THE POPCORN SPY

Kidnappers from the United States and other challenges face young Ellis and her poppable companion in this Dutch import’s second episode.

The kidnappers, Farmer Bill and cold-eyed corporate executive Coraline Corn, aren’t after popcorn-loving Ellis but her tantrum-prone buddy Bob, an illegally enhanced kernel the size of a kiwi (fruit) that was exported to the Netherlands by mistake. Distracted by both the need to keep Bob’s existence a secret from her dads and everyone else and her efforts to sneak pocketsful of popcorn into school where it has been unjustly banned as an unhealthy food, Ellis has no idea that Bob’s in danger. But then he’s suddenly snatched in the middle of a school field day sponsored by wildly popular internet nutrition guru Holly Jolly. What to do? Rinck seems so enamored of her premise (which was already well developed in the 2021 opener, Popcorn Bob) that she has trouble spinning out an actual plotline or moving it along. Still, there’s a lot of random scrambling about and gloriously muddy foolery—much of it carried on silently or nearly so in the graphite drawings that share every page with the short lines of generously sized narrative. She brings it to a happy close that’s expedited by some unexpected help from one of the supposed bad guys. Ellis and her dads are White, but her friend Dante and some of her schoolmates are depicted with shaded skin.

Patchy but farcical and, occasionally, explosive.