My Video Game Ate My Homework
Written and Illustrated by Dustin Hansen
Lettering by Corey Breen
Published by DC
‘Rama Rating: 8 out of 10
My Video Game Ate My Homework is extremely cute. Another original IP outing from DC’s forays into younger reader markets, Dustin Hansen’s debut graphic novel follows four kids’ trek into a virtual reality world to save Dewey Jenkins’ final, last-ditch attempt to pass science and escape the clutches of summer school. Together, Dewey, his sister Beatrice, and their best friends Katherine and Ferg take on new identities and new skills in the world of the next-gen Infinity Lens gaming console in an effort to rescue Dewey’s homemade volcano before their digital lives run out.
The book’s connection to DC is left largely in the background, and having that kind of distance gives Hansen the freedom to create something vibrant and fun from the ground up. His experience with other young reader-oriented books shines through. Dewey and the gang are youthful and by and large written without being anchored around anything that would make the dialogue or script feel too dated by the rapid-fire changes of technology or language. His distinctive cartooning style is fun to look at, though the characters’ expressions sometimes feel a bit flat – mouths and eyebrows do a lot of work here, with their faces often remaining otherwise unchanged panel to panel. That said, Hansen still often manages to get quite a bit out of the smaller details.
Hansen himself is dyslexic (as is Dewey) and it is very refreshing and exciting to see the ways in which Hansen writes and draws for this and around this within the story. For creators coming to young reader-oriented books for the first time, exploring a visual medium like comics in a way that is welcoming to readers that, by virtue of age, are often just less experienced at reading presents a set of hurdles many middle grade and early reader books can’t quite overcome. Books are dialogue and narration-heavy, making pages overcrowded with words, or oversaturated with background details or action that individual panels or layouts get difficult to follow.
My Video Game Ate My Homework is a welcoming read, in that regard. Hansen delivers pages and panels that manage to capture a frenetic, childlike enthusiasm without ever overcrowding them, leaving plenty of space for letterer Corey Breen to layout the generally succinct dialogue across the page in a way that leaves little question about who’s saying what. Within the narrative, Hansen offers several opportunities for both Dewey and readers who might share similar reading disabilities to pick out clues geared towards different types of visual processing. There’s a particularly touching conversation between Beatrice and Dewey later in the book that’s a helpful reminder of the importance of empathy, and remembering that while it’s important to ask for help, the best way to be helpful is to respect what others ask for.
This is a really sweet, fun read. It leans into video game tropes in some fun ways that don’t feel too explicitly tied to any particular title, modern or otherwise – older parents won’t feel left out of the loop, and if you buy the book six months from now it won’t feel dated. It offers Hansen some clever opportunities to spotlight his knack for kid-friendly visual humor, and helps create an immersive and engaging world that it would be great to see DC let Hansen return to in the future. My Video Game Ate My Homework is a fantastic original offering from DC, and hopefully a sign of what’s to come from this new publishing direction.