Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Writer: Brian Joines
Artist: Bachan
Release Date: 17th December 2014

The ‘elevator pitch’ for BOOM! Studios’ Imagine Agents is a simple one; what we have here, essentially, is Men in Black, but with imaginary friends (or “figments”) taking the place of aliens. Obviously there’s a little more to it than that, but at the core, this is essentially a series about a secret government organisation whose mission it is to round up all the wayward imaginary friends who are left behind once their children outgrow them.  The story centres around two of these agents; grumpy, figment-hating veteran David Slatern and his goofy, completely-out-of-his-depth rookie partner Terry Snowgoose, a pair who quickly find themselves drawn into a nefarious plot by a bitter figment named Dapple who is seeking revenge on the human world for the way his kind are treated and discarded.   

Right from the opening scene, writer Brian Joines injects everything with a healthy sense of fun, as we are introduced to Slatern and Snowgoose through their attempts to apprehend “Moog of Mog”, an absolutely hilarious Easter-Island-meets-millipede figment who is rampaging through a quiet suburban neighbourhood.   The endless scope of the premise offers up some brilliant opportunities for artist Bachan to flex his creative muscle, conjuring up all manner of bizarre figments that could very easily be drawn from any child’s imagination. Whether it’s amorphous pink blobs, hulking monstrous rag dolls or – perhaps mostly bizarrely – a venus flytrap/go-go dancer hybrid, things are never visually dull here. Not for one second. Special mention must also be made of Ruth Redmond’s gloriously vibrant colours which help bring everything to life in an impressively ‘Saturday morning cartoon’ style.

While there’s definitely a lot of slapstick humour and bright, colourful characters to be had here, there’s also a surprising amount of emotional heft thrown in for good measure. Similar to Pixar’s Toy Story, one of the main recurring themes of the series seems to be the inherent sadness of growing up and letting go of our childlike sense of wonder and, as in Toy Story, we get to see this from the point of view of the things we leave behind. This is perfectly illustrated through Blounder, the aforementioned ‘pink blob’ figment who is forced to watch helplessly as he becomes invisible to his best friend Molly as she ‘outgrows’ him on her birthday. It’s a genuinely moving scene as he waves goodbye to her while she blows out her candles, almost instantly forgetting him as she moves on with the rest of her childhood.

I’m not going to delve too deeply into the specifics of the overall plot, but suffice to say that it revolves around Dapple’s quest for vengeance on the people of the world who casually discard figments once they’ve outgrown them, leaving them with nowhere else to go. We learn more about just why Slatern hates figments so much, get to chuckle as Snowgoose continually provides comedy gems with his clumsy attempts to be an agent, and are treated to some stunning visual set pieces from the artistic partnership of Bachan and Redmond.   It’s a great, self-contained story, and one I hope to see continued down the line. There’s simply too much potential and promise in the world this team have created for it to be merely limited to a four-part series, although the fact that this is being sold as ‘volume 1’ gives me hope.

Balancing humour, creativity and emotional punch, Imagine Agents is undoubtedly one of the best all-ages comics I’ve read in a long time, if not the best. I honestly can’t imagine (no pun intended) a single person who wouldn’t find at least something to like about this series. Highly recommended to children of all ages.

Rating: 5/5.

The writer of this piece was: Craig Neilson (aka Ceej)
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