An absolutely delightful and splendid DC kids' comic.
I've read three 2020 mini graphic novels from DC "for kids" this week: 'Anti/Hero', 'Diana: Princess of the Amazons', and 'Primer'. I enjoyed them all - hooray for diversity and young superheroines kicking arse! - but 'Anti/Hero' might be my favourite. It's got such fantastic characters, character development, a practically perfect pace, brilliant and creative action, and the artwork serves to make it all remind me of a fresh-faced Saturday morning cartoon.
Set in the DC universe, it's time for a new generation of girl heroes to fight crime in Gotham!
Piper Pajaro is an Hispanic middle school wannabe superhero - the Cheesy Chips-eating, happy-go-lucky Hummingbird - with super strength and amazing bouncing energy. She's more brawn and impulse than brains, thus her tendency to cause more property damage than the criminals she tries to catch. She lives with her grandmother and cop uncle, and her absent parents are away in Antarctica doing groundbreaking scientific projects, and she desperately wishes to see them. A school competition to go to Antarctica for an adventurous summer program is just what she is looking for (what a coinckidink!).
Sloane MacBrute, a child prodigy in the same classes as Piper, is a supervillain. Only not really, as she's just committing crimes as jobs for her grandfather, a Scottish crime boss in Gotham known as the Bear, to support her sick mother. Sloane is a tech genius with a wrist watch which has an AI inside it, named Minnie, and she has little bug drones to help her out on her breaking-in-and-stealing errands.
An accident involving a theft of a device causes the hero and the archnemesis of this story to switch bodies. See how they live out each other's polar opposite lives with their polar opposite personalities, while they plan out how they can fix the device, among their other mistakes, and switch back.
Both girls are adorable, sweet, complex and precious in their own way, but I have to say that Sloane is my favourite. I love her design - I guess I have a soft spot for pale, white haired girls who wear black and are morally gray antiheroines - and she has such an assortment of facial expressions that I did not expect - both when she's herself and when Piper is in her body. She isn't really grumpy or moody at all, and she's a special highlight for three-dimensional smart girls in the media. Her relationship with her struggling, jobless and then hospitalised mum is also super lovely.
'Anti/Hero' is fun and colourful - there isn't a dull panel nor a moment without especial care given to it - but I have to admit that it isn't perfect. Sloane's crime boss grandfather, the Bear, and his goons are very much stereotypically Scottish: kilts, red hair, beards, saying lingo like "ye" and "did nae" and "wee lass", and the Bear actually has a pet bear. There's a bagpipe hanging on his office wall as well; of course they couldn't resist adding in that little detail. It's like Pixar's 'Brave' snuck into a James Bond plot (hey, a positive and complicated Scottish mother-and-daughter relationship is in here, too!). But at least the pet bear does play a major key role in the comic's climactic fight.
Additionally, that summer program to Antarctica that both Piper and Sloane are competing for - doubling their motivation for getting back into their own bodies - did that get forgotten about in the last sixteen pages?
But what a great team they make! They are so cute. Even Batman praises them in his two-page cameo at the end! In daylight! I realise I don't see the Dark Knight in broad daylight often, in any media.
I strongly recommend 'Anti/Hero'. It's all fun, funny, sweet, clever, intriguing, touching, heartfelt, and action-packed girl power (oh and there's a third wheel to the girls' team, Ben the junior journalist; he's barely worth mentioning, except that he's a POC, too).
Some of these new and original DC books for middle schoolers are sure showing promise! What super great and progressive stuff they are starting to put out for a new generation!
Final Score: 4.5/5
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