Cat Dad, King of the Goblins
By Britt Wilson, Koyama, 48 pages, $12
Kids naturally love comics; the medium is the perfect bridge between picture and chapter books, and it’s a great form for adolescents and teens while taking breaks from textbooks and required reading. But with notable exceptions (John Stanley, Carl Barks, James Sturm), the mind-numbing mediocrity of 90 percent of the comic book adventures of Archie, Scooby-Doo and company nearly justifies prejudices against the medium.
So it’s worth celebrating that alternative publishers are increasingly offering stimulating, original, youth-audience work. The impressively odd “Cat Dad” boldly starts in the middle of a joyously strange story, presenting profiles of two sisters, a humanoid reptile, a mysterious mom who is into yoga (and, presumably, witchcraft), and a dad who has been turned into a cat. His body hasn’t just changed to feline form; dad now has a total cat brain and attitude with all the quirks and traits that make Internet kitty videos so popular.
By combining colorful, cartoonish design; slick, mischievous linework; and brash African-American female protagonists, “Cat Dad” visually recalls the work of Ralph Bakshi. But while this audacious, kinetic style fits perfectly with Bakshi’s lustful decadence, Britt Wilson uses it to convey wholesomeness. It’s a naughty, rule-breaking, brazenly bizarre kind of wholesomeness, but ultimately this book is a good, clean presentation of youthful adventure fantasies. It’s also about the way kids can adjust to, and accept, whatever is different or challenging about their family life — even closet portals to goblin kingdoms — as long as they feel safe and loved.
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Moonhead and the Music Machine
By Andrew Rae, Nobrow, 176 pages, $24.95
Earnestly riffing on the classic outcasts-versus-popular-kids high school drama motif, British illustrator Andrew Rae spices things up by giving his hero a detachable moon for a head. This works as a metaphor for teen distraction, alienation, victimization and disconnection, but because it’s a comic book, it also works literally. Joey lives in a world where such oddities are rare but not unheard of; the power of music is apparently capable of triggering spectacular metamorphoses.
As Joey crafts a woodshop one-man-band machine, enters a talent show and gets an impromptu industry audition, the book proves to be fantastically musical. Rae celebrates the transformative magic of sounds (depicted as abstract globs, their texture — whether seductive plasticity or nasty gooeyness — reflecting the tune’s quality), the mechanics of rehearsals, the aesthetics of album covers (in a glorious six-page spread) and the alchemy of performer/spectator dynamics.
But for all its musicality, “Moonhead” is a beautifully quiet book, with Rae’s measured, clean design creating seamless pantomime sequences. Despite the tensions between our odd-domed hero and the sadistic rich kids (not to mention Joey’s inevitable friction with a female fellow outcast best friend whom he doesn’t realize is perfect for him), Moonhead has a sense of serenity that adds an elegant sheen to a familiar story.
Bumperhead
By Gilbert Hernandez, Drawn and Quarterly, 128122 pages, $21.95
Following up “Marble Season,” his appropriate-for-all-age exploration of childhood, Gilbert Hernandez offers a more literal take on “all-ages,” following a quietly rebellious character from bully-challenged boyhood through health-challenged middle age. Though too bleak to recommend to youngsters, this book speaks to teens, though they might not love what it says.
We meet Bobby as a child in the 1960s and leave him as a prematurely hobbled man in the 1980s, but this book is ultimately a melancholy celebration of the teenage years. This is achieved by gloriously lingering on Bobby’s high school days, when his confidence and love life peak, and also by reflecting how the defining traits of teendom (rock ‘n’ rolling, contrarianism, sexuality, parental issues) are lifetime concerns.
While Hernandez’s brother Jaime has been doing remarkable work bringing closure to the characters he introduced decades ago in the siblings’ revered “Love and Rockets” comic, Gilbert is doing stunning work with fresh scenarios. “Bumperhead” features disheartening reflections on aging, loneliness, family, failure and mental illness, but also celebrates survival, resiliency and the power of punk rock.
One of the signatures of the brothers Hernandez has been a sprinkling of Marquez-style magical realism, and this time that comes in the form of an iPad that receives Internet from the future. The characters accept this wonder matter-of-factly, another reason this book captures teenhood: Kids that age are hard to impress.
Jake Austen is editor of Roctober magazine and co-author of “Playground: Growing Up in the New York Underground” and “Darkest America: Black Minstrelsy From Slavery to Hip-Hop.”