Pilot & Huxley by Dan McGuiness is shorter graphic novel – coming in around 60ish pages. I have to admit on my first read I found it a bit ehhh, a little like a younger version of countless Cartoon Network cartoon series. The x-girls, however, both assured me they thought it was really funny.
One thing that stands out is the art. Because it's so average. I've gotten used to seeing beautiful, distinctive, just plain wonderful art on Scholastic-published books. Pilot has a jagged, low-res gif quality to it. It's bright and cheerful but pretty simple art. The page designs, the staging of scenes are also all relatively tame. But the writing and to some extent the visuals are chock full of absurd, nonsensical plot and character twists. Almost Axe Cop-like at times. That's my best guess as to why I reacted one way and my two kids reacted much more positively towards the book. Check it out for yourself, there's a short online preview of the book.
The publisher provided a free copy of this book to ComixTalk for review purposes.
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