“Yesterday’s” Comic> Sneakers & The U-Force #1

Your parents named you after footwear?

Sneakers And The U-Force #1

OmniLegend Tales (2010)

“Introduction”

ALL OF IT: Nana Kumi-Amankwah

Sneakers manages to chase off Von Seid, leader of the Legion Of Shadows, but hasn’t found a member of the U-Force, Bill E. Goat, who is connected to Unitopia’s water spirit. Von Seid wants to use him to raise his factory regardless of the environmental damage, and use his robots to create a weapon to destroy all animal kind, believing only humans should be the sentient lifeform on this world. Sneakers and his other teammates–the martial arts duck Stone, the girl with the obligatory crush on the title character Marie the mouse, and the lizard or something monk I think Kwame–head to the arctic but Seid manages to capture our heroes. Using a flute given to him by Bill, Sneakers summons the water spirit Waterra to destroy the factory and free the U-Force to send Seid packing.

What they got right: The coloring pencil art style works for a kids comic, and I’m a fan of coloring pencils. That’s pretty much it.

What they got wrong: Yep, this is an anti global warming comic, but it’s more heavy handed than Captain Planet & The Planeteers. The villain wants to commit mass murder of the sentient animals. He’s supposed to represent humans but he and his fellow Legion members are bluer than the Smurfs. There’s a lot of convenience involved. Sneakers blocks one of Seid’s magic attacks with a mirror he found in a lake, meaning trash just saved his life. That’s an odd choice for an environmental comic. Later, Sneakers just happens to have the flute nobody knew he had until that point. There are also a lot of panels with less attempt at getting a background than when I’m running against a deadline for Jake & Leon. It’s just white space. The scene debating using kids to fight the bad guys adds nothing to the story, though maybe that’s for one of the other issues.

What I think overall: I won’t know because I’m not bothering with the remaining issues. The villains make the case against “evil for evil’s sake” because they’re not very interesting. The theming is a sledge hammer, especially the final page where the narration goes on about how bad global warming is and to switch to solar, despite the issues with solar for a large community to get electricity, and it just isn’t a world I care to read more about.