{"id":33000,"date":"2025-05-29T08:00:28","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T08:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=33000"},"modified":"2025-05-28T17:17:45","modified_gmt":"2025-05-28T17:17:45","slug":"pandora-in-puzzlevale-the-secret-town-volume-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2025\/05\/29\/pandora-in-puzzlevale-the-secret-town-volume-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Pandora in Puzzlevale: The Secret Town (volume 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nBy Paul Duffield<\/strong>, Poqu<\/strong>, Siobhan McKenna<\/strong> & various (Pheonix Comic Books\/David Fickling Books)
\nISBN: 978-1-78845-349-3 (TPB)<\/p>\n

These days, kids are more likely to find their formative strip narrative experiences online or in specially tailored graphic novels rather than the anthological, pick \u2018n\u2019 mix of pictorial periodicals that defined my long-dead youth. And yet, once upon a time, the comics industry was a commercial colossus that thrived by producing copious amounts of gaudy, flimsy pamphlets in a multitude of subjects and sub-genres, subdivided into a range of successful, self-propagating, seamlessly self-perpetuating age-specific publications.<\/p>\n

These eye-catching items generated innumerable tales and immeasurable delight, designed to entertain, inform and educate tightly-defined target demographics including Toddler\/Pre-school, Younger & Older Juvenile, Girls, Boys. General and even Young Teens, but today Britain can barely maintain a few paltry out-industry licensed tie-ins and spin-offs for a dwindling younger readership. Where once cheap and prolific, strip magazines in the 21st century are extremely cost-intensive and manufactured for a highly specific niche market, whilst all those beguiling and bombastic genres that originally fed and nurtured comics are more immediately disseminated via TV, movies and interactive media. There are a few venerable, long-lived holdouts like The Beano<\/strong> & 2000 AD<\/strong>, but overall the trend since the 1970s has been downwards and declining.<\/p>\n

That seeming inevitability was happily turned on its head in January 2012 when Oxford-based family publisher David Fickling Books launched The Phoenix<\/strong>: a traditional (seeming) anthology comic weekly aimed at girls and boys between 7 and 14, revelling in those good old days of picture-story entertainment Intent whilst embracing the full force of modernity in style and Content. It has been generating fun, fantasy, educational episodes and wild adventure for kids ever since, scoring many impressive results whilst lifting the standards of comics literature and quality of graphic novels. Each weekly issue still offers humour, adventure, quizzes, puzzles and educational material in a joyous parade of cartoon fun and fantasy and, in the years since its premiere, the comic has gone from strength to strength. It is, most importantly, big and bold, totally tuned in to its contemporary readership and tremendous fun.<\/p>\n

The powers that be at the company also understand the sheer wonder of the creative urge and spend a vast amount of time and energy getting readers to have a go themselves: honing their own comics storytelling skills and making their own characters and stories via various outlets cumulatively designated The Phoenix Comics Club<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

You can run that by your preferred search engine or just buy this book and access their portal via the enclosed QR code…<\/p>\n

Moreover, as established comics companies seem to give up the ghost (in this country at least), old-school prose publishers embraced the graphic novels that evolved to fill their vacated niche. With a less volatile and tenuous business model and far more sustainable long-term goals, book sellers have prospered from magazine makers\u2019 surrender, and there have never been so many and varied cartoon and comics chronicles, compilations and tomes for readers to enjoy. Happily, many of The Phoenix<\/strong>\u2019s superb serials and series have joined that market, having been superbly repackaged as all-ages graphic albums. There are comedy adventures Bunny Vs Monkey<\/strong>, Mega Robo Bros<\/strong>, Toby and the Pixies<\/strong>, Evil Emperor Penguin<\/strong>, Donut Squad<\/strong>, Looshkin<\/strong>, Star Cat<\/strong>, Long Gone Don<\/strong>, Corpse Talk<\/strong> and fantasy dramas like No Country<\/strong>, Tosh\u2019s Island<\/strong>, Tamsin<\/strong>, Pirates of Pangaea<\/strong>, Lost Tales<\/strong>, Troy Trailblazer<\/strong>, Tales of Fayt<\/strong> and The Adventures of John Blake<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The comic has inspired factual series like the award-winning Martin Brown\u2019s Lesser Spotted Animals <\/strong>sequence and an entrancing and absorbing range of puzzle\/activity books including Von Doogan and the Curse of the Golden Monkey<\/strong>\/The Great Air Race<\/strong>, Bunny vs Monkey: The Whopping World of Puzzles! <\/strong>or How to Make Awesome Comics (With Professor Panels & Art Monkey!)<\/strong>, and more…
\n\"\"
\nThe one we\u2019re looking at today is Pandora in Puzzlevale: The Secret Town<\/strong>, the first of a serial offering a dazzling display of cartoon virtuosity and brain-busting challenges co-composed by writer\/art director Paul Duffield, graphic staging scenarist Poqu and illustrator Siobhan McKenna. A comic strip mystery that operates and progresses by solving assorted tests and conundrums, it all begins in \u2018Welcome to Puzzlevale\u2019<\/em> as aspiring crimebuster and Detective Crow<\/strong> devotee Pandora <\/em>is dragged from her comic long enough to realise that the tedious drive to their holiday home has been paused. Although the route to the much-anticipated \u201csecrets-themed\u201d village seemed straightforward, the road is long, winding and confusing. Now, heavy mists are falling and the satnav doesn\u2019t seem to work right anymore…<\/p>\n

When Mum and Dad pull up at a petrol station to ask directions, Pandora is fully engrossed in her comic, but eventually she looks up and realises she\u2019s all alone. Her parents are gone…<\/p>\n

Thus opens the catalogue of confusion and a casebook of ratiocination and logical deduction as the young girl is drawn deeper and deeper into a program apparently designed to test her physical and mental abilities.<\/p>\n

For readers the principle is simple: by accessing the book and selecting a choice of action at a critical moment in each episode, you\/Pandora are directed to another page to experience the ramifications of that decision. The final objective is to find her folks and learn the nested secrets of Puzzlevale but it\u2019s you who will be doing much of the work…<\/p>\n

In-world, there are people in the mist-shrouded hamlet such as fortune tellers, tea shop staff, rambling bystanders and potential witnesses like gossip Granny Garnett<\/em> and enigmatic rhymer Rita<\/em> Idyll<\/em> – but everyone\u2019s motives and accounts are unverifiable and not to be trusted so Pandora is ultimately left to fend for herself. At least in this very strange and mutable place, she occasionally has Detective Crow by her side and leading her on…
\n\"\"
\nHer methodology includes clue finding, location identification, map-making, maze-defeating, symbol deciphering, wordsearch weaving, witness-statement verifying, code-breaking, rune reading, message translating, riddle-solving, character assessing, crossword completing, key & lock retrieving, object unearthing, back-story compiling and comparison testing as well as frequent odd behaviour explanation, with all facts slowly forming a working hypothesis and eventual plan of action in her trusty ever-present notebook…<\/p>\n

But there are so many questions, such as why do the buildings seem to shift, and why do so many villagers wear masks and all-concealing costumes?<\/p>\n

Pandora\u2019s quest is divided into 26 sequential \u2018Mysteries\u2019<\/em> undertaken across five chapters – \u2018Welcome to Puzzlevale\u2019<\/em>, \u2018The Curious Crow\u2019<\/em>, \u2018The Mysterious Mask\u2019<\/em>, \u2018The Great Escape\u2019<\/em>, and \u2018The Mists of Change\u2019<\/em> – each with its own set of tests and challenges contributing to a Big Picture solution, but even after Pandora completes them all, she\u2019s left with much more to solve and a divergent path to follow…
\n\"\"
\nTo Be Continued…<\/p>\n

Story! Games! Action! Beguiling mystery unravelled in the manner of multiple-choice decisions and all there in the irresistible shape of entertaining pictures. How much cooler can a book get?<\/p>\n

Well, quite a lot actually since this premier tome devotes a bunch of pages to related activities in a swathe of features offered under the aegis of the aforementioned Phoenix Comics Club<\/strong>: tips and snippets by Duffield & McKenna on \u2018Drawing Pandora\u2019<\/em>, and how Poqu crafts the buildings, backgrounds and locations of Puzzlevale, as well as how to construct puzzles, draft alphabets and design symbols, before we conclude for now with a full list of mystery solving clues and hints detailing how it all came about in a closing glimpse at \u2018Pandora\u2019s Notes\u2019<\/em>…<\/p>\n

Bring paper, pencils and your intellectual A-game, and have the time of your life…
\nText and illustrations \u00a9 The Phoenix Comic, 2025. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n

Pandora in Puzzlevale: The Secret Town<\/strong> will be published on June 5th<\/sup> 2025 and is available for pre-order now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Paul Duffield, Poqu, Siobhan McKenna & various (Pheonix Comic Books\/David Fickling Books) ISBN: 978-1-78845-349-3 (TPB) These days, kids are more likely to find their formative strip narrative experiences online or in specially tailored graphic novels rather than the anthological, pick \u2018n\u2019 mix of pictorial periodicals that defined my long-dead youth. And yet, once upon … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Pandora in Puzzlevale: The Secret Town (volume 1)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[109,291,191,42,97,225],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to-books","category-activity-book","category-adventure","category-best-of-british","category-kids-all-ages","category-mystery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-8Ag","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33000"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33005,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33000\/revisions\/33005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}