Customer Reviews

Spike & Suzy & the Loch Ness Mystery

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Someone has tried and failed to imitate the earlier books in this series. Although the characters are similar, they have been redrawn and renamed and instead of occupying the surreal dreamspace of Fool's Gold and earlier, they now live humdrum suburban lives of boredom and violence. Sound familiar. These books used to be filled with suspense because you never knew when a nonchalantly spoken phrase or pun or even a gesture might cause the plot to veer in a new direction and propel the characters into completely unforeseen situations and conflicts. There was a compelling element of loss as well, the real kind of loss that kids are so much closer to than adults. Willy and Wanda and Lambick were slapstick geniuses who knew how the material world and the dream world overlapped, and they relished having to suffer the consequences of this knowledge. Not so in Loch Ness Mystery. In fact, here we have a Scooby Doo redux where the adult fantasy world, in this case scientists, completely overwhelms and ruins the real world of the children. There is not even a vestige of hope left in these later books.

It was fun to read a comic in english that I used to read in another language. Some of the jokes got lost in translation but overal it was an enjoyable read. The title translation doesn't really work for it. The original name: Suske & Wiske still works better than Spike & Suzy. Anyone who likes Asterix & Obelix would like this as well.