3 ½ out of 5 Covers
The high school only has enough budget for either new
uniforms for the cheerleaders or to send the robot club to the national
championship. And the decision will be made by the new student council. In the middle of this is Charlie, the captain
of the basketball team who is best friends with the president of the robot club
and the ex-boyfriend of the captain of the cheerleaders who is also dealing
with his parents divorce. Even though
Charlie is forced into running for class president, escalation between the two
camps ends up with some unintended consequences and forces everyone to join
forces for a robot fighting completion to raise the money they need.
If that description sounds like there are a lot of high school
tropes and clichés, there are. But
writer Prudence Shen does them well. And
the inclusion of the robot club and robot battles does add an element of
originality. But that doesn’t change the
fact that the story is familiar.
The characters are entertaining, but Charlie is the only one
who has any development. In fact, he
seems like the only one with real problems in his life, still trying to cope with
his parents’ divorce. And this is
because we don’t get any insight into the other characters and they just fall
into their predetermined roles. But just
because the other characters don’t have depth doesn’t mean they aren’t written
well.
The real star is artist Faith Erin Hicks. She brings incredible expressiveness to
everything she does. Every character not
only has an individualized design, they are also extremely expressive. Because of this there is no challenge diving
into the story; everything is immediately accessible. The only issue I had with the art was the
robot battles, as it wasn’t entirely clear what the action was.
So while not the most original story, it is still deserving
of a place on the bookshelf.
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