4 out of 5

The Creeps: a small crew of middle school outcasts who get involved in various mysterious and monstery hjinx and – very much going against the grain of these types of things – always incite the ire of their fellow classmates and teachers, often getting the blame for whatever events from which they just saved everyone.

Schweizer, having proven that he can turn historical fiction into rousing entertainment rife with educatable plot points and deft characterizations with his Crogan series, gives a go at something more traditional youthy.  His respect for his reader’s intelligence and creativity are still full on display: the roll call on the book’s back highlighting each Creeps’ members ‘specialties’ (e.g. ‘monster expert,’ ‘gadget whiz’ and etcetera) are pretty much unnecessary, as it all comes across in the text itself.  Adding to that – similar to the general subversion of the hero team into a maligned group – is how far outside the bounds of each of these attributes each character’s personality extends; in other words, Frankenfrogs might be an outlandish story, but it’s stocked with and grounded by its believable characters.  Schweizer drops us right into things, with The Creeps already in trouble post saving the school from a pudding monster, then uses their required clean-up punishment to segueway into their discovery of the missing frogs to be used for dissection in science class… and which show up a little while later, all goopily reanimated and electrocuting fellow students.  But who’s creating these frogs?  And why?  The clues are dropped in an obvious but logical fashion; Chris pieces it together in a way that seems knowing that we’ll figure it out, but keeps tossing in enough developments to keep continuing reading a blast.  And the way it eventually all turns back to get blamed on The Creeps is pretty hilarious.

Art-wise, Chris seems to be going for a much looser look here, both with his pencils and heavier, sloppier inks.  It adds fun verve to the page, but there’s often so much going on that the splashed blacks can distract from the main action.  There’s also an excessive use of color alternating, presumably to get his characters to stand out from the background or to make the book more colorful for kids, but it’s rather inconsistent feeling – reds, blues and green used for background without much rhyme or reason – to the point of sometimes being confusing, like the colors are signaling something we don’t understand.  But Chris has a strong sense of layout and pacing that moves past these blips to still tell an exciting and engaging romp.

Volume 1 of The Creeps is hopefully the first of several; kids series are no strangers to oddball happenings, but it’s a joy to read something that invests its creativity in an original twist on a theme, as well as developing memorable, surprisingly well-rounded characters.