Review Detail
Middle Grade Fiction
266
A Goofy Romp Across the Multiverse
(Updated: June 19, 2026)
Overall rating
4.0
Plot
4.0
Characters
4.0
Writing Style
4.0
Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)
4.0
Sidney Poblocki has finally found a foster care placements where he has a friend, Walt, but things go bad quickly when a group identifying themselves as Paladins appear out of thin air and tell him that they have to take him away to train with them! He ends up in their world, but is relegated to a dungeon, which doesn't seem quite right. Sure enough, Rodeo Hawkins, who identifies herself as a Daughter of Mayhem, shows up and claims that the Paladins have killed a number of other Sidney Poblocki's, and he is the last one standing in their way. She whisks him off to the treehouse fortress of her "femininjas", who are a bit put out that this Sidney is a boy. They try to explain the multiverse to him, and that fact that they are currently in the WoBeWo; the World Between Worlds, where things go when they vanish from other worlds. The Paladins release 400 dragonfly spies to try to locate Sidney, and Sidney meets up with Chainsaw Charlie as well as Madame Zoltana, who is working with the Paladins and won't tell him the prophecy in which he is mentioned. The Paladins eventually locate the treehouse, which leads to an altercation in the forest, where the Paladins tell Rodeo that if she hands over Sidney, everyone else can go free. Sidney manages to muster powers to bring everyone into his plane of existence on Earth, where they manage to regroup. Rodeo discovers that there are demon lords still around, even though the Paladins claim to have dispatched them, and Sidney comes up with a plan to steal the necklace that binds them and send them into a black hole. Will the Daughters of Mayhem keep the multiverse from imploding, and if they do, how will they feel about Sidney becoming one of their ranks?
Good Points
Multiverse stories are often frenetic and goofy, and this graphic novel is no exception. There is a being from another planet who manifests herself as a 1950s style robot named Go, Bugbear, who seems to speak a language everyone but Sidney can understand, and two girls named Tori, one of whom has green, leafy hair that lets her synthesize food! Rodeo seems to have a lot of unrelated side missions that occasionally pop up, like when she sends Sidney to demand a vanilla soda from Chainsaw Charlie as a distraction so she can threaten him because he owes her money, or when we find out that she was raised by the cave lion Mama Onca. With so much going on, it makes perfect sense to have demon lords suddenly appear and need to be sealed in the shadow dimension!
Miles' illustrations (which also show up in McAnulty's Save the People and Where are the Aliens?, Rubin's The Ice Cream Machine, Jewell's The Anti Racist Kid, and Ross' Alley and Rex) have a great teen look to them, and show the various levels of the multiverse to good effect. I'll be interested to see a final edition with full color, since Tori's green hair is no doubt spectacular!
While there are several middle grade novels that deal with multiverses, like Wilson's Me vs. The Multiverse, Caprara's Mission Multiverse, Lubar's Emperor of the Universe series, and Cypess and Molebash's Future Me Saves the Universe, this is the first graphic novel treatment of that theme I have seen. Fans of goofy, fantastical romps like Barnett and Harris' The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza or Angelberger's The Two Headed Chicken will love following Sidney's adventures with Rodeo as he tries to avoid being killed by the Paladins!
Miles' illustrations (which also show up in McAnulty's Save the People and Where are the Aliens?, Rubin's The Ice Cream Machine, Jewell's The Anti Racist Kid, and Ross' Alley and Rex) have a great teen look to them, and show the various levels of the multiverse to good effect. I'll be interested to see a final edition with full color, since Tori's green hair is no doubt spectacular!
While there are several middle grade novels that deal with multiverses, like Wilson's Me vs. The Multiverse, Caprara's Mission Multiverse, Lubar's Emperor of the Universe series, and Cypess and Molebash's Future Me Saves the Universe, this is the first graphic novel treatment of that theme I have seen. Fans of goofy, fantastical romps like Barnett and Harris' The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza or Angelberger's The Two Headed Chicken will love following Sidney's adventures with Rodeo as he tries to avoid being killed by the Paladins!
Comments
Already have an account? Log in now or Create an account
