3 out of 5

Hm.  There are a couple of things disrupting my appreciation of Nnewts:

1. This is the most youthy book TenNapel has written thus far.  On the one hand, it does feature his usual face-front treatment of violence and life and death, but the general tone and moralizing is set so low (as in very basic) that it doesn’t really sit well with those more mature elements.  And to be clear, I’d never claim that Doug’s concepts were ever really complicated (and have generally been sappy family / be yerself stuff), but he really jams it into your face every few pages in Nnewts with highlighted one-liners that could go on inspirational posters, and I’m not big on kid’s books that play things as such.  I’d rather the text respect that the kid – seriously, regardless of age – can string some things together without having it underlined in bold.

2. This is a less fair criticism, but I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop regarding the religious parables.  Doug is a proud Christian, and it’s a concept that’s definitely popped up in his previous tales.  Not so much proselytizing, but faith and spotty mentions of God make appearances, which would be more tolerable, I guess, if I didn’t feel it was wrong to lay the more (spoiler: personal bias coming up) honorable theme of individuality against it; propped up by The Big Pie In The Sky, as it were.  And occasionally it feels like Doug does tiptoe further over the line, flirting with guilt and sin and whatnot.  I’m making the picture worse than it is, but once you’re aware of the author’s religious dedication, you can’t help but frame his writing by it, which makes one question how, unconsciously, this could affect a child.  (Pardon if I’m using that in the wrong way, but I’m interpreting unconscious as meaning that of which you’re completely unaware, versus subconscious, which you register, but not actively – or consciously.)  Now cue my god-fearing mother saying that it’s not a bad thing to instill some basic morals, even if they come through a religious avenue (although mum’s a Jewish mum, and so would take issue with this on account of the Jesus angle), but I’m more of the sensibility that religion can kiss my ass and I’d rather not fake life lessons through bullshit mysticism.  Weeee!  …So, heh, there’s actually nothing directly Bible happening in Nnewts yet, but our featured characters do worship the constellation Orion, to whom an interesting ‘ashes-to-ashes’ style prayer is uttered, and there’s a Moses-floating-down-the-river story, and… yeah.  I just kept waiting for the ‘real’ moral to slip out from the behind the curtain at any point, and it made me read the text way too skeptically.

There are some other, less opinion-y negative things to say: that the main antagonist, the Lizzarks, are referred to as fairy tale boogie men and yet everyone seems real accepting of them when they show up; that one of the more interesting character elements – that lead Nnewt Herk has frail, unusuable legs – is fixed within this first volume, discarding that as sort of a forced plot barrier.  This might pay off in dividends later, of course, if the fix is removed, or if it winds into some Bible tale I’m not seeing, but either way, it’s resolved a bit too quickly to matter.  Which is the other main problem here, and the main criticism you’ll see for Nnewts: that it’s too much too soon.  TenNapel throws a lot of things at us in a couple hundred pages, razing cities and offing characters and twisting plots left and right, and it starts piling up in a way that prevents momentum.

WELL THAT’S A LOT OF NEGATIVITY, MISTER.

You’re right.  And if I gave half stars… yeah, this might be 2.5.  But, let’s go with a numbered list again for the positives:

1. The art.  Always a main draw in a TenNapel book.  His character designs – you know it’s Doug, always, but they’re such a joy to look at, and he gives them such Chuck Jones energy in every panel, every motion, and has an eye for those defining details that sum up a character at a glance.  The animal hats / pelts the Nnewt warriors wear gave me a chuckle.  But there’s something richer about the general look here, as well.  Katherine Garner is on colors, which she’s done for Doug’s Scholastic books before, but I did a brief flip-through comparison of previous stuff and there’s a lot less two-tone work going on here – the foreground with pop background color.  Every panel has a few tones happening.  The Nnewts world is consistently more ‘earthy’ than the settings in Doug’s other stuff.  Is it maybe that the origin as a webcomic changed the creator’s working styles?  I don’t know, but I often get a ‘rushed’ feeling from TenNapel’s stuff – in a good way, like he’s excited to draw what he’s drawing – whereas Nnewts felt a little more measured.  So the pages are fantastic to look at.

2. The flip-side of the kitchen-sink plotline construction is that you get to move on to something else soon if you’re bored with the current focus.  And admittedly, I can see this as being a boon for kids: even though it seems cluttered to an older reader, through my kid eyes, I can imagine how exciting this book would be, going from page to page.

3. No fart jokes.  Yet.

WELL THAT’S SOME POSITIVITY, OKAY, BUT YOU FORGOT TO TELL ME WHAT THE BOOK IS ABOUT.

Nnewts.  Sort of what they sound like, but with an extra ‘N.’  They’re attacked by Lizzarks, which are your general monstery creatures, and the sole survivor is the weak-legged tadpole Herk, who has a hell of a time – involving weretoads and water-worms and magic lasers – getting to safety.  But the Lizzarks are aware of his escape, and we’ll see how that continues to play out in volume 2…