All-Ages Reviews - The Gimoles
We’re looking at a major shift of the seasons in my next all-ages review, The Gimoles.
Created by the same team as Lions, Tigers and Bears, The Gimoles by Mike Bullock and Theo Bain attempts to similarly take children to a new and wonderous place.
Sorry for the poor scans on some of these, the scanner got moved around a lot this weekend and I need to clean it...
The story is, naturally, about the Gimoles, a group of small, green elves who are responsible for bringing about spring. Unknown to them, our villain, Frost has captured the groundhog, the only one who can shut down his snow machines, intending to keep it winter forever. The lord of Summer, Caliday and the leader of the niffles - autumn elves like the gimoles, don’t hold any power over winter, so it falls to the gimoles to take care of it. A couple of young gimoles, Limmy and Ohgi, end up being our main protagonists on a mission to rescue the groundhog and end winter.
Are Caliday's henchmen devils? I'm gonna go ahead and assume they're devils.
Let’s cut right to the chase, I picked this one up partially because it was made by the same people as Lions, Tigers and Bears, but more because of the art style. As I pointed out in the last review, this type of art is my favorite, I’m a sucker for it! It was a gamble that paid off with the last one...not so much here.
It starts off with a premise that just isn’t as striking as that of Lions, Tigers and Bears, kids see stuff like this all the time, but that in itself isn’t a crime. I’m usually of the opinion that there are no bad ideas for stories and good writer can make anything work, but it hardly feels like the effort was put in here. First off all, our villain is pretty pathetic. There could have been potential here, like he was upset about his beautiful snow creations getting destroyed by spring, or even just that he felt wronged or had some kind of grudge, but instead we get a bad guy who hates spring for the pettiest of reasons.
And I'm going to destroy shirt manufacturers too, those tags are SOOO annoying!
The main characters aren’t much better. Though we’re introduced to a handful of gimoles, the only ones given any real personality are Limmy and Ohgi (and Ohgi’s brother Aiter as well, if I’m being fair) and they’re pretty broad caricatures. Limmy’s show-offy and full of bravado and Ohgi’s overconfident and doesn’t tend to listen much to others…and I think you’ve all seen characters like this a million times in kid’s media and there isn’t much more to them than that.
At least when this guy's cocky we're meant to see it as a flaw *cough*superdinosaur*cough*
I thought it would be tired enough when they got to the end and learned important lessons about teamwork, but they really don’t and as a result it’s even duller. There are no dynamic characters in this, nobody learns anything, and I often feel like the art is giving them added personality that isn’t there in the narrative.
Would anyone be surprised if he added "What could POSSIBLY go wrong?"
It isn’t just the story that has problems, either, the world building could use some help. I might get drawn in if the world were more interesting, and with an entirely new society to explore, there’s no excuse for there to not be an interesting world to explore, and yet these societies seem fairly empty. We aren’t shown much about what their lives are like aside from the basics of the jobs they do, and when they do pull out things that are unique to their world, it just comes out of nowhere, and there’s no real weight behind it. As someone who’s spent a lot of time world building myself and has tried (successfully or unsuccessfully) to integrate things in a casual, yet engaging way, I have little patience for this. It smacks of lazy writing.
...burn?
And this still isn’t the end of the problems I have with the writing! In addition to ALL of that, this thing badly needed an editor. Oh, it had an editor listed, but I’m not sure how much he really looked at it. There’s basic continuity errors, repeated lines, and there were several points where I thought my copy was missing a page because things jumped around so suddenly. Some of these problems were admittedly in Lions, Tigers and Bears as well, but they were not nearly as bad, and were offset by many good things, so it stands out all the worse here.
It took me a good 15 minutes to figure out panel three was supposed to indicate time passing. Couldn't you have cut away to something else?
Despite all my complaining, however, it’s not as thought I hated everything about this book. As previously said, Theo Bain’s art is awesome, and Mike Metcalf’s, when he takes over part way through, is also quite expressive, if not as crisp as Bain’s. The character designs are unique and vibrant and in a better series, I could've had a lot of fun with them.
This moment I like, and thought could use more elaboration:
Like Minerva talking about darkness in the last one, I like it when beauty is found in "negative" places.
I actually thought the niffles looked kind of fun. Admittedly, Fall is my favorite season, so I’m biased, but I loved the resigned annoyance of their leader. They seemed a bit more flawed than the overly good gimoles. I would actually give this series another shot if I could read a story about them. Despite the obvious sequel bait ending, however, I doubt we’ll ever see any more of this. It wasn’t all bad, but the stuff that was actually interesting was never elaborated on, and the boring stuff ended up being the focus…and you wouldn’t think little spring elves fighting ice trolls would be that dull.
I thought this was a little funny...it comes only 6 panels from the end, though. Not kidding.
Ultimately, I think this books suffers most from just being too generic. It reminded me of so many crappy 90’s kids movies, there’s nothing unique out that stands out about this. When your premise isn’t that unique, you really need to knuckle down and put in the extra effort to make it something special. A typical story done well can still be interesting and memorable. It doesn’t really feel like a lot of effort was put into this, however, and that’s a shame, because it could’ve been interesting. I can’t in good conscience recommend this one to anyone. There’s nothing to engage adults, and there’s so many better things for kids. Heck, just go back to Lions, Tigers and Bears, it does everything this does better. It’s a shame, but I have to say, give this one a pass.
Up next we'll take a look at The Haunted Mansion!
Created by the same team as Lions, Tigers and Bears, The Gimoles by Mike Bullock and Theo Bain attempts to similarly take children to a new and wonderous place.
Sorry for the poor scans on some of these, the scanner got moved around a lot this weekend and I need to clean it...
The story is, naturally, about the Gimoles, a group of small, green elves who are responsible for bringing about spring. Unknown to them, our villain, Frost has captured the groundhog, the only one who can shut down his snow machines, intending to keep it winter forever. The lord of Summer, Caliday and the leader of the niffles - autumn elves like the gimoles, don’t hold any power over winter, so it falls to the gimoles to take care of it. A couple of young gimoles, Limmy and Ohgi, end up being our main protagonists on a mission to rescue the groundhog and end winter.
Are Caliday's henchmen devils? I'm gonna go ahead and assume they're devils.
Let’s cut right to the chase, I picked this one up partially because it was made by the same people as Lions, Tigers and Bears, but more because of the art style. As I pointed out in the last review, this type of art is my favorite, I’m a sucker for it! It was a gamble that paid off with the last one...not so much here.
It starts off with a premise that just isn’t as striking as that of Lions, Tigers and Bears, kids see stuff like this all the time, but that in itself isn’t a crime. I’m usually of the opinion that there are no bad ideas for stories and good writer can make anything work, but it hardly feels like the effort was put in here. First off all, our villain is pretty pathetic. There could have been potential here, like he was upset about his beautiful snow creations getting destroyed by spring, or even just that he felt wronged or had some kind of grudge, but instead we get a bad guy who hates spring for the pettiest of reasons.
And I'm going to destroy shirt manufacturers too, those tags are SOOO annoying!
The main characters aren’t much better. Though we’re introduced to a handful of gimoles, the only ones given any real personality are Limmy and Ohgi (and Ohgi’s brother Aiter as well, if I’m being fair) and they’re pretty broad caricatures. Limmy’s show-offy and full of bravado and Ohgi’s overconfident and doesn’t tend to listen much to others…and I think you’ve all seen characters like this a million times in kid’s media and there isn’t much more to them than that.
At least when this guy's cocky we're meant to see it as a flaw *cough*superdinosaur*cough*
I thought it would be tired enough when they got to the end and learned important lessons about teamwork, but they really don’t and as a result it’s even duller. There are no dynamic characters in this, nobody learns anything, and I often feel like the art is giving them added personality that isn’t there in the narrative.
Would anyone be surprised if he added "What could POSSIBLY go wrong?"
It isn’t just the story that has problems, either, the world building could use some help. I might get drawn in if the world were more interesting, and with an entirely new society to explore, there’s no excuse for there to not be an interesting world to explore, and yet these societies seem fairly empty. We aren’t shown much about what their lives are like aside from the basics of the jobs they do, and when they do pull out things that are unique to their world, it just comes out of nowhere, and there’s no real weight behind it. As someone who’s spent a lot of time world building myself and has tried (successfully or unsuccessfully) to integrate things in a casual, yet engaging way, I have little patience for this. It smacks of lazy writing.
...burn?
And this still isn’t the end of the problems I have with the writing! In addition to ALL of that, this thing badly needed an editor. Oh, it had an editor listed, but I’m not sure how much he really looked at it. There’s basic continuity errors, repeated lines, and there were several points where I thought my copy was missing a page because things jumped around so suddenly. Some of these problems were admittedly in Lions, Tigers and Bears as well, but they were not nearly as bad, and were offset by many good things, so it stands out all the worse here.
It took me a good 15 minutes to figure out panel three was supposed to indicate time passing. Couldn't you have cut away to something else?
Despite all my complaining, however, it’s not as thought I hated everything about this book. As previously said, Theo Bain’s art is awesome, and Mike Metcalf’s, when he takes over part way through, is also quite expressive, if not as crisp as Bain’s. The character designs are unique and vibrant and in a better series, I could've had a lot of fun with them.
This moment I like, and thought could use more elaboration:
Like Minerva talking about darkness in the last one, I like it when beauty is found in "negative" places.
I actually thought the niffles looked kind of fun. Admittedly, Fall is my favorite season, so I’m biased, but I loved the resigned annoyance of their leader. They seemed a bit more flawed than the overly good gimoles. I would actually give this series another shot if I could read a story about them. Despite the obvious sequel bait ending, however, I doubt we’ll ever see any more of this. It wasn’t all bad, but the stuff that was actually interesting was never elaborated on, and the boring stuff ended up being the focus…and you wouldn’t think little spring elves fighting ice trolls would be that dull.
I thought this was a little funny...it comes only 6 panels from the end, though. Not kidding.
Ultimately, I think this books suffers most from just being too generic. It reminded me of so many crappy 90’s kids movies, there’s nothing unique out that stands out about this. When your premise isn’t that unique, you really need to knuckle down and put in the extra effort to make it something special. A typical story done well can still be interesting and memorable. It doesn’t really feel like a lot of effort was put into this, however, and that’s a shame, because it could’ve been interesting. I can’t in good conscience recommend this one to anyone. There’s nothing to engage adults, and there’s so many better things for kids. Heck, just go back to Lions, Tigers and Bears, it does everything this does better. It’s a shame, but I have to say, give this one a pass.
Up next we'll take a look at The Haunted Mansion!