My mom sent me a warming YouTube video, as moms are wont to do.  Unlike some of those dastardly vids, this one was actually pretty great.  If you enjoy hearing about how artists get their start and the important of art education, it’s here.

I’ve never read a book about a lunch lady superhero, but when I heard there was a series, I decided I absolutely had to have it, so I asked Amazon to bathe it and send it to my door, which they did.

This is a kids comic, so it’s quite short.  Lunch Lady, the superhero, fights crime and serves lunch.  Three kids (two boys and a girl) sometimes stumble into the crime fighting and help out.

This time the villains are the dastardly librarians.  Since I had been kind of hoping the League of Librarians was a superhero group of my colleagues draped in capes, also kicking ass, I was rather saddened.  Dangit, librarians can too fight crime!  *shakes tiny fist of rage*  Only those who have had to remove the creepy guys doing unspeakable things in the back stacks know the extent to which the local librarian force keeps the world safe for book lovers everywhere!

Ahem.  Where was I?

Oh yes.  We librarians turn out to be the bad guys.  Which is OK, since I do know there’s some deeply annoying luddite librarian types out there, but still, I’d have preferred us to be a league of secret ninjas.  At least we’re competent villains.

The story is set around a book fair, which as a kid I loved, and there’s some fun librarian vs lunch lady fighting.

Here the librarians release characters from books to fight the lunch lady:

What really makes this story work for me is the art.  It’s cheerfully inventive.  The funny ideas, like a refrigerator being the portal to the secret lair, and a taco used as a semi-night vision device (except it doesn’t quite work–it just makes everything look like a taco!) were pretty great.  The silliness and the inventiveness remind me of the very first Harry Potter book–a sense of wonder that was utterly delightful and light-hearted.

She’s a superhero who battles evil while wearing kitchen gloves and holding a spatula.  I think it’s pretty great.  As a kid, I’d have loved it.  Definitely recommended for those who enjoy silliness with their capes or to parents who want some fun comics for their kids.