STEVE L. MCEVIL

A young would-be supervillain has trouble living up to his name in this fart-sical outing.

Stepping personally into the panels of cartoon art fore and aft, first to introduce his characters and then to show how to draw them, Turnbloom sets up his planned graphic series with a save-the-world scenario featuring sixth grader Steve—properly outfitted in lab coat, goggles, scowl, and huge flame-colored shock of hair—as a standard-issue inept lead. Notwithstanding a checkered history of freezing the faculty toilets and, with a special smartwatch supplied by his retired (mostly) villain grandpa, making Principal Wilfahrt and other unsuspecting victims poot on command, the budding bad guy finds himself joining dreamboat classmate Sierra Flores and archrival do-gooder Vic Turry in battling to close a local wormhole before the armies of alien overlord Perses the Destroyer can surge through. His quest for ultimate evilness may be stymied here by circumstances (not to mention still having a set bedtime, being forbidden by his mom to use death rays in the house, and the good influences of Vic and Sierra) but is bound to continue in future episodes. Fans of Jamie Thomson’s Dark Lord romps, Artemis Fowl, or Wimpy Kid–style underachievers will find themselves in familiar territory. Sierra and Vic are browner skinned than the pale McEvil clan.

Not gassed up by much beyond the rampant flatulence, but readers fond of that sort of laff will find it a blast.