I don't know why this comic series was suggested to me while I was browsing Amazon, but it looked charming and I decided to buy it for my Kindle app. I liked the first volume enough that I bought the rest.
The premise is slowly revealed over the course of the first book. A girl named Katie needs to raise money to go to summer camp. Meanwhile, things are happening in the city, including possible crimes committed by a supervillain named the Mousetress. These stories soon cross over when Katie's multiple attempts at finding (and failing at) odd jobs finally land her a winner: she gets to catsit for a woman named Madeline, who owns over 200 cats. She soon learns that these cats are intelligent and have very humanlike skills, such as construction, spying, computer usage, and more. And she finds out that Madeline is really the Mousetress - and she's not a villain!
Madeline/The Mousetress soon recruits Katie into her schemes, which aren't quite what she expected - mostly protesting various causes during the day, and punishing corrupt businesspeople and other jerks during the night. Katie joins The Mousetress on some of these nighttime capers, and even has to break her out of jail at one point.
This is a very strange story, but I also found it to be a refreshing take on what it would be like if superheroes and supervillains, minus actual superpowers, existed in the real world. No-one has real superpowers, but they often use technology to do their deeds, both good and evil. Superheroes have rankings, and they move up or down. There's even ranking sabotage by corrupt superheroes! The closest we get to superpowers are Madeline's superintelligent cats, and the existence of giant robot attacks.
Aside from that, there's the fact that this is primarily a Slice of Life story. Katie deals with the usual things that middle schoolers deal with - losing friends, trying to fit into a new friend group, etc. I can't really relate to that since I'm autistic, and my middle school years were quite different, but that is what most kids experience.
The mood is very light. To the point where there's practically no suspense other than the real life issues, such as Katie's friends getting angry at her, Katie upsetting her mother by the fact that she hid the truth about her working with the Mousetress, and so on. But the suspense just isn't there for the superhero antics. When a giant robot attacks a skate park, it quickly stops working and breaks down, and then the skateboarders just play with it and treat it like part of the park. When Katie discovers that a friend's parents are secretly supervillains, the worst that happens is that the friend and the friend's supervillain parents have some family drama.
There just never feels like there's any real danger, and I find that disappointing. I love adventure and suspense. There's elements of mystery, but without suspense, the mystery elements don't feel like they add enough to the story for me.
Still, I found the comic interesting and entertaining enough overall, as a Slice of Life story set in a word of de-powered superheroes. It's charming. I just wish it went a little bit further with its premise and had at least some adventure and danger.
ComicBook Slice of Life in a world of superheroes?!
I don't know why this comic series was suggested to me while I was browsing Amazon, but it looked charming and I decided to buy it for my Kindle app. I liked the first volume enough that I bought the rest.
The premise is slowly revealed over the course of the first book. A girl named Katie needs to raise money to go to summer camp. Meanwhile, things are happening in the city, including possible crimes committed by a supervillain named the Mousetress. These stories soon cross over when Katie's multiple attempts at finding (and failing at) odd jobs finally land her a winner: she gets to catsit for a woman named Madeline, who owns over 200 cats. She soon learns that these cats are intelligent and have very humanlike skills, such as construction, spying, computer usage, and more. And she finds out that Madeline is really the Mousetress - and she's not a villain!
Madeline/The Mousetress soon recruits Katie into her schemes, which aren't quite what she expected - mostly protesting various causes during the day, and punishing corrupt businesspeople and other jerks during the night. Katie joins The Mousetress on some of these nighttime capers, and even has to break her out of jail at one point.
This is a very strange story, but I also found it to be a refreshing take on what it would be like if superheroes and supervillains, minus actual superpowers, existed in the real world. No-one has real superpowers, but they often use technology to do their deeds, both good and evil. Superheroes have rankings, and they move up or down. There's even ranking sabotage by corrupt superheroes! The closest we get to superpowers are Madeline's superintelligent cats, and the existence of giant robot attacks.
Aside from that, there's the fact that this is primarily a Slice of Life story. Katie deals with the usual things that middle schoolers deal with - losing friends, trying to fit into a new friend group, etc. I can't really relate to that since I'm autistic, and my middle school years were quite different, but that is what most kids experience.
The mood is very light. To the point where there's practically no suspense other than the real life issues, such as Katie's friends getting angry at her, Katie upsetting her mother by the fact that she hid the truth about her working with the Mousetress, and so on. But the suspense just isn't there for the superhero antics. When a giant robot attacks a skate park, it quickly stops working and breaks down, and then the skateboarders just play with it and treat it like part of the park. When Katie discovers that a friend's parents are secretly supervillains, the worst that happens is that the friend and the friend's supervillain parents have some family drama.
There just never feels like there's any real danger, and I find that disappointing. I love adventure and suspense. There's elements of mystery, but without suspense, the mystery elements don't feel like they add enough to the story for me.
Still, I found the comic interesting and entertaining enough overall, as a Slice of Life story set in a word of de-powered superheroes. It's charming. I just wish it went a little bit further with its premise and had at least some adventure and danger.