Page 45 Review by Stephen
“OK, I get the point. What does CHERUBS stand for anyway?”
“Good question. Our first chairman made up the initials and had a batch of stationary printed. Unfortunately he had a stormy relationship with his wife and she shot him before he told anyone what it meant. It was wartime and you couldn’t waste six thousand sheets of headed notepaper, so CHERUB stuck. If you ever think of what it might stand for, let me know. It gets quite embarrassing sometimes.”
Promise: this will exceed your expectations!
Published by Hodder Children’s Books, its back cover declares, “NOT SUITABLE FOR YOUNGER READS” and it really isn’t: it is shockingly and unflinchingly violent for the first dozen pages, young James Choke losing his temper with devastating results, then being bullied back in return. I love what Aggs has done with the black, white and blood-red splatters that expressionistically introduce or curtail some scenes depending on what’s been depicted, and what’s being depicted is devastating in places, like the death, early on, of James’ mother.
Bereft, distraught and taken in to care, James is more scared for his sister. Her Dad – his step-father – is a violent man who drinks and she’d be better off joining James. Unfortunately there’s nothing that can done. But although James is landed right in at the deep end with a new, potentially hostile environment and even worse company, he is nothing if not resilient and resourceful. It’s not gone unnoticed. So imagine how startled he is to wake up one morning somewhere else entirely, naked, in bed, with a new set of threads. And the academy outside is palatial. It’s a clandestine, military academy which trains promising recruits to infiltrate, investigate and if necessary close terrorist networks down: extreme force sanctioned. Welcome to CHERUB, James: hope you survive the experience. You’ve already been drugged once.
“Criminals use children all the time. For example, imagine a grown man knocking on an old lady’s door in the middle of the night, saying he’d been in an accident. Most people would be suspicious. She’d call an ambulance but still wouldn’t let him in.
“Now image the same lady comes to the door and finds a young boy crying on the doorstep. “My daddy’s car crashed. He’s not moving. Please help me!” The instant she opens the door, the boy’s dad jumps out of hiding, clobbers the old dear and legs it with her cash.
“Criminals have used this for years. At CHERUB we turn the tables on them.”
With smartly paced storytelling throughout and a real power in places from relative newcomer, John Aggs, this all far more complex and clever than you’d imagine. The training is intense, relentless and gruelling, the initial aptitude tests and James’ performances far from predictable, never mind their final analyses. That’s when I really started to become impressed. Take this one, after James was given a pen and ordered to kill a chicken by severing the main artery and cutting through the windpipe with a pen. “This is sick.” Did he do it?
“How do you think you did on the third test?”
“I killed the chicken…”
“Does that mean you passed?”
“I… thought you wanted me to kill it.”
“The chicken was a test of your moral courage. You pass well if you kill it straight away or if you flatly refuse on moral grounds. I thought you performed poorly. You didn’t want to kill the chicken but you let me bully you into it. You made a decision and saw it through, so get a low pass. If you’d dithered or got upset, you’d have failed.”
All of which precedes James’ first mission with swimming trainer Amy pretending to be brother and sister. It doesn’t go quite to plan.
Each of the friendship dynamics are different here and I relished every one. I don’t know how much more strongly I can emphasise my admiration for the original script and adaptation, both Edginton’s and Aggs’ except to say I cannot think of a better action graphic novel for early-to-mid-teen boys, and there’s plenty for young ladies here too.
Hope you enjoyed the review. From tomorrow half of it will be translated into Russian, half into Japanese. You’ll need to cooperate to decode it.
