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CBG SATELLITES
The ADD Blog by Alan David Doane
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Bumperboy Loses His Marbles!!
I would say: yes. Mainly because, and this is a nice surprise,
Bumperboy is not Huey’s only cool looking creation. Bumperboy’s search
for his marbles for the big upcoming tournament brings him across many
cute and cool critters. It’s during the tournament that we get a
glimpse at a lot of the people populating the Land of Buptopia. There
are menacing parrots in propeller powered chairs, a dog with socks on
and a marble wielding star that looks a bit like the incivility stars
from Super Mario Bros..
The last one’s very interesting to me. As I read this book I felt some
of the “Nintendo realism” (that would be a term coined by Pete at GraphiContent)
creeping in. I enjoyed the video game fueled anarchy of
Sharknife but if that comic was mecha-Street Fighter
Bumperboy Loses His Marbles is Mega Man for a younger
crowd. Some of the best parts of the book come from seeing how Huey
depicts the “Borping” Bumperboy and his faithful Bumperpup (inspired
by Mega Man’s pet Rush?) do through these tunnels connected all the
different worlds they travel to. It’s pure video game fun but there’s
a certain way Huey does it that makes me like this book.
When kids play a ton of video games (and I know what it’s like to be a
kid who played tons of video games) they will soon enough come up with
their own ideas for video games. This is what Bumperboy feels
like. It’s got that simple story combined with a fevered imagination
that comes from a child’s creativity. I didn’t feel like I was reading
a book an adult drew for kids, I felt like I was reading a very
imaginative kid writing for him/herself. I can’t think of many books
that do that and it surely can’t be an energy that’s easy to capture.
Huey does it and it makes this book a lot of fun to read.
-- Ian Brill
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Here’s something I’ve been trying to get my hands on for a while. See,
I’m a sucker for good character design. Most of the time that means
simple and direct character designs. When I started to see the hype
for Huey’s creation after she won a Xeric Grant, I thought ol’
Bumperboy had a pretty good look to him. He’s got one of those white
cartoonish bodies, not unlike Jeff Smith’s Bone characters or
the Smurfs with only one color. That head sort of looked like an egg
with its oval and white outside to go along with the yellow, yolk-ish
looking face. He was a pretty cool looking cartoon character, but
could the comics he’s featured in hold up?