Somebody’s First Comic Book: Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? #2

Wondering what Somebody’s First Comic Book is all about? The explanation is on this page!

TITLE: The No-Class Classroom (or) Carmen’s Big Brain Drain

CREDITS:
Writer: Barry Liebmann
Art: S.M. Taggart
Letterer: Tim Harkins
Colorist: Rick Taylor
Editor: Laura Hitchcock
Publisher: DC Comics

PRIOR KNOWLEDGE: Carmen Sandiego! I played this game when I was a kid. Watched the game show, too. She steals stuff and hides all over the world. Awesome.

IMPRESSIONS: It seems that Carmen isn’t exactly the main character of this book. The story begins with her complaining about the sub-par performance of a bunch of other villains who have failed to steal important geographical artifacts. Then we see “Acme’s Finest Detective,” Evan Sawyer, preparing to track down an enormous Menorah that was stolen from in front of the parliament building in Israel. Evan sets off to track her down.

This is a weird comic book. Both the writing and the art style are really off-the-wall. Body shapes are wild, sight gags are crazy, and the puns… oh, the puns just don’t stop. The writer also really packs it in on these pages. Eight or nine panels to a page sometimes, and virtually every panel is crammed with word balloons. Granted, this is the first comic I’ve ever read (cough cough), but it seems like an awful lot of text. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing – Barry Liebmann does manage to work in at least a little educational content here – but most of the comic is played for laughs. And not great laughs, either.

There’s really not enough content in here, considering how many words we get per page. Both the video games and the TV show were pretty educational, but this comic only brushes up against  the learning content. Plus, for a book with her name in the title, there’s precious little Carmen Sandiego to be had in this comic. She shows up at the beginning, then we follow the rather bland Evan Sawyer and his gang as they try to crack the case.

The comic is easy enough to get into – you know everything you need to know to read the book – but that doesn’t necessarily make it a good comic. The grade is based mostly on how easy it is to read cold, but it’s definitely not going to make me want to track down any other comics with Carmen Sandiego.

GRADE: B