Review by Jamie McNeil

It’s been a month since the events of Mega Robo Bros: Meltdown and a near-catastrophic end to humanity. The Mega Robo Bros, Alex and Freddy Sharma, managed to avert those schemes, and to celebrate their heroics a garden party is being held at Buckingham Palace in their honour. The younger Freddy has hardly a care in the world, pleased that the spotlight is on him while the older Alex is subdued and uncomfortable. Quietly Alex is struggling with the emotional impact of decisions he was forced to make in conflict and the high casualties the R.A.I.D team suffered, among them his handler and friend Suzie. However, an unlikely friendship may bring Alex out of his funk.

In the meantime, the world turns and with their growing fame (that Freddy loves and Alex detests) someone is capitalising on action figures of the brothers. Again, Freddy loves, Alex hates, but is this entrepreneur purely in it because it’s good business? And who is bankrolling them? The boys still have a job to do and lives to get on with so while cuddly toys are on the rampage and a series of mysterious thefts baffle the police, Alex and Freddy have a wedding to attend and their greatest challenge to face in school camp.

A key strength of Mega Robo Bros is that creator Neill Cameron mines his own experiences as a parent to create hilarious situational comedy. Anyone who has children will tell you that childrearing is hard, expensive, and emotionally draining, but also rewarding and very funny. Like all good writers Cameron is a keen observer of people, giving his cast have realistic and relatable touches. The answer to where a vendor got his stash of action figures is classically British: “I bought ‘em off a bloke! A bloke in a pub!”

There’s also drama and as the foes become more complex, Cameron is toying with the laws of superhero escalation. Batman largely faces these situations alone, but when you are public figures, the heroics will affect the boys’ friends and their parents Michael and Nita. It’s intelligent and reflects the reality of family life. No matter what colour the sticky substance hitting the fan, kids still need feeding, clothed, and entertained.

Cameron’s art has been enthused over in previous reviews and there’s a danger of either overstating it or taking it for granted. He improves with every outing, adopting a dynamic essentialist style that employs shapes and patterns with magnificent effect, to create great landscapes and scenery. He’s also blessed with a fantastic eye for shades and tones of colour that subtly empower the action or powerfully enhance a scene’s emotional heft.

Next Level has some fun extra material including sketch pages and two funny short comic strips. ‘Monsieur Gorilla in: Les Vacances de M. Gorrilla’ has Freddy’s Francophile pet robot terrorising office workers on their lunch breaks with out-of-context French phrases. ‘Legend of Heroes’ pokes fun at the reality of playing fantasy computer games with your little brother (or Dungeons & Dragons© with that one guy who thinks consequences are irrelevant).

Hilarious, cheeky, packed with action and brilliant one-liners are good, true and frequent descriptions of any Mega Robo Bros tale. Next Level is all that, but it is also moving and relevant as the consequences of being a hero on friends, family, and yourself are neatly explored.

In Carnival Crisis Alex and Freddy look forward to having fun with their friends but discover that trouble seems to follow them around.