‘Who’s the girl in the pink frilly dress … it’s Super Unicorn Princess‘
She’s here to show villains where to go! The world’s latest graphic novel superhero is on the scene. If your city has robot, ice-cream monster, evil mummy or kraken issues then she’s the person to call.
This is The Powderpuff Girls for Gen Alpha. It’s the genuinely witty, pacy superhero stories that contain a proper girly-girl heroine. Pink tutus and cute hair clips don’t stop her from being a force to reckon with – even if she does occasionally need help from her friend Toby and his robotic suit. Tony never rescues S.U.P. but he does fight with her which is great – why should ice-cream with sprinkles be limited to girls alone? There is also Robot Goon. Robot Goon is the minion to Super Unicorn Princess’s arch-nemesis Leona. Unfortunately for Leona, Robot Goon has a mind of his own. His character builds and grows across the book in ways that might surprise the reader.
Leona is a scheming scientist with a secret treehouse layer. She’s the antithesis of the all-STEM-girls-are -bright stereotype … or, to give her more credit, she’s a STEM girl who is ultimately eight or ten years old. Her disguises are as cunning as a fake moustache, her creations help as well as hinder S.U.P. and she can throw a tantrum with the best of them. She’s undoubtedly good at science and engineering though!
The setting of Horizon City mixes things familiar to all superhero stories – the town hall, the Mayor, the villain’s layer, adoring crowds – with things every tween needs like ice cream shops and family fun days. Like The Powerpuff Girls it doesn’t oversugar things and I think this is where the brilliance lies. It has touches that will appeal to the children who might appear least likely to pick up a graphic novel or comic but it has a strong narrative and enough adventure and villainy to draw in other readers too.
The art style is brilliant – Hartigan creates wonderfully expressive faces that make it impossible not to know what the character is feeling from a glance. The colour palette is a masterstroke too. It contains all the pleasingly girly pastels a pony-unicorn-rainbow-and-sparkles tween might have in their pencil case whilst using toned-down versions of superhero bold colours. The skies are often contain multiple colours that face one into the other like a rainbow. If you know the child who shades the background of their writing this way before adding a flowers and cute bunnies border … you know!
I love this book for showing children that they can dream big, have strong values and be proud of their abilities and of themselves. Why tone your personality down when you can get a unicorn to fart over you – true origin story – and grow a rainbow horn? I know this will be a big hit with readers. If tween is the target age I would say the peril is only very mild so most children old enough to read the words or be read to should be happy. It will also be a hit with many millennials who remember that first trio of girly superheroes. This is one you can read with kids and enjoy, or sneak off for yourself!
- Super Unicorn Princess by Mike Hartigan is available now from Simon and Schuster UK LTD. RRP. £9.99 (My copy was provided as part of a promotional blog tour. With thanks to everyone involved.)
