Broken Frontier

N-Guard is the super cool name for the Guardians of Nature, a prophesized team of four who still help Mother Nature destroy the evil forces of the Spidersect Empire. While on a field trip, Boon and his friends discover that they are the aforementioned fated team. The government of Forestya scrambles to make sure that these kids are under protection. It all sounds pretty comic book tropey until you realize that Boon and his team are anthropomorphic animals.

Bryans obviously is having a lot of fun with his creation. It apes everything from the X-Men to Elf Quest to Captain Planet to the Transformers. He has taken all the super cool stuff from when he was a kid, thrown it all together, added just a touch of a grown up version of the Get Along Gang, and given it to the world. I mean, their call to arms is “Let’s Get Wild!“ and the team is made up of rabbits and wolves and maybe some kind of bear or badger. It’s harmless fun and actually very entertaining.

I hope that the book is actually aimed at kids, because it seems safe and I think this is where the concept could really take off. I mean in this issue alone, we see respect for elders, a sense of environmental concern, the idea of right versus wrong, the nature of bullies, and the idea that different social classes can work together. With a healthy dose of anything is possible, this is the perfect kind of book for kids to get into. The kind of thing that a ten year old girl and a ten year old boy would be able to enjoy equally and want to talk about.

The art provided by the team of Jackson and Clausen only ups the all ages quotient. They give a style to the characters that will appeal to fans of clean art, while making them just cute enough to give them an age in the under thirteen market. Their storytelling is crisp and clean. It’s what you want from art in a comic book; it compliments the story and the tone of the book in general. My only complaint is that other than the owl and the wolf, I am not a hundred percent certain what the animals are supposed to be. However, I would bet a ten year old could tell me in a heartbeat.

N-Guard is not gonna be the next big comic. Well, it is certainly not going to tear up the charts. It is however, the perfect kind of superhero book for the all ages set - it is charming, exciting, and non-offensive. Wait, maybe it is the next big thing.