Tuesday, April 07, 2009

The Hardy Boys Graphic Novel #14- Haley Danielle's Top Eight by Scott Lobdell and Paulo Henrique

Joe and Frank have more jobs on their hands in this volume, from winning at DDR to prevent a videogame arcade full of kids from blowing sky-high to tracking down a fellow A.T.A.C. agent's missing friends.

Joe and Frank are relaxing at the drive in with a movie and some popcorn when Joe gets a message on his cellphone asking for his help. The request comes from Haley Danielle, a girl recruited into ATAC to investigate a Teen Horse Rustling Ring. Haley has eight close friends, and they keep in touch via "MyFacePlace". All the girls go to the same school and are close friends.

But one morning, when she went on "MyFacePlace", the image for one of her friends was missing, and she was also missing from school. Haley and the others looked for her, but with no luck. One by one, other friends from the group went missing, their "MyFacePlace" pages deleted, so Haley went looking in the ATAC database and found out about Joe and Frank, and she decided to ask for their help.

They agree to help her, and start by investigating the missing girls. At each place, someone tries to hurt and/or kill them, but being ATAC agents, and in good shape, they manage to escape death from each encounter. But as the attacks go on, they realize that they are being given a way to escape each one, as if the person really doesn't want to kill them.

But can they find out who is abducting Haley Danielle's friends, and find a way out of their predicament before they end up seriously hurt or killed? Or is there another way to take care of the villain?

The art was much better this time around. Some resorting to Chibis, but no stretched out, misshapen character art. The story was also good, although I did get the feeling that the writer was stretching a bit for the story.

The ending I found rather less than plausible, and also the fact that someone who looked as young as Haley Danielle, and her friends, all equally young-looking, were attending the same High School as Joe and Frank, who looked considerably older. Haley and her friends looked like Middle-Schoolers, not high-schoolers, and the fact that their kidnapper, as young as they were, was an orange prison uniform? Not very realistic.

But definitely better than "Abracadeath". This is a cute series, but great literature, it's not. But then, were you really expecting it to be?

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