DC’s young adult line is creating great reading, and that includes My Video Game Ate My Homework, even though it doesn’t include ANY characters I’ve ever seen in a DC comic!

MY VIDEO GAME ATE MY HOMEWORK OGN

Author: Dustin Hansen
Illustrator: Dustin Hansen
Colorist: Dustin Hansen
Letterer: Corey Breen
Editor: Jim Chadwick
Publisher: DC Comics
Cover Price: $9.99
Release Date: May 27, 2020

SOLICITATION: Meet Dewey Jenkins, a 13-year old schoolkid who’s about to fail science class. Follow him on an amazing adventure that leads Dewey and his friends to a virtual world where they will have to overcome all sorts of digital creatures and solve a number of puzzles in order to get home.

My Video Game Ate My Homework is a funny, fast-paced adventure that shows the importance of cooperation and teamwork, as well as the importance of using your own unique abilities to solve problems. It’s illustrated in Dustin Hansen’s colorful, cartoony style, and filled with lots of sight gags and nods to video-gaming tropes.

Dustin Hansen spent years directing and creating video games before becoming a writer and illustrator, and makes his DC debut with My Video Game Ate My Homework!

TEENS AND VIDEO GAMES

One of the things I’m always interested in is the connection between teens and video games. Let’s face it—gaming is real competition for comics, even today! So, an original graphic novel on this subject is low-hanging fruit I’m glad DC took advantage of! Especially with a game creator!

The story focuses around four teens-Dewey Jenkins and his sister Beatrice, who are 13, and Ronald Ferguson and Katherine Ortiz, who are 12. Their school year is coming to an end, and the science contest is kind of the exclamation point to it. Dewey is desperate to do well because he wants to avoid what many kids his age fear—summer school! He’s building a volcano, not a very original science project. He hopes it will put him over the top when it comes to his grades!

Their friend Ronald, who goes by his last name “Ferg,” is the son of the principal. The trophy for the science contest was in his dad’s office, and Ferg accidentally breaks it! In the process of repairing it, Dewey creates a portal into a video game! (Don’t you just hate it when that happens?) When Dewey’s volcano gets sucked in, they must go in after it, and thus get new personas there. They explore that world in an attempt to learn how to fix their several problems.

The various levels and areas they encounter are very true to the video game encounters I’ve had, and it’s quite a fun adventure. Of course, the teens each learn something and grow through their various experiences. Like all good YA novels, the story takes place during a very specific time frame, so things do resolve themselves by the end of the story. That’s a welcome change compared to how many comics go these days! And the characters have a very “real” feel to them.

The dialogue is fun, and the pacing is quick. Of course, when they go through their several changes, we learn about them as they learn about themselves and each other. Nicely done!

CARTOONY ART THAT FITS THE STORY

As I always like to say, I evaluate a comic’s art on two levels—facial expressions and action sequences. While the faces of the various teens and the people around them are somewhat simple in portrayal, we do understand what they are thinking and feeling very well. That’s important, especially in a book that’s primarily targeted at teens, who do appreciate reading something that holds on to their attention!

The action sequences are very true to video games, I felt. Things take place as quickly as the pacing is, so it’s important that we understand just what’s going on. This volume does that strongly, so even someone who has read comics for years like I have can enjoy the art as much as someone who plays a lot of video games!

BOTTOM LINE: A New DC Universe

Of course, there are several nods to DC’s regular books along the way, like one kid who is wearing a t-shirt with Batman’s logo on it. I’m sure that, if we got the chance, we’d see tales like this more often if they sell well, so I’m hoping this will be the first in a series of books featuring these teens and families. They were fun to read about!

It’s a funny thing to note, but several years back, a friend of mine wrote a fan story where the members of our local Star Trek club got sucked into that universe when lightning struck a VCR we were watching. Thus, I can kind of relate to this story, even though it still sounds silly today when I say that! This book has a much better story, though!

Maybe DC could get Mr. Hansen to develop new stories and books with the theme, “My Video Game Ate… .” It would be like “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” was for Disney for a while. Don’t laugh! It could work!

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