Fwooosh! Crash! Boom! This graphic novel about crime-fighting superpets is probably as close as a kid can get to the full superhero experience without actually going to the cinema or switching on a screen.
That unfairly suggests it’s a book trying to be like a movie, when of course it was comics that came first. From The Incredibles to any video game starring Miles Morales in the Spider-Verse, those movies have origin stories rooted in the same comic book tradition that the American cartoonist Dan Santat is having so much fun with here.
Captain Amazing is past it. After years of protecting Metro City, the strain is beginning to show on his square jaw, and his latest encounter with the local supervillains ended up with him crashing into a peanut vendor on live TV. Deflated, he comes home to his beloved pets, Roscoe the dog, Fluffy the hamster and Shifty the chameleon. (His transition from caped crime-fighter to tired, suburban bloke on a day-off is a joy.)
The American author and cartoonist Dan Santat
He decides to audition for a sidekick, unaware that his pets, who have been developing superpowers of their own, are already perfect for the job. Just as well because Dr Havoc has just been released from prison and is claiming to have learnt the error of his ways and promising to “do everything in my power to preserve peace in our fair city”. Should he be believed? Of course not!
The artwork is superb and the storyboarding so slick it feels cinematic. There are thrilling chases, breathless battles with baddies and clever, quiet moments. One (almost) wordless sequence reminds us that Captain Amazing hasn’t yet lost all his power by showing him sneezing as he tends his garden: the force blasts a tree up and over the roof of the house.
Santat worked as a concept artist for video games before being offered a dream job by Google to work on the Google Doodle. His agonised decision to turn it down to concentrate on his own work was vindicated when he won the Caldecott medal in 2015 for his picture book The Adventures of Beekle.
• My children won’t read: tips for raising voracious readers
Sidekicks, the first in a series, is now available in the UK, as is another refreshing, American graphic novel for primary-school age children. In Leon: Worst Friends Forever by Jamar Nicholas, the main evils facing Leon, the self-proclaimed saviour of his school, is the danger of believing your own hype. Bonus points for his superhero mum having a secret underground lair that must be entered through a washing machine at the local launderette.
If the real nemeses are the screens intent on taking over every child’s downtime, the superheroes from both these books will put up a good fight.
Sidekicks: A Graphic Novel by Dan Santat (Graphix £9.94 pp224)
