(++++) FROM SILLY TO SINISTER

Wallace the Brave 4: Are We Lost Yet? By Will Henry. Andrews McMeel. $11.99.

Sorceline. By Sylvia Douyé. Illustrated by Paola Antista. Andrews McMeel. $12.99.

     When it comes to creations for middle-grade readers, the best graphic books, whether collections of comics or through-written graphic novels – the line often blurs nowadays – can be every bit as engaging as traditional novels, and often more so. The best authors and illustrators manage to integrate pictures and words so effectively that the whole becomes, as clichéd as the statement is, greater than the sum of its parts. And in a few cases, there is genuine character development in the stories on top of their overt amusement or adventurousness. The fourth wonderful Wallace the Brave collection by Will Henry, for example, shines some unexpected light on Wallace’s family and friends. For one thing, we find out that Wallace’s last name is McClellan. For another, it turns out that the quaint seaside town of Snug Harbor is in Rhode Island – a fact that turns up in the “More to Explore” section of the book, when Wallace’s mom talks about making johnnycakes. Is this information accessible online? Well, of course, but the way Henry works it into the strips is well-managed and more informative, in some ways, than any simple recitation of facts on Wikipedia. And Henry does some things in Are We Lost Yet? that do not admit of being simply looked up online. Notable among those is the way he deepens and fills out the character of Wallace’s mother. This is done both cleverly and subtly. In one strip, Wallace bemoans the fact that people always ask what you want to be when you grow up, but not where you want to be. And as he continues, both he and his mom say, at exactly the same time, “Aboard a star-class spaceship traveling the galaxy at light speeds.” This leaves Wallace completely shocked, and all his mom says is, “I’m your mother.” So that is where Wallace gets much of his personality! Nor is this the only such situation. There is also the time that Wallace gets covered with mud and his best friend, Spud, says “Your mother is going to be furious” – but when the two get to Wallace’s home, Wallace’s mom is even muddier than he is, having just been working in (way in) the garden; and all she says is “I’ll get the hose,” while Wallace tells her, “Oop. Got a worm in your hair.” And then there is Mrs. McClellan’s reaction to meeting a new friend of Wallace named Rose, who is intelligent and down-to-earth in ways that Wallace and his other friends are not. Rose brings over photos of recent UFO sightings, saying, “I don’t believe them, but I find it fascinating that Wallace does.” As Rose leaves, Mrs. McClellan comments to herself about Rose (not about Wallace), “What an odd little duck.” And just then, Wallace’s near-feral little brother, Sterling, appears and announces, “I put barbecue sauce under my armpits!” Apparently Wallace and Sterling get their personality quirks from their mother. Certainly not from their comparatively straitlaced fisherman father. At one point, Wallace’s mom catches Wallace walking upstairs with a hose, and Wallace admits he plans to “spray dad from my window,” because he would “never see it coming.” Instead of confiscating the hose or lecturing Wallace, his mom is next seen at the open window upstairs, calling out to Wallace’s dad to “come here for a sec,” and the unwitting about-to-be-sprayed father is happily saying, “Of course, my lovvve.” And then there is the time that Mr. McClellan remembers an occasion when an eel swam into his swim trunks and he started, as Wallace says, “dancing like a crazy person” while yelling “Whocha!” Just to be sure dad remembers what happened, the next panel shows Mrs. McClellan – along with Wallace, Sterling, and the seagull who hangs around with the family most of the time and occasionally has something to say, all perfectly synchronized in weird poses and with weird expressions, all yelling “Whocha!” Add these elements to Wallace’s interactions with Spud (who in one sequence is mistaken for a raccoon and captured by Animal Control, eventually escaping thanks to a bowling ball that Wallace has thoughtfully packed in Spud’s backpack) and Amelia (who at one point stops bully Big Gunther by whispering something to him that leaves him saying “mama,” and in another series comes up with and follows through on a really bad idea involving school and a pumpkin), and you have a Wallace the Brave collection that builds neatly on the three previous ones while opening up some delightful new territory. Are We Lost Yet? Not at all – in fact, Henry has found a whole additional set of wonders in a seaside town that only seems to be ordinary.

     The island of Vorn does not seem to be ordinary, not even a little, in the graphic novel Sorceline by Sylvia Douyé and Paola Antista. This book’s physical appearance is very European, and many elements of the plot are as well: Sorceline was originally published in three parts by Éditions Glénat of Grenoble, France, in 2018, 2019 and 2020. That does not mean Sorceline in this single-book edition is thick – the whole book runs only 144 pages – but it is very concentrated, as is often the case with European novels and graphic novels. The jumping about from scene to scene without connective tissue takes some getting used to, but is quite worthwhile in light of the depth of characterization and genuinely compelling art that make text and illustrations very involving indeed. Sorceline is a 12-year-old would-be cryptozoologist – that is, a student of cryptids, magical creatures that most people think are imaginary but that have needs that specialist humans can supply, specifically including medical care. The book’s combination of outré creatures with matter-of-fact matters involving health and wellness is an attractive one, helping make the fairly standard concept more interesting. That setup involves not only the mysterious and difficult-to-reach island but also the man who is teaching the students, Professor Archibald Balzar – the standard gruff-but-goodhearted professorial type whose expertise is compromised and limited by personal circumstances of which the students only gradually become aware. The assortment of students is pretty much standard as well: Sorceline has friends, supporters and someone (actually two someones) with a crush on her, but also has opponents and enemies who will gladly stab her in the back to advance ahead of her in Professor Balzar’s classes. What is so good about Sorceline, though, is that the formulaic elements quickly fade into the background as Douyé creates a genuinely intriguing storyline that involves Sorceline negotiating the ups and downs of her studies while also beginning to think that she herself is a mystery to be solved. Antista’s art also moves beyond the manga-inspired elements (huge eyes, spindly limbs) to develop a character and charm all its own, with the scenes of students and cryptids in motion and interacting possessing both a sense of realism and an appealing aura of strangeness. Sorceline does not involve wave-your-wand magic – in fact, it contains nothing of the sort – but does require the application to cryptids of knowledge from our own decidedly unmagical real world. For example, Sorceline figures out what is wrong with a group of pixies by remembering the life cycle of the liver fluke and realizing that similar parasitism is occurring on Vorn. Matters become more fraught, and at times more confusing, as Sorceline becomes convinced that scary events involving fellow students are in fact her fault and that she must herself be a cryptid with dark powers. But Douyé moves things neatly along to the discovery that Sorceline may be a cryptid, but she is not the one responsible for the problems – at least not directly – and she is also not the only cryptid among the students. All this occurs against the background of Sorceline trying to learn about her own past – she knows she is adopted but knows virtually nothing else. That “finding one’s identity” theme is another trope of fantasy (and plenty of other genres), but again it is handled skillfully here. Unfortunately, and this is the biggest flaw in Sorceline, the book (or rather the third part of the story) builds to a major revelation that then falls completely flat with a “to be continued” conclusion. Finding out at the end of Sorceline that the story is not self-contained will likely be highly frustrating to many readers – and since it took three years for the three parts of the original French edition to be published, it is certainly likely that it will take three additional years before a followup to Sorceline appears as an English-language graphic novel, if indeed it appears in that form at all. Readers who become genuinely engaged with this book be warned: the “to be continued” ending is a major disappointment after so much interesting and involving material. That does not mean Sorceline is unenjoyable by any means, but it does mean that the buildup to a letdown undercuts the overall impact of what is otherwise a very effective, and affecting, graphic-novel presentation.