Will Not Appeal To Mainstream Readers

Animal Crackers: A Gene Luen Yang Collection by Gene Luen Yang
 
Yang presents a collection of interconnected stories that use food as a means to instigate the action in each piece. Unfortunately, these stories are just plain weird, not to mention more than a bit confusing. In “Gordon Yamamoto and the King of the Geeks,” young Miles is angry that his abusive father has never shown him love. The mystical energy of this emotion somehow fuses with a box of his pal Gordon’s animal crackers, resulting in a gang of terrifying animal cracker monsters that can only be defeated when Miles lets go of his long-suppressed rage. In “Loyola Chin and the San Peligran Order,” a girl meets up with Saint Danger, the mysterious and attractive leader of the San Peligran Order, a group dedicated to weeding out the stupid and the weak in order to galvanize mankind’s chances at survival against a future alien invasion.

The thread that connects these two stories takes form in two subplots. The first details Gordon’s crush on Loyola (they both attend the same high school), and a friend’s attempt to coach him by encouraging him to try acting “cooler.” The other subplot focuses on the San Peligran Order’s attempts to measure Loyola’s and Gordon’s intelligences to determine whether or not they should be eradicated. How? The Order merely dispatches a series of microscopic robots, which access the brain by crawling inside the nasal passage. It is only by reading the graphic novel’s introduction by Derek Kirk Kim that the entwining of these two stories even begins to make sense. Kim writes that here, “[Yang] engages [the reader] with everyday issues and struggles that concern all of us: forgiveness, conformity [to] social hierarchy, and tolerance.”

In the end, Loyola, Gordon, and Miles all make the right choices: Miles forgives his father for his brutality; Gordon choses to be true to himself; and Loyola, who passes the Order’s test, refuses Saint Danger’s promises of power and comfort, arguing that compassion towards the weak is greater than a human race with no weakness at all. These are nice messages, but since Yang takes the detour route to delivering them, he loses the reader halfway through.

For good measure, he also throws in a separate story (sandwiched in between the “Gordon” and “Loyola” pieces) titled “Sammy the Baker and the M.A.C,” about the consequences that occur when a baker decides to ignore his mentor’s advice about sticking to old recipes, and instead begins experimenting with his own ideas. His culinary labors produce a batch of muffins that transform into rhinos and terrorize his unsuspecting customers.

The most helpful (and welcome) of Yang’s contributions to this collection, unfortunately, is his thoughtful “making of” feature. Here, he chronicles his own struggles at breaking into the publishing market, and lays out the steps of how to create a comic for those who wish to follow in his footsteps. That said, it’s safe to say that Animal Crackers will hold no appeal to mainstream readers whatsoever. The only readers I can think of to recommend this to would be those interested in Yang’s previous (and better) work, American Born Chinese. Recommended for Ages 13-Up.