4 crampons out of 5

Cardboard is pure TenNapel – GIGANTIC imagination and beautifully depicted ideas that are given space to rummage through an awesome poppy kid-centric story that has no choice but to succumb to a nice packaged “family” moral lesson at its end.  I’m loving these Scholastic treatments of Doug’s work – the smaller, Bone-size format is perfect for giving the art size for scrutiny but allowing the book to be portable, and binding feels firm enough to be tossed on a bed without fear of pages coming unglued, but flexible enough to get to the spine of the book to examine each page in full.  The colors are also glossy and bright, which is great for Cardboard, where Doug gets to parallel the brown of the medium against some cavernous purples and dangerous reds that might’ve gotten blurred together if not for the production values.

As to the story: magic cardboard comes to life for a poor, single dad family, and a boy gets a best friend – made out of cardboard – out of it.  Unfortunately, we have the evil, selfish boy who gets his hands on the cardboard, then decides to do evil, selfish things with it… which, naturally, in kid-logic land, equals magic cardboard becoming self-aware and turning against its owner and taking over the neighborhood, and the world…

While a lot of TenNapel’s stories get knocked a bit for being too “I love everyone” family-friendly cheesy at story’s end, or dropping just a dash too much Christ into the mix, or even surprisingly glib homosexual remarks (yeah, those always strike me as odd for such a seemingly ‘all are equal’ guy like Doug), something that is included in eeeeevvvery thing he has touched is an unbridled – in the truest sense of the word – creativity.  An idea springs to life an he just lives in it, creates worlds out of it.  It doesn’t always go somewhere amazing – Tommysaurus Rex is rather barebones, for example – but it’s always a joy to experience, and TenNapel’s art, cartoony and sloppy as it may be, is equally inspired, and energetic.  He cleans it up well for the Scholastic books, the figures maintaining the loose look that keeps it separate from looking like a Disney film or something, but the layouts are cleaner, more mindful of “staying in the lines,” so to speak.  So CB is similarly creative to all things Doug, but even managed to surprise me (having read all of Doug’s stuff) with how deep it goes into this imagined cardboard world that the living cardboard inhabits.  It’s unhinged, but never fully lacking in cartoon sense.

There’s also growth evident in the plotting, our “evil” character getting shades of reality mixed in with his palate, making his relationship with our lead youth deeper and more identifiable.  Doug even gets confusing with some psychology toward the book’s end, flip-flopping back and forth on what any one person’s core emotions may or may not mean, which is interesting grey territory for the faithful (assuming he still is religious… I haven’t checked his blog in a bit).

I still prefer the moral-less feeling of some of Doug’s earlier work, although he’s grown so much since then.  It limits the sense of random fun of these stories, knowing that he feels the need to adhere to some type of lesson by the end, but Cardboard is an incredibly good looking and fun ride up to that point.