Customer Reviews

Bionicle #1: Rise of the Toa Nuva (Bionicle Graphic Novels)

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Who doesn't have a young teen boy these days that hasn't heard the words "Toa Nuva", "Bionicle", and "Masks" in the same sentence? On our bookshelves, guardian bionicles stand watch over slumbering children, waiting for the dreaded enemies of the Toa Nuva (probably new warriors in some lego language).

The toys are very cool. What was once Johnny West, Batman, or Spiderman is now full poseable, fully changeable, and the dynamics of the body structure are such that these 'toys' could even be our bodies in mechanical form! My eyes don't usually glow, and my hands are digitized, but movement wise, they are magical.

Just like this book, collecting the Lego magazine stories, there is a sense of completeness about the story now. Whenever I read the Lego installments, I always thought that it was time for a collection. Papercutz has a remarkable reputation for quality books printed on quality paper, and is a natural choice for such a property.

The team of Greg Farshtey, Carlos D'Anda, and Randy Elliot have created a world around the characters that is very cool. The setting is other worldly, but the battle for survival is no different than any humans have endured. This is no 'band of brothers', but it is a 'band of others'.

The arrival of Makuta on the Island of Mata Nui signaled the transformation of Nui into a place of evil. The Tohunga wait for salvation, and six arrive who control the forces of nature to help them find it. Collect the masks, and defeat the Makuta no matter what the cost.

The art and color in the books is amazing. D'Anda and Elliot have captured the feel of the characters beautifully. The challenge of illustrating any book with non humanoid features is to make them 'real' and the artists have done that very well. I can imagine their studio. Shelves filled with BIONICLES in various poses, giant boxes of LEGO waiting for construction. How do they ever get any work done?

Read in short installments, these stories made little sense. Now that Papercutz has collected the episodes, the story is clear, and even for adults who have had to learn new words in a new language, the story of the Bionicles has just become more interesting.

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I bought this item for my son's birthday and after reading through it once, the glue on the binding fell apart and all of the pages fell out.

We ordered this and had to return it because it completely fell apart. Amazon exchanged it for us, but the new one fell apart as well. A friend had the exact same thing happen to her with the copies she bought at Borders. We won't be buying any more of this series for this reason.

I got this book for some younger friends of my son we were going to visit after a 12 month absence, and was embarrassed to see the book disintegrate into pieces over our 2-day visit. YIKES! Half the pages just unglued and came out. W/o clear numbering, it was difficult to piece together, and technically overwhelming to think of trying to tape back together. As I would tape, more pages would fall out. YUCK!

I made the mistake of not reading some of the other reviews; don't do the same! The binding falls apart in one to two days. This is a total shame. The kids love these books and I didn't pay attention to which ones were paperback and which were hardback. The one hardback that I purchased (book #9) seems to be holding up well, and I wish I had purchased all of them as hardbacks. In fact I consider the lost money as a lesson in reading reviews and item descriptions. The kids love these books so much, I have since purchased them again but in hardback of course. In summary, do not buy the paperback!