On top of that he’s drawing the ships, technology, and hidden bases that make up this world. We’ve seen a lot of illustrations of Andalites, but Grine also has to draw the Hork Bajir and Taxxons. Take for example, one of the many alien races the Animorphs encounter. Continued belowĪn “Animoprhs” comic is also going to have to include a lot of images that have lived in my imagination for decades and it is here that Grine’s simple style again does more with less. I was seeing kids my own age go through this war and it was empowering. In a live action adaptation, we would never put child actors through what these characters go through. There are lots of stories about kids in danger but rarely do you feel their youth so acutely. This simple choice does so much heavy lifting. Jake, Marco, Rachel, Cassie, and Tobias don’t look like 25-year-olds playing 16-year-olds they look 13. The first is how young the characters look.

So he does a few interesting things that re-contextualize the story for a reader like me. Chris Grine understands exactly what his artwork looks like and perhaps more importantly, he knows exactly what tone an “Animorphs” story should take. I would have told you that wouldn’t have fit well for this series. Those tend to have a style that verges towards broad and cartoony. I read things published by Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, IDW, Oni, maybe some smaller publishers… but I don’t normally read the most popular kind of published comics, those put out by Scholastic. My comic tastes tend towards the US direct market. This graphic novel is the first new Animorphs thing in almost 10 years. There was an attempt to re-publish the novels in 2011 without all the 90s references that were so rampant in the originals, but that fizzled. They put out a book a month from 1996 to 2001 and in that time got a pretty lame toy line, and a pretty notorious season of a TV show on Nickelodeon. Applegate, who is now acknowledged to be Katherine Applegate, her husband Michael Grant, and a support team of about a dozen ghost writers. The story is pretty, cool and that’s definitely part of it. If you’re not a millennial born between 19, it’s possible you don’t know what the big deal about this series was. And they must use that power to outsmart an evil greater than anything the world has ever seen. Now Jake, Rachel, Cassie, Tobias, and Marco can transform into some of the most dangerous creatures on Earth.

That was the night five normal kids learned that humanity is under a silent attack - and were given the power to fight back. He could tell you about the night he and his friends saw a strange light in the sky that seemed to be heading right for them.

The invasion animorphs