Heavy on exposition but setting up for a fantastic ride.
Creative Staff:
Story: Adam Glass
Art: Diego Yapur
Letterer: Sal Cipriano
What They Say:
When immigrants came to the new world they didn’t only bring their hopes and dreams, they also brought their MONSTERS. Years ago, early setters locked these monsters away in a secret prison deep in the woods of NEW AMSTERDAM so that they never would return to the Old World again. Those woods have become CENTRAL PARK and now the monsters have escaped! NICK, 14, finds out that he is a “legacy” to a secret society that for the last 400 years has kept these monsters in check–he and a ragtag group of kids just like him have to put the monsters back before they get out of the park and destroy the city.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Adam Glass has had some very fun works with AfterShock Comics so far and I’m definitely all-in to try anything he puts out. Lollipop Kids was very under the radar for me but that can make for a really good moment of discovery and Glass definitely delivers here. Working with Diego Yapur on the artwork, the opening issue is very heavy on exposition but the combination of these two talents gives us a very lived in life for young Nick and allows for the introduction of the bigger and wider world in a very natural way. You know the twist is coming but by making Nick and his world so accessible from the get-go it becomes even more engaging because of it.
The premise is simple enough in that we’re introduced to Nick, a fourteen-year-old kid that lives in, as he describes it, the part of Harlem they don’t show on postcards or TV. The bulk of the issue focuses on him going through his day of school while narrating the important pieces of his life that need to be known, such as how he’s trying to get closer to his older sister Mia as she’s turning eighteen and he fears her leaving because of the tension within the family. That tension comes from the fact that a few years prior his mother was shot in a street robbery that Mia was at. Nothing was right after that but it was made worse by the family dynamic. With their mother being a proud and outgoing black woman, their father is a sweep it under the rug man with a heavy Irish background. That kept Mia from really getting things worked out and it just upped the tension the more that time went on.
For Nick, his struggle has been more about dealing with his textbook standard dyslexia that was discovered a few years prior. He’s largely got it managed and all but it’s interesting to get the little details of his life growing up, the nature of aspects of Central Park, and just the impression we get of his family while not really meeting any of them for bit a moment or two. It’s the final pages that provide the hook (after showing up in the opening page) where the actual “big bad wolf” is attacking him. Showing that here, he gets a save by a group of kids around the same age that introduce him to the larger world out there where immigrants over the centuries known as sentinels have come to America and to this place in particular to bring the creatures of myth. It’s an intriguing idea in shipping off that which terrorizes you but they’re now loose and Central Park is no longer going to contain them.
In Summary:
I had little idea what to expect going into this book since I hadn’t read anything about it but Adam Glass and Diego Yapur nailed it right out of the gate. It’s a slow build with what it’s working with here as it’s focused on introducing us to a perfectly normal kid by all accounts who deals with dyslexia. While it does introduce us to a larger story with the immigrants and their dangerous creatures of myth, it’s about Nick at its heart, and hopefully, some of these other kids will get explored as well. Nick is an engaging character almost from the start and I’m eager to see how he fits in with this group and its dynamic and to see what other creatures we’re going to end up dealing with. It’s a great read, if heavy on the exposition, and it looks fantastic. Very recommended.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: October 3rd, 2018
MSRP: $3.99
