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Mega Robo Bros is a series of mega enjoyable graphic novel adventures for kids, created by the hugely talented cartoonist and writer, Neill Cameron.
He has an undeniable abundance of talent for creating rambunctious, reader-centred super hero adventures that grip, engage and entertain reluctant readers as much as committed fans of standard form novels and committed comic book lovers.
Neill Cameron’s award-winning epic comic book saga concludes!
Neill is a regular contributor to the brilliant weekly comic, The Phoenix, and it was here that his fan favourite series Mega Robo Bros was born. The adventures have been reformatted and published in high quality graphic novel form by David Fickling Books, across 8 perfect packages. This month welcomes the grand finale - Final Form, the ultimate extraordinary conclusion to the Mega Robo Bros story. LoveReading4Kids expert reviewer, Andrea Reece has been a huge fan of the series from the start, and after reading Final Form said "It’s the moment all Mega Robo Bros fans have been waiting for (and dreading): the conclusion to their adventures. The good news is it delivers – boy, does it deliver!" Andrea has awarded the book a Star (well, she'd have given it ten if she could!) and you can read her full review here.
Mega Robo Bros is graphic novel storytelling at its very best, brilliantly drawn, expertly plotted, so funny and mega exciting. The books follow the adventures of Alex and Freddy; they are just like any normal brothers - constantly bickering, often fighting, but thick as thieves. There's only one difference - they are also the most powerful superhero robots on Earth and work as secret agents for a government operation that seeks to protect the world from attacks at the hands of alien robots.
Mega Robo Bros: The full line-up
Here we are introduced to Alex and Freddy, the superhero robot brothers. It's immediate, high-stakes adventure but as with all the books in the series, Double Threat is also fabulously inclusive, with messages of empathy, feisty female characters, and incisive, witty deconstructions of gender stereotypes. If that’s not enough, it also boasts a whole lot of hilarious one-liners (“I can see your butt”) and relatable homelife scenarios - even superhero Mega Robo Bros have trouble finding their shoes from time to time.
School and superpowers, family arguments and flying tube trains, and rocketpowered sibling rivalry . . . it’s all jam-packed into this exhilarating rollercoaster!
This new adventure once again brings the brothers up against the evillest robot of them all, Wolfram, who has a personal vendetta against our heroes. There’s as much explosive, kapow action as you could hope for, but also lots of ordinary home life/school stuff which is just as enjoyable and just as gripping.
With Wolfram set on bringing the world of humans crashing down, only our two young heroes can save humanity. It means flying to the North Pole super-fast and robot hand to hand combat. Great fun, super smart and mixes real human emotions in with the robot dynamics.
Alex and Freddy's powers are growing, as is their fame. But with fame comes danger, intrigue and evil robot doppelgangers!
Mega Robo Bros: Carnival Crisis
Alex and Freddy face their greatest danger yet! The return of their most terrifying enemy, a robotic malware virus causing robots to rebel against humanity, and a growing anti-robot protest movement - it's a lot for two robot brothers to cope with.
Relations between (some) humans and robots are at an all time low, with attacks on robots encouraged by a violent new action group, ‘Humanity First’. Alex and Freddy find themselves caught up in this, but unknown to them the force behind the group is an old enemy, and very dangerous indeed.
Jacob Gulliver, from the Kids Reader Review Panel, was lucky to get an early copy of the book and said - "I thought the whole book was magical! I loved the part where Alex and Freddy brought their friends to help fight robot 23. There were so many robots there coming to save the world! The last page was really cool with all the robots and new robo bus flying through the air."
What is so great about graphic novels?
Neill Cameron is a keen ambassador of the contribution that comics play in developing children's literacy skills. "Comics / graphic novels are an incredibly powerful form, combining the rewards and challenges of reading text with all the immediacy and power of visual art and storytelling. They can tell stories in wonderfully exciting, visual, multi-layered ways, and offer storytelling experiences that are powerful, immersive and completely unique. They can develop skills of inference and empathy and interpretation, and they can make people fall in love with reading for life. Basically: comics are pretty great."
Graphic novels are so popular and accessible, and can engage the most reluctant of readers, and for Neill it is "so important that children be given a wide range of stories, that they get the chance to find the stories that will connect with them. That will make them fall in love with reading, with all the benefits that brings, for the rest of their lives. I do think that the immediacy and visual power of comics can make them an incredibly effective form for kids who are struggling with literacy, or who are just early on along that journey. You can get so much from looking at a page of comics - cool artwork, and action and emotion that you can interpret and read as a story - even if you’re struggling with some of the words in the speech bubbles. And that can really encourage and reinforce your efforts to read those words. I do think there’s a danger in thinking that comics are ‘just’ for reluctant readers, though. Like I say, they’re an incredibly powerful and multi-layered form in their own right, and offer reading experiences unlike any other medium, that can be profoundly rewarding and really engage the imaginations of readers with highly-developed literacy skills. Basically, I’m saying there’s a reason every hyper-intelligent nerd you know is so into comics."
Scroll down to find out the full list of books in the Mega Robo Bros series.
Read more from Neill Cameron in his Guest Editor feature from Spring 2022.
And all comic fans will be excited to hear that David Fickling Books and The Phoenix comic have announced an epic new comic-book imprint, The Phoenix Comic Books.
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RandyBiavyEJ R - 3rd February 2025
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