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There is a first book, Mighty Jack, which I have not read. Even the epi­logue, often used to wrap up a sto­ry and tell us about the future, leaves us with a sense of urgency: what will hap­pen next? A turn of the page often brings an unex­pect­ed turn of events. (Just a lit­tle.) The col­or palette is spacey where appro­pri­ate, con­vinc­ing­ly sub­ter­ranean when we’re in the goblin’s habi­tat, and quite rich­ly appeal­ing when the veg­e­ta­tion trans­forms. The gob­lins are oth­er-world­ly but a lit­tle cud­dly. His vil­lains are das­tard­ly, fear­some, invit­ing us to defeat them. His brain cre­ates exot­ic set­tings that invite lin­ger­ing to absorb their odd­ness. Hatke’s art­work is so much a part of the sto­ry that the book couldn’t be read out loud with­out show­ing the frames of the graph­ic nov­el. Why can’t Mad­dy talk? Where did the mag­ic seeds come from that give Jack and Lil­ly short bursts of need­ed pow­er? Why is Jack’s mother’s house being fore­closed? These are the intrigu­ing bits that encour­age the read­er to fill in the sto­ry, becom­ing one with the storyteller. Their lan­guage is not exact­ly Eng­lish and it suits them. They are fun­ny, resource­ful, knowl­edge­able, and they care for Lil­ly. The gob­lins are the most endear­ing char­ac­ters in the book. Lil­ly is a hero in the truest sense of the word. In the “trash from all worlds,” she finds a Shel­by Mus­tang. The Gob­lin King demands that Lil­ly will be his bride. Lil­ly is seri­ous­ly hurt by the rats … and saved by the gob­lins who inhab­it the low­er reach­es of the nexus point. The adven­ture takes off in two direc­tions. “This is not earth,” illus­tra­tion from Jack and the Mighty Gob­lin King by Ben Hatke Jack vows to come back for her but he is com­pelled to find Maddy. Jack and Lil­ly are split up when Lil­ly falls from the vine (a rat is respon­si­ble). It’s sat­is­fy­ing to dis­cov­er these plot points through­out the story. The place has lost its lus­ter because of the giants’ nefar­i­ous choic­es, among them the need to feed a human child to the machine that blocks the bridges between worlds.

It looks like the tow­er of a cas­tle built on an aster­oid. They have con­trol of a nexus point that exists out­side of time and space, a con­nect­ing link between worlds. The vil­lains of the piece are rats, giants, and that ogre. His friend, Lil­ly, no side­kick, is climb­ing along­side him. Instead, we quick­ly learn that Jack is climb­ing some veg­e­ta­tive mat­ter to find the ogre who kid­napped his sis­ter Mad­dy and take her home. We are thrust into the midst of the action, which nev­er stops until the epi­logue.