Plot: The Odd Squad team tries to track down the reason for the president’s son’s transformation into a giant beaver.

Comments: I’m not entirely sure what I expected when I read Odd Squad #2. Something funny, wacky, sci-fi. X-Files meets Doctor Who, with a little Family Guy thrown in. If only.

There are a few good things here. One liners, the occasional double entendre, and some mildly fun dialog. Overall, though, this book failed to deliver on the entertainment factor.

We begin with a flashback scene to one of our protagonist’s childhood memories. Seems she was in a car accident caused by aliens who failed to turn off their hi-beams. Her parents were killed, and the aliens bicker back and forth for a bit (in alien-ese, according to the caption) before taking her aboard their ship to repair her (and experiment on her brain, duh). This passage is entertaining, and the aliens’ attitudes were funny. And lest I forget to mention it, the aliens invented the “butt-hat” tattoo placement/style. Way to go, aliens. Unfortunately, then we have to flash forward to the present.

We follow the Squad around for a bit as they “investigate” the recent transformation. We have our ditzy blonde, our Mulder and Scully analogues, our science geek, and a David Blaine wannabe who is, apparently, psychic…sometimes. Of course, he’s also full of crap, unfocused, and a bit of a doofus.

Blah blah blah, we follow them around, they think they’ve found the answer and blow up the satellite that’s beaming down the radiation that causes the transformations, congratulate each other, and then realize that now every satellite in orbit has taken the task over. People are suddenly transforming left and right.

That’s as far in depth as I want to go on this one. Not that I can’t see what they were going for with this book, I just feel like they missed the mark by a fair margin. The dialogue and most of the humor is flat, the characters are boring and too stereotypical (even considering the fact that they’re obviously supposed to be specific stereotypes), and the story is just average.

The art is passable. It’s a fairly simplistic style, but it’s executed well enough. It’s not Alex Ross or Curt Swan, obviously, but it gets the job done. The colors are fairly dull, almost looking like someone did the flats and no one ever deepened them into a finished job. Honestly, this book has the visual look and style of something printed in the early '80s as opposed to the type of thing we’re used to seeing these days.

I hate giving bad reviews. Someday I hope to see my own stuff reviewed, and I hope to see good reviews. But I can’t lie, I just didn’t like this book all that much. I thought I would, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

Final Word: If you’re looking for a way to blow ten or fifteen minutes on an afternoon, with a couple of chuckle-worthy bits of dialog that could pretty much fit any story, this would do it. If you’re looking for a book you’ll rave about, with humor, science fiction, action, and adventure…keep looking.

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