Publisher: IDW Publishing
Writer: Derek Fridolfs
Artist: Ryan Jampole
Release Date: 22nd October 2014

I have a feeling that this may be the comic book offspring of a ‘zany’ Saturday morning, cartoon TV show but being of a considerable age (Tiswas was my breakfast companion of a Saturday), I am not at all sure. But it has that look and feel.

Dexter is a precocious child, who is very intelligent and is so into science that he has his own laboratory and robot. His interfering sister is Dee. He dreams one night of a life without a sibling and lo and behold, come morning, Dee is gone. Now he and his lab have to bring her back.

Honestly, I am not the target audience for this and so I read it with my son who is 9. We both agreed that it would make a much better TV show because you don’t need to work out what’s happening yourself. As most of Dexter’s dialogue is a variation of this – “The inverse ratio of the hypotenuse equals the vector output of three decimals to the…” – it can be a struggle for kids to do all the work in the comic book. In addition, Dee’s disappearance leads to an existential daydream and dimensional discussion from Dexter.

Maybe the actual audience is late teens/early 20s currently wrestling with arrested development? There are rainbows and unicorns after all.

The artwork is typical of this stylized, frantic, pseudo-manga type drawing. Bold, black outlines, flat colouring, no shades or tone. And for added delight, a colour palette that will fry your brain. Mid-teens will love it I am sure.

Rating: 2/5.

The Writer of this piece was: Hazel Hay