Review: Ed’s Terrestrials

Ed’s Terrestrials
By Scott Christian Sava and Diego Jourdan (Blue Dream Studios, 2006; $19.99)

There’s few things in comics that I love more than a good, all-ages graphic novel, both for my own personal enjoyment and to be able to share it with my 6-year old son. In the past, I’ve praised the likes of A Bit Haywire, Amelia Rules!, Bumperboy, and Superhero — all excellent reads for kids ages 6-60+ — and Scott Christian Sava’s delightful Ed’s Terrestrials joins that list.

Fans of such entertaining Nickelodeon fare as Fairly Oddparents and Jimmy Neutron will love Sava’s slightly younger-skewing tale of aliens on the run who’ve crash landed in the titular Ed’s tree house and look to him as their savior. Ed is your typical middle America pre-teen who doesn’t know what he wants to do when he grows up — “I like to read comic books!” — but comes to understand that you can do anything you want to if you follow your dreams.

Ed’s nemesis — his “bazillionaire” classmate, Natalie, who has a weakness for “shiny, pretty things” — teams up with the Intergalatic Food Court’s Mall Security Guard, Maximus Obliterus, who threatens to destroy the Earth if Ed doesn’t surrender his new friends. Diego Jourdan’s artwork is clean and colorful, with great attention to character design that gives the lead humans and each alien, no matter how peripheral, a distinctive identity.

While it may sound sappy and/or overly outlandish, it’s neither as Sava and Jourdan keep the humor and action coming at a steady pace, and their cast of characters is extremely likeable — even the “bad” guys. Ed and Natalie are similar to Timmy and Vicky from Fairly Oddparents, perfect foils for one another, and coupled with a potentially unlimited alien cast, Ed’s Terrestrials is not only a smile-inducing winner the whole family can enjoy, but a worthy franchise-in-the-making that I’d like to see more of.

[Review copy provided by Sphinx Group, for Blue Dream Studios.]