As Classics Illustrated found out many decades ago, you can trick kids into learning things through comics. Using illustrated narratives to engage the minds of youth continues today, with Rosen Publishing Group’s line of GRAPHIC MYSTERIES among the most recent.
GRAPHIC MYSTERIES doesn’t adapt the great whodunits of classic fiction, but rather casts its eye toward myths and legends, where the amount of fact forever may be called into question. But there’s no doubt kids and teenagers would eat these puppies up. I sure would have.
Each title follows a strict formula of including a few text pages up front (accompanied by a generous amount of photos) before getting into the meat of at least three stories in the comic-book format. The 52-pagers finish up with a “Fact or Fiction?” essay, a glossary and suggestions for further reading.
Rob Shone and artist Jim Eldridge collaborated on ATLANTIS AND OTHER LOST CITIES, which deals with the famed lost underwater city of the title, the fabled treasured city of El Dorado and King Arthur’s kingdom of Camelot. Rather than just approaching it as straight encyclopedia-style entries, Shone wisely wraps his scripts in a character-driven narrative.
With artist Nick Spender, Shone also wrote BIGFOOT AND OTHER STRANGE BEASTS. With three wildly (no pun intended) subjects, this is a globe-hopping trip into monsterville; the Arctic-dwelling Yeti, the “Wildman” of China and middle America’s own Bigfoot are explored, again through story scenarios to make the chapters lively. It’s always fun to see Bigfoot in comics, though this can’t compare with the crazed version of BIGFOOT unleashed by Steve Niles and Rob Zombie (although that’s one you don’t want your kids to get their hands on).
For more creatures of questionable origin, there’s THE LOCH NESS MONSTER AND OTHER LAKE MYSTERIES by Gary Jeffrey. In it, Bob Moulder draws tales of Nessie and the water-dwelling monsters of Lake Erie and Lake Champlain. Even I was unfamiliar with the latter two, and the three stories are too similar in nature and execution to be all the distinguished. This may be a case in which a separate title was not necessarily merited, as the Loch Ness monster could have been covered comfortably in the BIGFOOT volume.
For major conspiracy theorists, there’s the Jeffrey-penned UFOS: ALIEN ABDUCTION AND CLOSE ENCOUNTERS title. Naturally, the book covers the Roswell incident, as well as the abduction of Travis Walton (as depicted in the 1993 film FIRE IN THE SKY) and something called “the Varginha invasion.” No individual artists are credit that I could see, although it looks to be completely the style of the books above.
Comparable in subject is THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE: STRANGE HAPPENINGS AT SEA, by David West and artist Mike Lacey. Telling three stories of disappearances in the Atlantic Ocean – of a ship, a plane and another ship, respectively – this title is perhaps best representative of pulp-oriented speculative storytelling. Lacey’s art is sharper than the others in the series, too.
But my favorite of the bunch is West’s GHOSTS AND POLTERGEISTS: STORIES OF THE SUPERNATURAL, illustrated by Terry Riley, for one main reason: Because it’s a hoot to see the story of THE AMITYVILLE HORROR condensed into a kid-targeted comic without having to lose the flies, pig’s head and dripping goo. In fact, I think it has the potential to scare – and thus scar – more impressionable youths, which makes it all the more worthy of checking out. The two other terror tales center around a ghostly warning in 19th-century England and poltergeist activity in 1940s farmland America. Clearly, it’s the single most fun one of the bunch.
All in all, the GRAPHIC MYSTERIES line holds potential for juveniles. The stories are easy to follow and engaging just enough to make them forget they’re learning. I can’t see seasoned, comics-loving adults grabbing them, except to enjoy in conjunction with their children, as the art overall is competent but unremarkable, and not up to the level of mainstream comics and graphic novels. –Rod Lott
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