Kaboom! Boom! Studios 2017
Written by Box Brown
Illustrated by Lisa DuBois
Coloured by Eleonora Bruni
Lettered by Jim Campbell
Hang on to your diapies, babies! We’re teaming up with Nickelodeon for all-new Rugrats adventures featuring the most intrepid toddlers to ever bust out of a playpen! Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, and Lil have noticed something—they are being watched. Somehow their parents can see every little thing they can do. They’re going to have to find a way to have fun while avoiding the electronic eyes of the babycam!
I might have been a little too old when Nickelodeon ran this series but that didn’t stop me from becoming a die hard fan. Heck I even say The Rugrats movies in the theatre. So for me one of the most honest, innovative and fun cartoons to ever been seen is back in this new series from the Kaboom! Line over at Boom! Studios. If you’ve never seen the Rugrats then you are in for a real treat here and if you were a fan let this take you back to those days when watching them was a thing of joy and laughter.
Box really does a magnificent job bringing the characters personalities to life here. He has captured the essence of each character here in ways I wasn’t expecting to see and delights me. He had to watch the cartoon since it seems he understands their personalities and character traits which he expertly uses in these pages. Box also manages to capture the awe and wonder of their imaginations and how they see things unfold as they play.
Just like the show the kids play and then their parents come around and then the real story starts. Tommy is in his crib and doing his thing when his dad comes in and puts an end to what he’s doing. But how did dad know what he was up to? Tommy being the smart baby that he is figures out what’s different in his room and goes about trying to figure a way around it. I love Tommy, aside from his imagination and his leadership skills with the others he’s the baby with the plan. If anyone has a question or needs guidance it’s him they turn to and it’s so stinkin cute to see how that works here in a comic book as it worked on the small screen.
Lisa does a nice job on the interiors here. The only small critique I have is that Tommy doesn’t quite look right to me. Like the shape of his head is giving her trouble mimicking. Everyone else is spot on and I love that. Yeah with all the imagination and creativity on display makes me so very happy. Her utilisation of page layout through angles and perspective demonstrate a solid eye for storytelling. I would like to see more use of backgrounds because this really calls for them since it’s their imagination that we’re seeing or the real world by comparison. They do play an important role in telling the story so I’d see less solid colour background panels.
I do really rather like the way that this book is structured. The flow of the story is wonderfully done as we get the whole mystery, adventure and story/character development all alongside one another. More impressive is the fact that Box and Lisa make you feel like your back to a time and a place where things were more innocent, fun and full of hope for what was ahead. Let also say that the fact that this story takes place before Dill and Kimi joined the cast is really what captures my attention. Why simply because I feel like their future is now wide open again.
Regardless of age or gender this has exactly what it needs to appeal to literally everyone and for kids learning to read this is exceptional.