Kris Bertin

The Case of the Missing Men is the first part of an ongoing mystery thriller set in a strange and remote east-coast village called Hobtown. The story follows a gang of young teens who have made it their business to investigate each and every one of their town's bizarre occurrences as The Teen Detective Club (a registered afterschool program). Their small world of missing pets and shed-fires is turned upside down when real-life kid adventurer and globetrotter Sam Finch comes to town and enlists them in their first real case--the search for his missing father. In doing so, he and the teens stumble upon a terrifying world of rural secret societies, weird-but-true folk mythology, subterranean lairs, and an occultist who can turn men into dogs. The Case of The Missing Men is at turns funny, intriguing, eerie and endearing, and is beautifully illustrated in a style reminiscent of children's pulp classics like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.

The Case of the Missing Men

Maggie Gordon

The Case of the Missing Men is a bizarre little book. It is a mashup of teen detective and weird fiction, seems to poke a lot of fun at both genres, yet remains utterly serious about its plot. As I said, odd, but quite a compelling tale to read. With very detailed and rich art, readers follow five teens as they explore a strange political-paranormal conspiracy of missing men, murder, and gnomes. There's plenty of mystery left at the end of the book, so I hope there will be more! This is definitely everything I wanted Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero to be!

Fraser Simons

This was a really weird book.

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I haven’t read much, or maybe any of these kinds of graphic novels before. Maybe it’s pulling from tropes from Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, or Scooby Doo? But it literally doesn’t make sense, even when you just go with it. 

About half of the questions raised are answered. Some casual racism thrown in there for good measure just to make it more confusing. Are we trying to make this “realistic” and people are racist newfies or is this all supernatural and, if that’s the case, maybe make a point with the racism or take it out? 

But more than that, it’s just not communicating genre or expectations well and it routinely spends time on stuff that doesn’t matter, then does an exposition dump where they got all these clues we didn’t need to see them getting. Suddenly they’ve got a new contrived lead that takes them to a contrived place. The plot beats for an actual mystery, I don’t know what this is? Maybe I’m just completely missing what the is is; it’s completely possible. But it’s still a mystery, I assume. And in that case, at the very least the plot beats are contrived and mishandled, the pacing is terrible, and the dialogue is out of a B movie.

The only thing I can is, maybe just like a B movie, it’s so bad it’s supposed to be enjoyable?

Nancy Drew but make it pulp fiction. I loved this!

The Case of the Missing Men

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