ARC received from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This fun comic follows the beloved cast of Big Hero 6 after the events of the movie. Hiro is attending nerd school, he and his friends are still fighting crime, but big players are moving behind the scenes that make things even more difficult on top of the drama Hiro is facing at school!

I enjoyed this, but a lot less than I thought I would. Of course, I didn't expect the emotional weight and the same feelings as in the movie (since that would be so hard to measure up to!), but this first volume was much simpler than I expected. The structure and pacing were also odd to me. In the first chapter, Hiro is paired up with another young student at his school and has to deal with her 180 in personality while the gang fights an electric mother-daughter villain duo. (And of course, Karmi is in love with his superhero persona.) In chapter two, a globby art thief who can change shape confounds them, but it turns out there's more than meets the eye to the painting he's targeting.

I'm a sucker for "monster-of-the-episode" type stories where beloved characters wrap up a job in one section, but what threw me off was chapter 3, when the story suddenly picks up right after the movie ended and introduces the new dean as if she's not a character we met in chapter one. I wasn't expecting the storytelling to be nonlinear (or told backward), and I didn't see a craft reason for the comic to be arranged this way.

This is going to tie into the animated show, though, so I think this book was probably just trying to introduce all the pieces that will be present in the show. The art style was fun and will appeal to kids, especially those who really loved Baymax, but I think it might not hold up for an older audience. 

 ❧ 3.25 ★