Action heroes with a difference
This new kind of comic is a great read
As an immigrant child in the late 1950s, I came to Canada knowing only five English words: yes, no, one, two, three. My vocabulary quickly grew, thanks to a passel of English-speaking cousins, the efforts of Mrs. Jacobsen in New Canadian class at Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant School, and a stack of comic books.
Kids immersed themselves in comics back then — and not with a view to resale value, like the nerds who keep theirs in plastic wrap these days — and parents worried about comics being a far cry from literature; shouldn’t their kids be reading books instead? All I know is that Donald Duck, Richie Rich, Little Lulu and Superman helped me acquire the English language. In my opinion, comic books have their place in the realm of reading materials.
Canadian authors Richard Scrimger and Marthe Jocelyn clearly think so, too. They joined forces to produce a well-paced, entertaining adventure story in which comics play an integral role. In fact, Viminy Crowe’s Comic Book celebrates the genre in a way that hasn’t been done in children’s lit before: by combining the format of a novel with that of a comic strip and housing it between two hard covers for the enjoyment of youngsters everywhere.
Viminy Crowe is the titular hero, in that he’s the talent behind the adventures of intrepid Flynn Goster. But the real stars of this book are two kids — 12-year-old Addy, Crowe’s niece who helped him hone his new Flynn Goster Summer Special and who knows how crucial it is that the comic sell well at the ComicFest currently taking place in Toronto, and Wylder Wallace, who’s a big Flynn Goster fan and is at the show to buy the new comic, which has apparently met with a distribution glitch. Both kids accidentally pass through a portal at the show that deposits them inside the pages of the comic book itself, where much of the action takes place on a train travelling across Canada in 1899. They encounter grave danger in the form of a dastardly criminal, Professor Lickpenny, who, with the help of grotesque eight-foot robots he created and covered with human skin, is determined to steal the gold bullion being carried on that train.
When Addy and Wylder try to return to ComicFest, they discover that by inadvertently leaving some of their belongings on the train, they’ve derailed Crowe’s original story and the plot has taken on a life of its own. Flynn Goster loses a limb in the process; robots run amok; fire breaks out and Crowe himself eventually finds his way into the comic. It takes considerable effort before he and his niece can extricate themselves and safely return to presentday Toronto with Wylder in tow.
Illustrated by Claudia Dávila in various black-and-white formats (from spot illustrations to a fourpage comic strip), this makes for a highly entertaining summer read.
Ages 8 to 12
Viminy Crowe’s Comic Book By Marthe Jocelyn and Richard Scrimger Illustrated by Claudia Dávila Tundra Books, 319 pages, $19.99