The teens investigate the scene of a fire that they find to be suspicious. (Page120, Bertin, K., & Forbes, Alexander, 2017)

I read “The Case of The Missing Men” By Kris Bertin and Alexander Forbes. This book was about a group of teens ( Dana, Denny, Sam) in a teen detective club, who try to investigate different mysteries. Throughout the book the teens are going through their conspiracies trying to figure out what is happening in their town and why there are missing men. As they investigate to try and solve the mystery they run into other crimes and obstacles along the way, for example when Sam finds out the lunch lady was found dead (page 90, Bertin, K., & Forbes, Alexander, 2017).  one other detail of the story I though was interesting is that Sams father ended up being the sixth man to go missing  (Page 44, Bertin, K., & Forbes, Alexander, 2017).

I would describe The iconography used in the book as traditional realism. The reason I think they chose to go with style over a more cartoon style because it is supposed to be taken more seriously than a comic that is meant to be funny.  They may have also chosen this style to objectify the characters. It seemed to follow Jack Kirby’s model of story telling, however the illustrations were more in depth. There is mostly subject to subject and scene to scene panel transitions. Another reason they might have used detailed realistic illustrations was to make clear that there was one thing that was happening and to leave little room for readers to have to imagine or infer what happened. The novel also uses a lot of speech bubbles, that sometimes overlap the frame of a scene. It also makes good use of lines, for example on page 113 they use line to show Sams sense of panic while he is on the phone by making thick lines on the left of him. The novel was refreshing, since it was more pleasing to read than a book with no illustrations.

Citation: Bertin, K., & Forbes, Alexander. (2017). The case of the missing men : a Hobtown mystery #1 (First edition.). Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada: Conundrum Press.