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The Revenge of the Garton – Starting Them Young!

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• by Brian Cronin
• in General
• 11 Comments

I received a comic a little while ago from a young gentlemen named Tim from New Jersey. Tim is in the third grade, and he sent me his comic titled The Revenge of the Garton (or Gantor or Gartor or even maybe Ganton). It was an interesting first effort for Tim and I’m glad he sent it my way.

The cover of the book is designed well, with the imposing view of the castle intriguing us as to the nature of Tim’s tale.

The first page is a marvel of productivity, as Tim gets a good deal of plot done in one page that some other writers might take a couple of issues to do! See for yourself (the home-made binding made it a bit too difficult to scan the pages normally, so please forgive me for the missing parts of the page)…

As you can tell from the page, the protagonist of the book goes off to join the army and gets involved in a madcap dash for power, involving fencing and cannon battles. The end result, though, leaves our hero with the possession of the castle. The only problem is – ALIENS ARE INVADING!!

Here, I will have to admit, the plot escapes me a bit. The aliens attack and they are repulsed, but how exactly is not made particularly clear by Tim. Perhaps he intended to fix it in the trade paperback, I do not know.

The ending of the tale, though, is inspired, as “The End” reads across a mirror image of the castle at the front of the comic – with the defeat of the aliens, we as readers have come full circle. It’s a neat storytelling trick by Tim.

All in all, while the story certainly falls apart a bit when the aliens attack, there is some really good signs of storytelling structure on that first page (the comic is about six pages long), which is a very good sign for a third grader. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the comic, but I would certainly recommend the strong foundation Tim has laid out for himself as a comic book storyteller.

A job well done, Tim!