SIDEKICKS
Written by Dan Danko and Tom Mason
Published by Little, Brown and Company

As a reviewer in any field, a creator has the ability to “buy” or “earn” credit from you. By that I mean that if someone produces a superior or affecting work, you, as a reviewer, are going to be more inclined to be interested in seeing what they do next even if it’s radically different than that last project. In film, it has always been the Coen Brothers for me. Even if THE HUDSUCKER PROXY sucked, they had enough credit with me that I was in line on the first day for THE BIG LEBOWSKI. In comics, there are a few people who have that credit with me, though some I haven’t heard anything from in a while. So it was much to my great surprise and happiness to receive an email missive from Tom Mason asking if I’d take a look at and review the first two (of eventually six) young adult novels he’d co-written with writing partner Dan Danko.

How could I say “no”?

Tom Mason, no relation, was the insane genius behind one of my all-time favorite comic books, DINOSAURS FOR HIRE. Published by Malibu/Eternity back in the late 80s and early 90s, DFH was a rip-snortingly funny, wildly subversive tale about walking, talking dinos who were obsessed with Elvis, shooting people, and destroying property. It was guns, sex, and loopiness all the way, and I still look back on the title with great fondness. Mason even signed my copy of issue two at the first San Diego Comic-Con I ever went to. He saw my nametag, looked amusingly horrified, and assured me that, if I was a relative, he had no money to loan me. Good times. His autograph even reads “Marc- I have no money. – Tom Mason.” So yeah, Tom has some credit built up with me. Full disclosure and such.

SIDEKICKS, and its first sequel SIDEKICKS: OPERATION SQUISH is the tale of Guy Martin. Guy, a/k/a Speedy is your normal teen boy, struggling with school, and too terrified to ask out Prudence Cane, the most beautiful girl in the school. He’s also the fastest runner in the world, able to make it up to 92.7 miles per hour (he improves to 102 in OPERATION SQUISH), and training to be a superhero by being a sidekick to Pumpkin Pete, who has all the powers of a pumpkin… whatever that means. He spends most of his time hanging out with his fellow sidekicks in the Super Sidekick Clubhouse where they all await the call for extra help from the League Of Big Justice. And what mighty sidekicks they are: Spelling Beatrice. Exact Change Kid. Earlobe Lad. Boom Boy. Boy In The Plastic Bubble Boy. Charisma Kid. Spice Girl. If you’re catching more than a faint whiff of tongue firmly implanted in cheek from that list, then you’re pretty much grasping exactly what Danko and Mason are putting forth in these books.

As Danko also did comic work, the writing duo has decidedly taken a look at the superhero genre and they work they did in it, taken the piss out of it (if you will) and found a marvelously subversive way to get it across to the 8-13 age group who would never pick up a comic book. Fortunately, they were also smart enough to make it amusing enough for adults to enjoy as well, and the books are filled with one sparkling moment after another. To wit:

There’s a moment in SQUISH wherein Guy is describing his relationship with the lazy and cowardly Pumpkin Pete (who naturally takes all the credit for Guy’s work and bravery):

”…Pete likes to call me his ‘human bulletproof vest’. ‘But I don’t have the power to stop bullets,’ I told him the first time he called me that. ‘You will if you’re standing in from of me,’ he replied.

Delicious.

The SIDEKICKS books work, I think, because even through the subversive attitude they take towards the superhero genre, Guy is a sweet, decent kid who really does have the desire to do good things for the world. He somehow manages to stand above the silliness that swirls around him (Spelling Beatrice’s power is just that: she can make eight letter words in Scrabble with just seven letters in her hand, for instance) and be heroic and normal at the same time. The rest (battling an evil puppet called Peenoh Keeoh- think about it; trying to rig a “win a date with a sidekick” contest so that Prudence will go out with him) is all gravy, really, stuff that allows Danko and Mason to get their clever on.

The books are each about 100 pages long (and come with trading cards of the characters), making them a pretty quick read, especially compared to Harry Potter, and they’re going to be entertaining from ages six on up. Danko and Mason have written for both RUGRATS and MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE, so that gives you an idea of their ability to create entertainment that crosses multiple age groups. They also take a moment in SQUISH to set up a meta-plot that will apparently be picked up on in the later four books of the series, so there is an effort to bring the read back for the future installments as well.

Of course, no one would be happier than me if Guy were to progress through the series and wind up as a full-fledged superhero at the end… as long as there was a strange and bewildering meeting with some very violent dinosaurs somewhere along the way. Keep hope alive, I always say! But the only way to find out is for me to keep reading, and so I shall. Tom’s credit is still good with me. Grade: A-

Marc@MarcMason.com