Shark and Lobster's Amazing Undersea Adventure
by Viviane Schwarz; colored by Joel Stewart
You'd think with all those teeth and claws between them, Shark and Lobster wouldn't be easily intimidated. Except by tigers.
Tigers?
Apparently, these guys never heard of Snopes and fall prey to a toothy aquan legend. In graphic-novel panels laid out vertically, they enlist the aid of a cuttlefish and a score of other crabby critters to build a mighty fortress to ward off the threat of big cats with fins.
Then they hit on the notion of dragging the ugliest, scariest sea monster up from the depths: "Its mouth was wide enough to eat a whale sideways."
That doesn't prove to be the brightest idea, of course.
The vertical panels makes the briny sea bottom seem endlessly deep, but smacks of gimmickry and can be hard for wee hands to handle. Fortunately, Schwarz' cartoonish work provides many surprises and don't-miss-'em details, and her sea critters are loony instead of scary. Stewart's computer-generated coloring is awash in happy sea greens and washed-out blues, as if viewed without a scuba mask.
Schwarz' writing keeps this "undersea adventure" cheerfully afloat. Shark and Lobster and their friends get the tiger rumor revving until it builds its own momentum, and they sound exactly like kids in a playground: "Tigers are invisible -- until they EAT you up!"
Narrative is minimal and presented as typed lines pasted in, as if we're just dropping in on another crazy day under the sea.
Rating: *\*\*\
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