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 - Monkey Nuts: The Diamond Egg of Wonders by The Etherington Brothers

Welcome to the Isla de Monstera, home of the world's only tap-dancing, banana-loving, rust-fighting, coconut-talking, crime-busting organisation... MONKEY NUTS! In their very first adventure, Sid, Rivet and Chief Tuft are forced to do battle against a horde of random oddballs and weirdos. When a mysterious signal begins to drive the local loonies into a crazy rage, the Monkey Nuts team have no choice but to grab their masks and get heroic!

A few days ago I reviewed the quirky and totally fab Verne and Lettuce by Sarah McIntyre, and in that review I promised that I would soon be posting about another recent release from The DFC Library, Monkey Nuts by the Etherington Brothers. They say that variety is the spice of life and the people at The DFC sure know how to keep their fans' lives spiced to the limit. So far their releases have included the beautiful and atmospheric Mezolith, a stunning book that was very different to the funny noir-inspired Good Dog, Bad Dog, itself different from Sarah McIntyre's pastel-coloured, chilled (though equally funny) creation. And now in Monkey Nuts we have even more variety to add to the mix - a book that is totally crazy, fun, frantic and exciting - sort of like the 'Dick and Dom' of the comic book world.

The first thing that you notice about Monkey Nuts are the colours - you have no option but to notice them as they are so gloriously vibrant. Look closer though (once your eyes have got used to the rich kaleidoscope of colour) and you will then notice the exquisite detail that Lorenzo Etherington puts into his illustrations; detail that is always very clear despite the vibrancy of the colours and the business of his panels. For busy they are although on first reading the temptation to just bathe in the colours was so overwhelming that I missed a lot of the many less obvious elements in some of the panels, and especially on the occasional splash pages. This book is made to be read again and again: I have now been through it three times and I was still spotting new things.

The appeal of this book is far more than just aesthetic though: Robin Etherington is a skilled writer and his text is the perfect accompaniment to his brother's artwork. The story revolves around the mad-cap antics of Sid the monkey and his new crime-fighting partner Rivet (a robot). 'Thrown' together at the beginning of the story they soon find themselves up against monster after monster, aided by boss of the Serious Crime Squad, Chief Tuft (who just happens to be a coconut...... see, told you it was pretty crazy). The monsters have been drawn to the duo's island paradise home of Isla De Monstera by a Monster Magnet, which has been activated by the dastardly Lord Terra (somewhat un-villainously aka Eric). Lord Terra is after the Diamond Egg of Wonders, a valuable and mystical artefact, yet during a food-poisoning induced Vision he sees the two 'warriors of good' who could foil his plan, warriors who just happen to look like Sid and Rivet. His only hope is that the legion of monsters that feel drawn to the island will destroy the duo and leave the way open for him to get his hands on the Egg.

Young readers will love Monkey Nuts as it has everything they could ask for in a comic book. It is action packed, with great characters, and amazing illustrations. It is also very, very funny: how's this for an opening 'speech bubble': "Deep underground, directly below the strange area of Earth known as The Bermuda Triangle, stands a fortress so evil-looking that it sometimes scares itself! This monstrosity is called Tabitha, and within her stone nostril lives a being even more evil than she!". Brilliant!

Monkey Nuts - The Diamond Egg of Wonders was published at the beginning of September as part of The DFC Library. My thanks go to the generous people at David Fickling Books for sending me a copy to review.