Parenting With The Soylent Greens: A Nerds Guide...

Parenting With The Soylent Greens: A Nerds Guide

This installment is a bit late and I do apologise for that but the book being reviewed was longer than the last one. This time we'll be reviewing “Adventure Time Mathematical Edition: Vol 1”. This weeks book is a HC trade which collects The FCBD issue and 1-4 of adventure time as well as some other extras like covers.

Mat- For me this book was almost perfect. It had a strong story which I really didn't expect from a comic book aimed at younger readers and has all of the humour from the adventure time TV show, The only thing missing is John DiMaggio's voice. If you only considered the amount of story content in the book this isn't incredible value (especially since 1 issue was free in the first place) but the sheer amount of effort that has gone into the book makes it worth the extra. The book is a pleasure to hold (it just feels nice in your hands) with the embossed cover designed by Stephanie Gonzaga... then you open the cover and meet the first piece of artwork which is just beautiful and has so many little nods to the series including the Magic Man, Lemongrab, Tree Trunks and Ricardio. The story is pretty solid, following on from the episode “Mortal Recoil” it follows the idea that the Lich was able to survive the episode by hiding the bag of holding and decides that he can use the bag to destroy all life and mostly Finn and Jake. For me I found that the story flowed well and didn't seem forced near the end. It ran its course and felt like it should end where it did.

My only complaint with this book was the additional content in the back. Every cover for the first 4 issues were included in the back and there were a few “behind the scenes” pages including a short story but I was left wanting more concept art however that's just left me wanting volume 2 to see more.

 Megan- “This is a long book but its funny. I didn't know what it was about until I watched adventure time again and then I remembered who the Lich was. The story took a long time to read but I didn't want to read the last pages because there was just pictures to look at and daddy already has them in his box to look at. I liked the book and want to read the Marceline comic now.”

 Value for money- 7/10. With 20% of the story effectively free and the additional content being “boring” to children, this book caters more to adults than anybody else, however the book only costs £2 more than the TPB and the quality of the HC it is vastly superior. Story and Art- 10/10. This is exactly what it promised it would be when I opened it.

Overall- 8/10. This book does need a small amount of adventure time knowledge but its pretty easy to pick up. It has a strong story and in my opinion you would be justified to buy the HC over the TPB just for the quality of the book. The book is also strong enough to share with the family without being boring to parents or inappropriate for children.

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Parenting with the Soylent Greens: A Nerds Guide

Firstly I have to apologize for the format. I am working towards a video format that will include the kids giving their reviews but editing is confusing to me at the moment. I will eventually get there though.

What is parenting with the soylent greens? As a parent I spend a lot o my time sharing my interests with my family and friends but as I have 2 small girls I cant always show the full extent of nerd culture for reasons ranging from explicit images to the use of bad language. I also find that as I've grown up so has a lot of the material making it quite inaccessible for younger viewers. Parenting with the Soylent Greens aims to level the playing field for us adults a bit by finding the best FAMILY FRIENDLY material. This means material that you as parents can enjoy WITH your family.

For this first feature we took the time to read Itty Bity Hellboy (Artist: Art Baltazar Story: Art Baltazar, Franco). This was a great find for me as a huge Hellboy fan and so it gave me a chance to introduce the character to my kids without any of the darker elements or quite frankly older themes of the original comic books.

Mat: I'm a huge Hellboy fan especially when Mignola himself is on art so this book was really exciting to me. The first thing that took me was the cover art showing some of Hellboys more exciting friends including Lobster Johnson and Abe Sapien. The interior artwork is bright and colourful and hits you right in the eye, nothing like the original source material but not in a bad way. The child like element of the art adds to the flavour of the book but I did really miss hellboy's classic brooding look, there's just something missing without the heavy shading. The story is broken up into a couple of shorter stories that could act as a comic strip in its own right but then adds up to a bigger overall story. This wasn't a bad thing because i noticed that Megan couldn't possibly read the whole thing in one go. This style let her read what she could manage to concentrate, without needing to sacrifice the story.

Megan: I like this comic because it was easy to read and I liked the story and colours. I like it because daddy likes Hellboy and its like the film but without the monsters and its funny.

Overall the comic has earned a very respectable 7/10 as an average score from the Soylent Greens. Whilst it appealed to the Megan, it did suffer from missing the quirks that make Hellboy who he is and I found that the characters came across as bratty. I will be buying the rest of the mini series however because it is accessible to younger readers and you just cant say no to the artwork.