Mechaboys

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 5. FEB. 2018

Kochalka delivers another joyously strange, boyish fantasy of a piece with his SuperF*ckers. High school seniors and best friends Zeus and Jamie are working on building a robot suit out of dismantled appliances. Jamie, physically small and naive, spends his free time reading superhero comics. Zeus, sarcastic and beginning to grow a spotty mustache, is the driving force behind their "mecha project." On their very first test run, Zeus crashes the suit into their gym teacher's car, accidentally creating the hero-team's new nemesis. At school, the boys are social outcasts, regularly the target of homoerotic taunts; during one run-in with a bully, Zeus dumps a milk carton over his own head, aiming to puncture the bully's mood with his wit. This catches the eye of a popular girl who invites him and Jamie to a party in the woods. To which, of course, they bring their mechanized suit, and expected hilarity ensues. The cute, cartoony stylized characters and backgrounds, reduced to their bare essentials, are inked in black and white. Like its protagonists, this book teeters between adolescent and adult storytelling the high jinks are decidedly teenaged, but the swearing and the creator's trademark dirty jokes go R-rated. While it presents a shelving challenge, this quirky adventure will surely satisfy Kochalka's fans.