboard Kingdom - Chad Sell

Cardboard Kingdom - Chad Sell (with various authors)

In a small suburban neighborhood, a boy uses cardboard to play the evil Sorceress, while in the short vignettes that follow, family and friends become other characters that suit them, if sometimes after a struggle.  A possibly neurodivergent, on-the-spectrum boy dresses as a robot.  A detail-oriented girl grounded in reality becomes a seller of magic potions.  A bully becomes a rampaging monster, gradually accepted through play.  A girl told to act demure and quiet lives out her true self as a roaring beast.  A questioning boy decides he's not a princess to be rescued nor a monster, but a dashing rogue.  All of this is told through pictures when possible (though there's a good amount of dialogue).  It's a sweet, welcoming story, told with delicacy and understanding.  Absolutely perfect for questioning kids.  [4]

The Okay Witch - Emma Steinkellner

The Okay Witch - Emma Steinkellner

Thirteen-year-old Moth Hush loves magic and witches.  One Halloween, she discovers not only that she has witch powers, but her family is at the center of some centuries-old witch drama in her Massachusetts hometown.  Her mother wants nothing to do with witchcraft or old history, but when Moth decides to peek in her mom's diary, she enters a hidden dimension of witches and starts uncovering more secrets, as well as meeting her grandmother, a regal witch who wants as little to do with the real world as Moth's mother wants to do with witchcraft.  Trying to navigate both worlds, Moth learns too late that she boy she likes has a family history rather opposed to her own.  It all comes to a head in a final confrontation that feels slightly forced, but I will say it's nice to get a real resolution out of a YA graphic novel for once.  Also, there's an adorable talking cat!  Well drawn and a nice solid read, this is sure to please tweens with a taste for fantasy.  I personally would be interested in a sequel.  [4.5]

The Fifth Quarter - Mike Dawson

The Fifth Quarter - Mike Dawson

Lori Block is a fourth grader who likes basketball, but is relegated to the "fifth quarter," a non-essential period before the real game in which typically benched players are given some time to shine.  But she keeps working on her skills and attends a basketball camp, eventually getting pretty good.  however, this comes at the risk of losing her friends, who find her protective attitude toward the game off-putting and insulting.  Even worse, her mom is running for student council, risking alienation from another friend whose father is running against her.  Her father is often occupied with her twin siblings, leaving Lori more and more isolated and out of place.  Can she maintain her confidence without alienating her friends?  A great middle-school coming of age story about maintaining relationships and believing in yourself.  The art is more cartoony than I'd like, but it's not too distracting and sometimes amusing.  [4]

Katie the Catsitter - Colleen AF Venable

Katie the Catsitter - Colleen AF Venable

Katie is a young girl who cat-sits for a lady named Madeline, who is actually costumed vigilante Mousetress.  Katie wants to be a sidekick but Madeline is more or less retired and letting her army of intelligent cats do her work.  She's thought of as a villain, but is more of a leftist animal activist.  Two heroes, the Eastern Screech and Stainless Steel, seem to be framing her for villainy, but Madeline doesn't seem to mind, while Katie does.  The tween subplot is that Katie is become estranged from her best friend, who returns from summer camp with a new nickname and a boyfriend.  Gradually, these two plots merge, as it's revealed that several people Katie knows are actually costumed heroes.  This is a childish and poorly-executed attempt at parody, with a baffling story structure; it has few introductions of the characters, little background on its fictional setting, and has almost no explanation of the action parts of the story.  This couples with extremely basic art makes some of it hard to understand.  Scenes shift suddenly without any clues as to where they are; I only learned that one place was a bodega because it was referred to that way much later.  At one point a character destroys some lines that keep the subway working; the scene then cuts to what can only be a train, and then a station, but the art is so terrible that you can get this only from context.  The end drags and relies on the most basic cartoony slaptick humor to keep things going.  Venable also overuses the beat panel, then a shared laugh that's informed by tired sitcoms.  For tweens only, and only if they care about superhero parody, I guess?  [2]

Black Hammer - Jeff Lemire

Black Hammer - Jeff Lemire

1. Secret Origins - Six superheroes, after defeating the Anti-God, are mysteriously zapped into a small town somewhere, possibly another dimension, where there are no superheroes and something is very off.  The town seems constructed, unreal, and there's a barrier locking them in.  Two of the group, however, seem to know more than they let on,   Sometimes the characters are a little too on-the-nose derivative, but the story is intriguing, suspenseful, and mysterious. [5]
   
2. The Event - When the deceased Black Hammer's daughter arrives to find the heroes who vanished all those years ago, things start to get dark. Madame Dragonfly reveals herself to be more in control of the situation than anyone realizes.  As Lemire lets a little fact here and there slip about the heroes' past and current situation, you want to keep turning the pages.  [5]
3. Age of Doom Part I - Black Hammer's daughter, now the new Black Hammer, travels through a limbo of story (some of it a thin pastiche of legacy or Vertigo characters) before breaking free of the spell that kept the team in the small town.  But if they return to Earth, the Anti-God may return as well.  At this point the series has, perforce, lost a bit of its mystery, but Lemire is still on target with his exploration of comic book tropes.  [4.5]
4.  Age of Doom Part II - With the characters in another Earth, some with their memories and others without, Black Hammer and Walky-Talky try to get the team together.  Colonel Weird travels to a limbo of unused characters and teams up with a humanoid insect detective; some of Barbalien's backstory is revealed; and the team confronts Dragonfly.  [4.5]
5. Reborn Part I - Lucy tries to balance being Black Hammer with having a family, despite her crumbing marriage.  Alternating between 1986 and the current age, Lemire shows how Lucy's story comes together, even as Colonel Weird forces her to make a terrible choice.  [4.5]
6. Reborn Part II - When a mad scientist from an alternate dimension threatens to wake Anti-God, Black Hammer joins forces with Skulldigger to find their dimension's Dr. Andromeda and stop him.  Meanwhile Weird finds a cabal of alternate versions of himself and tries to fix things.  This continues to be a brilliant, suspenseful love letter to comics (with a very deep hat tip to Kirby), full of surprises and thrills.  [4.5]
7. Reborn Part III - Lucy meets the evil version of her father, who tries to convince her to join him; meanwhile her lost family are found in limbo by Inspector Insector, and they go to the "real" Earth, our Earth, where the Black Hammer team are living in peace.  Weird asks Lucy to continue the fight, but having found her family, she may stay on Earth for good.  [4.5]
8. The Last Days of Black Hammer - This volume tells the story of Joe, the original Black Hammer, and how he tried to balance life between his wife and daughter, and continuing the fight as the world's premier hero.  When Anti-God comes, the team decide to go down fighting; this obviously takes place right before the events of book one.  Joe and Lucy's dynamic mirrors that of the grown Lucy with her husband and kids.  This volume isn't as dynamic or startling as the main story, but it's nice to see how it all unfolded before the farm events.   [4]