Review: Von Doogan and the Curse of the Golden Monkey by Lorenzo Etherington

A super puzzle adventure comic starring Von Doogan...and YOU! The Curse of the Golden Monkey is BOTH a brilliant puzzle book AND a thrilling adventure story! It's jam-packed with challenges for you to solve, and every step of the way our hero's fate is in YOUR HANDS! Can Doogan uncover the MYSTERIOUS and TERRIFYING secrets at the heart of Javasu Island? It's up to YOU!

I appreciate that posting a review of Von Doogan and the Curse of the Golden Monkey a mere two days after my review of Long Gone Don makes it look as if the Etherington Brothers have hijacked The Book Zone as part of some nefarious quest for world domination, but I could hardly review one and not the other, could I? As with Long Gone Don, if you're not a regular reader of The Phoenix then you will most likely not know that Von Doogan is a regular feature in said weekly comic, but whereas Long Gone Don is a traditional narrative story format, Von Doogan is something different entirely. Whilst the Indiana Jones style story element is still important (and also great fun), it is also possibly the most evil and dastardly children's puzzle book created in the history of the planet... ever!

Best known for his illustrating of his brother's writing, Lorenzo Etherington has cast off the shackles of brotherly love and gone solo with Von Doogan, although we are not looking at a Wham-style split over artistic differences here - the 'boys' are still very much a double act for their other work (and long may it be so). And Von Doogan may be enough suggest that Lorenzo is the evil brother of the two, as the puzzles in Von Doogan made my brain turn to mush and ooze out of my nostrils in protest. Lorenzo never, ever resorts to the mundane or simple for his puzzles. Wordsearches? Pah! They are for wimps. No, we are presented with codes and word 'games' that would have had the Bletchley crowd scratching their heads in frustration. In fact, I would go as far as to suggest that Von Doogan and the Curse of the Golden Monkey should in future be used as part of the MI5 and MI6 selection process. Finish it in less than a day and you're in! Just look at this one for the first puzzle in the book:

And yet, despite its devilish difficulty this book is pretty damn fun as well. Each of the puzzles is given a difficulty rating (or 'impossibility level', depicted in skulls), and your heart does skip a beat when you turn a page to see five skulls glaring menacingly at you. Especially as you know that in order to be able to continue with the narrative part of the comic you MUST solve the problem on each page. But then there is that feeling of satisfaction when you do manage to finally complete a puzzle and move on to the next page, even if that status bar at the bottom of the page does seem to creep along slower than an M25 traffic jam on a hot and sunny Bank Holiday Monday.

And then there is Lorenzo Etherington's artwork. Every single puzzle is lavishly produced in Lorenzo's trademark detail and stunning vibrant colourwork, and it is this that really sets Von Doogan head and shoulders above any puzzle book I have come across for kids. Von Doogan and the Curse of the Golden Monkey is almost guaranteed to keep kids (and their parents) occupied for hours (as long they can resist the temptation to cheat by looking up the answers at the rear of the book, which I did not do even once. Honest! (Gulp!)

Von Doogan and the Curse of the Golden Monkey is yet another great publication from David Fickling Books as part of the ever-increasing The Phoenix Presents series and just like Long Gone Don, it deserves a place in every young comic lover's collection. My thanks go to the publisher for sending me a copy yo review (even if I have gained a few more grey hairs whilst working through it).

Review: Long Gone Don by The Etherington Brothers

Ten-year-old DON SKELTON never imagined a school day could get any worse than drowning face down in a bowl of oxtail soup. BUT HE WAS WRONG! Transported to the spooky underworld of BROILERDOOM, Don is soon forced to fight for his life-after-death against a host of villainous monstrosities. Prepare to enter the hilarious and dangerous world of LONG GONE DON, where one boy's END is just he BEGINNING of the adventure...

Like many others who have a passion for encouraging young people to read for enjoyment the news of the launch of The Phoenix comic back in 2012 filled me with excitement. Doubly so because I am also a huge lover of comics and graphic novels. Trebly so because among the artists and writers lined up for The Phoenix were the totally completely utterly brilliant Etherington Brothers. I love the work of these guys! Seriously, I would change my breakfast cereal if another came along with a serialised (cerealised... hahaha) Etherington Brothers comic inside it (and I am so set in my ways that I've not touched a cereal other than Frosties since I was in my teens). Are you listening Kellogg's? Forget asking your consumers to collect codes in order to get a personalised spoon - start giving away comics in your cereal boxes and do something for literacy whilst you are at it!

Since the launch of The Phoenix my love for the Etherington Brothers' Long Gone Don has come second only to the superb The Pirates of Pangaea (it takes a hell of a lot to beat a pirates and dinosaur mash-up), and now Don is here in his first collected volume. I have been a fan of the work of Robin (writer) and Lorenzo (artist) ever since I was sent a copy of Monkey Nuts back in 2010 (another must-buy for comic-loving kids), and I fell instantly in love with the addictive mix of Robin's off-the-wall-bonkers story-telling combined with Lorenzo's insanely detailed, vibrantly coloured artwork, and I am so happy to be able to add the first volume of Long Gone Don to my collection.

If you have not yet discovered Long Gone Don through The Phoenix then you are in for one hell of a treat. The eponymous 'hero' of the story, schoolboy Don Skelton, dies on the very first page of the book. A strangely dark start to a comic for kids, you may think, but his death is funny (very, very funny and a tad unfortunate) rather than gruesome, and it is the kick start for the craziness that follows. Having drowned in his bowl of Oxtail soup, Don 'awakes' to find himself in the after-life, but it is an after-life that could only be born from the unique imaginations of the brothers Etherington. And he also finds that his hair has gone white, and it's not entirely clear which bother him more - death or white hair.

This review is going to be severely lacking in details regarding Broilerdoom, the underworld type place that Don finds himself in post-drowning, as one of the real joys of reading this (and any other Etherington brothers) book is in the detail that Lorenzo puts into interpreting his brother's story. I can just picture the two 'boys', giggling with tears of mirth pouring from their eyes, as they come up with zany idea after zany idea - I would love to see a video of their collaborative process (brothers - if you're reading this and are interested in filming one for Middle Grade Strikes Back, please get in touch). Suffice to say, that Don makes enemies almost as quickly as he makes friends following his arrival in Broilerdoom, and he soon finds himself a wanted boy, with the rather horrible and totally despotic General Spode rather keen to inflict all kinds of nastiness on Don for a supposedly treasonous act.

Back in 2010, not long after I had read Monkey Nuts, I had the good fortune to meet Robin and Lorenzo after an event they did as part of the Crystal Palace Book Festival. We briefly chatted about our shared love for the Asterix books of Goscinny and Uderzo, and the brothers' passion for these books has never been more evident than in Long Gone Don, which visually is an obvious homage to the classic and world famous illustration work of Albert Uderzo. The (many) fight scenes in particular took me back to the incalculable number of hours I spent as a child (ok, yes, and as a teen, and yes, as an adult too) reading and re-reading the Asterix books, and the parallels do not end with the artwork - the humour in Long Gone Don is also at times just as tongue-in-cheek, with puns aplenty, although given the post-death subject matter there is also a subtle darkness to it in places.

Like their previous books Long Gone Don is the kind of comic that merits many reads - the first for the story, and the second, immediately after finishing it, to go back through and spot any missed details in the images. I've now read it four times, and even on that fourth visit I was still spotting things I had missed before. What's more, there is a big fat 'Book 1' printed on the front cover which hopefully means, sales figures permitting, that those wonderful people at David Fickling books will continue to publish these just-as-wonderful collected editions. 

Review: The Pirates of Pangaea by Daniel Hartwell and Neill Cameron

The year is 1717. The newly discovered island of Pangaea is the most dangerous place on Earth, where dinosaurs still walk the land - Sophie Delacourt has been sent to Pangaea to stay with her uncle. But little does she know its perils - for Pangaea is a lawless wilderness, teeming with cut-throat pirates! Kidnapped and imprisoned, Sophie must escape from the ruthless Captain Brookes and embark upon an epic journey, to find her way home.

It's nothing more than simple maths where this book is concerned:

Yes, Daniel Hartwell (no relation) and Neill Cameron's brilliant The Pirates of Pangaea, first seen in The Phoenix comic has finally been given its first collected edition, courtesy of those wonderful people at David Fickling books. Seriously, if you have kids who love comics (or kids who you would love it if they loved comics) then The Pirates of Pangaea is a must-buy book. I was a weekly purchaser of The Phoenix in its early days (and I still would be if I had kids), and although I adored the zany and madcap work of the Etherington Brothers, my favourite part of the comic by far was Hartwell and Cameron's dinosaurs and pirates mash-up.

The story follows the adventures of Sophie Delacourt, who, following the death of her parents, has been sent to live with her uncle, the governor of the remote tropical island continent of Pangaea. What Sophie doesn't realise until the voyage is almost at its end, is that Pangaea is not like the other islands she has heard of as it is still home to many species of dinosaur. 

The interior of Pangaea consists of vast areas of long grass that hide deadly predators, much the same as a quite and serene ocean may hide a school (or is it a shiver?) of vicious killer sharks. In order to travel throughout the interior, ships arriving at the port are craned onto the backs of huge sauropods, which then proceed to transport said vessels across the land. However, as this is set in the early 18th Century, there have to be pirates a plenty as well (of course), and they lie in wait for passing vessels, ready to attack with their own sauropod-mounted ships. Poor Sophie has barely made landfall when her own ship is attacked by a bloodthirsty band of cutthroats, and she is the only survivor.

Sophie is not your typical demure and retiring 18th Century young lady - she is quick to leap into the fray and the incredible creatures that inhabit Pangaea do not faze her at all. In fact, she quickly discovers that she might have a gift similar to that of a horse whisperer, something that will come in very handy as she attempts to escape captivity.

Daniel Hartwell's exciting, dinosaur-laden, swash-buckling adventure story is perfectly complemented by Neill Cameron's stunning graphic work. Neill was the talent behind the brilliant and visually stunning Mo-Bot High, but in Pirates of the Pangaea he has taken his artwork to a new level. Everything about his art in this comic is right: the sprawling Pangaea landscapes; the details of the dinosaurs and their ships; the depictions of the characters (especially the evil pirates); and the great colour palette used throughout (just feast your eyes on the image below, a promo poster that Neill Cameron produced for the launch of the comic). 

The Pirates of Pangaea is due to be published by David Fickling books on 5th February and it is well worth every penny of the £8.99 cover price. My thanks got to the wonderful people at David Fickling Books for sending me a copy to read and review.

(Pirates of Pangaea, all images and concepts ©2011 Daniel Hartwell & Neill Cameron)