Monster Locker | Review
Monster Locker
Writer: Jorge Aguirre
Artist: Andrés Vera Martínez
First Second; $22.99
Pablo Ortiz had a short but significant set of worries upon starting middle school: Trying to convince his parents he is old enough for his first cell phone, putting up with his eccentric abuela (who succumbs to spells that she’s still in the old country), and learning to dance at his tyrannical sister’s upcoming quinceañera.
All are dwarfed by a new, more urgent, even world-threatening concern during his first week at school, when he accidentally summons the vengeful Aztec goddess Coatlicue through the magical portal in his locker (hence the title of the book, Monster Locker).
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Suddenly, his school is cut off from the rest of the world by a huge chasm. Monsters of Aztec mythology are capturing students and laying them at the goddess’ feet, and she’s transforming them all into helpless animals.
Meanwhile, Pablo would seem to be ill suited to the role of hero. He is, unfortunately, best known among his classmates for having wet himself after a scary story told at a sleepover. But he does have a few things going for him.
For one, he’s an experienced role-playing gamer, and thus he’s picked up a little bit of knowledge when it comes to monster encounters. Then there are his new, fellow misfit friends, who have his back and are surprisingly adept at fighting monsters: Outcast field hockey player Maggie Murphy and weird California transplant Takashi Rosenberg. And, perhaps most importantly, there’s his abuela, who it turns out had her own encounter with Coatlicue back in the day and is able to gift Pablo with her wisdom, with ancient Aztec weapons and with her own fortifying xocolatl, a spicy hot chocolate that Pablo had previously always resisted.
Will all that be enough to turn Pablo into the kick-butt hero the situation seems to demand, and allow him to physically defeat the goddess of Earth and her army of monsters?
Spoiler: No, no it will not.
But Pablo will eventually find a way to save the world, through a clever, non-violent solution that seems to make everyone happy.
Jorge Aguirre and Andrés Vera Martínez, who share a “story by” credit in addition to their respective credits as writer and artist, present an extremely fun adventure that clashes colorful mythology against a modern setting, generating a hero’s tale that revolves around a young person embracing aspects of their heritage (which, for Pablo, seems far away in both time and geography, as symbolized by his abuela) and their own whole selves, weaknesses and all.
As Pablo learns, it’s okay to be afraid, as you can’t have bravery without fear, they just need to be balanced. In fact, he uses one of his own, older, pre-monster locker fears to essentially negate his new, post-monster locker fear.
Though the stakes are high, the various gags and jokes never work to diminish them and Monster Locker remains light-hearted, the humor perfectly balancing the drama. In one particularly effective running gag, Pablo has a tendency to look directly through the fourth wall of the comic panel to address the readers, sometimes at inappropriate times, as when Maggie has to yank him to safety when he stops to do so during a monster attack. It seems perfectly natural then when, after the story concludes, Pablo returns for a few pages to explain the various Nahuatl words used throughout the story, including the names of the various monsters.
Martínez’s art similarly strikes a balance between the deadly serious and the more cartoony, vacillating between the two in terms of detail and style depending on the character or situation. This is most strikingly apparent when one looks at the book’s two different antagonists, the aforementioned goddess Coatlicue and Obie, a little teardrop-shaped creature that resembles nothing so much as a blot of ink with spindly arms and big eyes. They almost seem like they hail from two entirely different comics.
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Though only semi-responsible for the events of this book, Obie is a vital component to the story and the series; yes, Monster Locker is destined to be a series of graphic novels, the last page depicting Obie looking over a magical book of his, a sort of monster catalog, and vowing vengeance on Pablo and his friends, while text along the bottom of the page promises “To be continued in the next volume of…Monster Locker“.
Obie is, in Monster Locker‘s lore, a “summoner,” who, with the help of a mortal, is able to bring any monster from any mythology into the world through his portal. (He just happens to be based inside Pablo’s locker.) He’s not a particularly good summoner, but he was still able to trick Pablo into summoning Coatlicue and is apparently ready to work more mischief in a second volume (the monster he’s looking at in his book in the last panel of this story is Kitsune, a Japanese fox spirit, if that’s a clue for what to expect next).
Were it not for Obie’s continued presence, it would be hard to imagine a sequel to this comic, as Aguirre and Martínez have told such a complete story, one revolving as it does around Pablo and his abuela and their lineage and their ancestors’ mythology, and one hinging on Pablo’s family’s traditions and upcoming plans.
It’s a great enough comic that the prospect of a second volume of similar quality is pretty appealing, though, and it will be interesting to see where the creators take the characters and concepts next.
Filed under: Reviews
About J. Caleb Mozzocco
J. Caleb Mozzocco has written about comics for online and print venues for a rather long time now. He lives in northeast Ohio, where he works as a circulation clerk at a public library by day.
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