Comic Review: Bolivar SC (BOOM! Studios)

BOOM! Comics releases a children’s book graphic novel about a dinosaur who survives from extinction and now lives in New York as a citizen in Bolivar.

So this is how all of this began, aside from the other book where Bolivar tries every restaurant to eat in New York with Sybil. However, this book tells the story about how dinosaurs went extinct in history, but there’s one dinosaur who survived and lives in New York. The story is both written and illustrated by Sean Rubin. He’s not only that he created Bolivar, but he also illustrated Redwall, one of my favorite series and Mouse Guard books. He began working on Bolivar in 2003, then illustrated in 2011, and then published this book in Archaia in 2017. But he is also named for the NY Public Libraries Best Book in 2017. However since Bolivar Eats New York was published in 2019, I just get the fact of how the girl became friends with a dinosaur while I was too busy complying with the restaurants that she and her friend ate in New York.

The front cover shows a typical concept art which is taken place in the upstate New York. Here we have Bolivar entering the apartment while Sybil is watching his every move, whenever she finds something strange, she can’t help it to find out. However, ever since she lived so far in New York, she has never seen a dinosaur ever in her life. Either way, this is destiny for her to become friends with Bolivar. As I said from the Bolivar Eats New York review, this whole book is a work of fiction and some of the places have taken place of one of the hotspots tourist spots in New York City. For me, I try to expect to go on an adventure to the city and then I go back to the book to reflect every that I’ve ventured much more as anyone does. The story starts when the author decides the background of the city and the people itself as everyone is occupied from their work or something. However, there is a theory for this and it actually goes back when the city used to be peaceful back then. So the story goes about an everyday normal life in the city, then the mayor announced that he will appear at the Natural History Museum to open a new exhibit on Dinosaurs with new evidence of how the Dinosaurs became extinct. However, in this story, there is a last living Dinosaur in New York, but there is one problem, no one and I mean NO ONE ever noticed that there is a Dinosaur wandering in New York, except for one girl who spies on him, a girl named Sybil who believed that there is a Dinosaur living next door. Since every New Yorker is too busy to notice that a Dinosaur lives in the big city, everyone is like accepting him to welcome to the city.

Then the next day, when she was going to read aloud an essay about a person in their neighborhood, the whole classroom finds it very hard to believe that there is a dinosaur who lives next to her apartment and started laughing over the reason that a creature lives next door. She became more curious about the dinosaur and started to spy on him just to take some pictures to show her mom and everyone that he exists. Even when she goes to the tourist’s hotspots, I’d get to see the MET museum on this book at the Arms and Armor exhibition, one of my personal favorites. I couldn’t count how many times I’ve gone to that exhibition to look for armors and weapons. Then she ran off with her mom to Central Park, the Upper West Side of Broadway to take pictures of the dinosaur, but thwarted by her mom for raising her like a spoiled child over a dinosaur. There are more places than meets the eye while I’m traveling because there is no place where a dinosaur has traveled everywhere just for eating a corned beef sandwich, visiting any tourist hotspots, and more. Then later he revealed his name as Bolivar because it came from a mill from the riverbank, but instead of the riverbank, it’s a dinosaur.

However there is more to that because everyone at the museum was mistaken for a mayor to a dinosaur, and everyone freaked out. I have no idea why, even though it was Sybil who told everyone that there’s a dinosaur who is impersonating as the mayor, now everyone is terrified of Bolivar. The next scene goes into a subway train with a series of passengers of different ethnic religions, families, tourists, workers, mariachis, and such, not only that but Bolivar was disguised as a local citizen who looked like Raphael in disguise. Then there’s the scene where Bolivar is eating at a restaurant which is more likely to be Katz Deli, but it’s Kanofsky Deli. And just like in the last review, he goes there to eat his favorite Corned Beef sandwich. But geez, can anyone go there to eat the best sandwiches on the big apple? I would like to try that sandwich one day, but the point is that the restaurant is so famous around the lower east side location, every other famous celebrity eats there, even the author too, it’s strange but I did some deliveries there with my co-worker once. However, as soon as her mother warns her daughter that Bolivar would eat her, he would rather go out to eat a sandwich than going over rampaging the city to eat innocent little girls like Sybil and her four-eyed simple-minded mother. And I swear the last scene is the last thing that I wanted to see is how Sybil read aloud her essay, with everyone in the classroom except her mother freaking out like he’s going to attack or performing a terrorist attack. For christ’s sake, JUST STOP! WHAT IN THE DUNKING DUCK IS THIS?! HE’S JUST A NICE LIVING DINOSAUR WHO LOVES TO EAT CORNED BEEF!

The story is great, even more, a great fitting for a bedtime story for children, even if it is a graphic novel. Even if the story claims that there’s a dinosaur living on the upper west side, no one notices it, no one but her sees that Bolivar lives next to her. Dude, if I never reviewed the restaurant adventure with him and Sybil, I would have to know what’s the relationship between them. The art is amazing and easy to follow for the children to read. I can’t tell that much because his art style makes it much more similar to the other scholastic children’s books around. Some say, this is like Arthur, but the whole concept is that the characters are all humanoid animals, except this book Bolivar is like Carmen Sandiego trapped in a Dinosaur’s body. The character designs make it more like PBS kids setting because this is a children’s book, and almost a well worthy of the story. Coming back to Bolivar’s design, the concept is almost looked like Barney, but when you see that grotesque poster of “Have you seen this Dinosaur?” with the picture of a real dinosaur seemed to have the New Yorkers scared off from him, whoever put up a poster like that must be a complete moron who believes that Godzilla will rise again. Sybil’s design seems more of an innocent young lady, but she’s brave enough to befriend a dinosaur. Her personality makes the readers feel so sorry about her to realize that she saw a dinosaur while others didn’t notice.

So what’s the one thing I never get tired of a thousand times by now? Impress the cityscape environment, but I’m truly impressed you know why? Because IT’S MY HOME. I’m just going through the book, looking at the places that I’ve gone so far everything in sight, taking pictures for reference or landscape drawing practice for my project that I’m working on, from tourism sites, to apartment buildings, to other buildings, parks and such, not caring whether or not realizing that the people never knew that there’s a creature living in the big city, either I get too surprised to see a creature roaming around the city or a guy whose pet is a rat. Whichever comes first, I welcome it. All I know is the cityscape that the author illustrated is very beautiful, I even liked the interior of the MET museum and the landscape of Central Park too. You know this series is way generous to tell a New York-themed story about her and the dinosaur, it’s like destiny when you’re actually miserable for their childhood life, the only thing you need is a true friend. For what it’s worth, the story is more family-friendly, but very appealing whatsoever, making a graphic novel about New York-themed story about a dinosaur who lives in the big apple is one of the best concepts imaginable even with a big name as Bolivar. It’s one of the best books that every child would ever read, but from my perspective, it actually makes my heart race over the fact that a young girl starts making friends with a dinosaur.