YAM is a small boy, wearing hooded orange jammies and owning a pet TV set and a hover-pack. But I'll see you that and raise ya - YAM is a comic book by Corey Barba told entirely without words. For kids.
Knowing these rather extraordinary facts, I expected YAM to be extraordinary. In a a sense, it failed to meet my expectations. In another sense, I am at fault for having these expectations.
To explain:
YAM lives on a small tropical island but often visits the nearby city. Both are populated by bizarre creatures - his good feline/humanoid friend Gato, the scientifically-oriented May, talking cupcakes, edible tortoises, emotional clouds and more.
The exploits of YAM have appeared in Nickelodeon Magazine over the last few years, and YAM: Bite-Size Chunks collects these yarns along with several new tales. This probably explains the variable formats and styles displayed in the book - colors and black & white, inks and pencils - with stories ranging from a single page to 38 pages. To Barba's credit, he seems equally at ease in all of these - YAM remains characteristically YAM whatever the length and technique, and the stories never seem to suffer from the limitations I assume the original medium imposed.
- YAM being Yam
The problem with YAM is that while it is original and often charming, it almost never seems to soar - the characters are neat, but nothing much happens to them. The stories often revolve around a single joke or a simple theme, and they are neither very funny nor profound. Unlike the designation on the back-cover, I am not at all sure that this is an All-Ages comic, but, rather, aimed exclusively at kids.
Article comments