By Eric Daniel Shein & Theresa A. Gates, illustrated by Jay Fotos Studios (ArkWatch)
ISBN: 978-0-9963872-0-0
It’s tough being an outsider and doubly so if you’re a teenager with weird interests and strange parents.
Just think how much worse it can be if you’re notionally foreign, have no friends and your family has a long tradition of keeping secrets…
Introduced in prose Young Adult novels The Monsterjunkies: An American Family Odyssey and its sequel Sanctuary, impressionable Cromwell and his far more sociably adaptable older sister Indigo negotiated the tricky path through high school, slowly finding friends and companionship, gradually sharing their clandestine clan’s big secret with the ordinary folk of Foggy Point, Maine.
Now that first gently inclusive tale of integration and assimilation has been adapted into a beguiling graphic novel by original authors Eric Daniel Shein & Theresa A. Gates and opens at the daunting gates of 1313 Road to Nowhere. Within the vast wilderness compound lurk an assortment of oddities who have found safety, anonymity and peace of mind under the custodianship of glamorous cryptozoologist Dr. Talon Monsterjunkie and his eldritch, ethereal wife Pandora.
The dedicated preservationists of everything outré have turned their secluded estate into a haven for the world’s rarest and most endangered lifeforms, and although young Cromwell (he prefers “Crowâ€) may lack for strictly human companionship he is beloved by the creatures resident on the expansive Eden-like grounds.
Amongst his closet confidantes are Chico the chupacabra, poetry-writing sasquatch Beauregard, pituitary giants Frances and Betty, Periwinkle Pterodactyl, Fan – who runs the family mailbox – and sea serpent Sybil joyously sporting in the waters off scenic Bizarre Beach.
A loner at school, Crow’s life is made even worse by spoiled rich kid and practised bully Rutherford Grimes, but things start to radically change for the better after local lads Larry, Todd and Edgar sneak beyond the forbidding walls on a dare.
Shocked and awed by what they find, the kids are “rescued†by the aloof Goth kid from a succession of terrifying but ultimately friendly beasts and monsters and are soon the best of buddies. They even form a gang of their own to stand up to the predatory “popular kids†at school…
Soon the centuries-long family policy is being gradually tweaked and before long select individuals are being invited to share the hidden treasures of the estate. Ruth Grimes, however, isn’t happy at all and after Crow creates a unique way for school kids to stand up to him the closet psychopath subsequently tricks his boorish, millionaire dad into instigating a malicious whispering campaign to drive the weird foreigners out…
Then comes the worst news of all: daredevil dad Talon has been lost on an expedition to Bolivia…
Comparisons to the filmic Addams Family are unavoidable, but there is a superficial similarity at best. The dark humour of unsettling fear and voluntary isolation which underpins the movies has been replaced here with a cast of warm, accommodating outriders heroically performing great works, eagerly accepting newcomers into their circle and prepared to change and enter the wider world that encroaches upon them…
Wild, imaginative, compassionate and packing a potent and welcome moral message, this is a wonderful interface between modern supernatural thrillers for teens and grand old-fashioned family romps like Willard Price’s “Adventures†series.
And there are more to come…
© 2015 Arkwatch Holdings LLC. All Rights Reserved.
For more information check out http://www.themonsterjunkieuniverse.com/ and www.redanvilcomics.com