Review by Ian Keogh

Toby Cauldwell is a likeable kid who just hasn’t found his place in the school hierarchy, so how would people feel about him if they knew there was a community of magical pixies in his back garden and he’d been anointed their king?

It comes as quite the surprise to Toby also, but it’s due to his having disposed of the previous ruler, a tyrant in fact, with a casually pitched garden gnome. Especially grateful are three pixies who were facing random execution when the gnome fell, and who insist on using their magical talents, such as they are, to make Toby’s life more comfortable at home and at school.

To an extent James Turner is demonstrating how cultures clash, with incompetence and misunderstanding equating to comedy chaos, but it requires the addition of Turner’s absurdist mind to elevate Toby and the Pixies beyond formula. There’s no everyday situation the pixies can’t make worse by manifesting badgers, creating a living waterspout or instructing a plague of slugs, and Andreas Schuster’s cartooning maximises their comedy potential. His pixies are strange little creatures, almost formless at times, and each very different, but it works in context.

Toby and the Pixies starts with a good idea, but it takes Turner a little time to distil what works and what doesn’t. Toby’s mate Mo works. The other school kids irritate. Jokes involving farts and disgusting moments are winners, but toaster humour fails. The pixies work best in their own environment when Turner’s stretching his imagination a little, rather than the real world episodes relying on the threat of discovery for tension.

You don’t get to be serialised in The Phoenix without being better than average, but as yet this is no Bunny vs. Monkey.