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A Boy and His Shadow by Benjamin Ilka Publisher: Mad Sea Dog Comics Format: Graphic Album format. Black and White, 56 pages. |
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Reviewed by Jamie Coville
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This book is actually two books. First there is a
45 page A Boy and His Shadow story. Then there is
a flip book 8 page adaptation of Don Quixote De Le
Mancha. A Boy and His Shadow. This is a story about a boy that is ignored by his parents and wants to be ignored by everybody else, too. He does a good job of it, but he still gets caught at school by bullies. The boy also has no friends and reads a lot. One day his shadow starts talking to him, telling him all through history shadows have helped people. Some people end up calling them Guardian Angels, Ghosts, etc . . . The shadow tells him, just as shadows have to follow their objects, the objects have to follow their shadows. Thus, the boy's shadow begins to move around objects in a ghost like manor to help out his boy. One part doesn't hold up to logic though. Throughout the story the shadow has no problem getting the boy in trouble, but in order to help him the shadow needs him to say out loud that he believes in him. There is no explanation for this, other than to build up some suspense as the bullies get very close to beating him up. The shadow helper idea is interesting and fun. Sadly the execution is not so. The nerdy, book loving, picked on boy is a cliche. As is a magical friend both getting him in trouble and helping him at the same time. The shadow comes across more as a plot device than a character. The art is cartoonish, but looks amateurish. Ilka draws these really big, weird looking hands. There was a few times where I had to double check the page to see what was going on. The 8 page Don Quixote story is like a children story book. Splash pages with written text under it to tell the story. Pages 3 and 4 seemed to be out of order with the text. One page talks of Giants, the other talks of Windmills and they don't match up. Some of the art is drawn for sideways viewing. One page doesn't make any sense as it appears a horse is drawn upside down in the clouds while the Quixote is falling down a falling straight down wards. The story doesn't get finished in those 8 pages and it's a "to be continued . . ." this could be a good story, but there is too little of it to judge. The mistakes and the awkward art does not help. In short, there are much better indy books for kids available. Seeing this book reminds me of Electric Girl (published by AiT/Planet Lar) which is far superior and hits some of the same notes A Boy and his Shadow story does. This book gets a 1.5 out of 5 stars.
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E-mail: jcoville@kingston.net
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