Review by Frank Plowright
Max’s dream is to be good enough at playing Lone Wolf of Calamity Bay to qualify for the finals at Gamerville. He thinks winning will bring him prestige and popularity at school. His mother has other ideas. She thinks he spends too much time in front of a screen and would benefit from a summer at Camp Reset, not least because he lives on sugary items and forgets to hydrate, to the point of feeling faint and dizzy.
An old fashioned summer camp is a grim alternative to Gamerville as far as Max is concerned, but Johnnie Christmas cleverly shows how without realising, Max is doing much of the same things his on-screen avatar does. The audience will see how he’s exploring, collecting things and interacting with people. To achieve this Christmas has to make the game as convincing as reality, and as seen in the sample art, there’s a lot of effort put into designing Lone Wolf of Calamity Bay. Contrasting Max is Zanzi, summer camp star pupil, enthusiastic about everything, but most of all maintaining the traditions of her great-grandfather, camp founder, and Dylan, who needs redemption.
An attractively drawn cast in attractive surroundings make for a graphic novel that looks good, and Christmas also delivers the emotional moments effectively, meaning the readers will live the situations along with the cast.
Because it’s aimed at a younger audience, at times Gamerville sometimes takes a simple approach to real life problems, but also delivers practical solutions. Some kids know they become too angry too quickly and later regret it, so there’s an example of how to prevent that, and while the audience knows Max is a good kid, he still has to learn there’s more to life than a screen and a hand controller.
As in games, nothing in real life can prepare for the unpredictable moment, yet Christmas plots cleverly around that, and behind everything is Max’s own secret mission. Has he learned anything? Is there a way to combine two worlds? Christmas ensures it’s fun finding out and delivers a great pay-off.
