Dreams Come to Life

Gr 6-9–Shortly after WWII, Buddy, a delivery boy with artistic aspirations, is hired as a gofer by Joey Drew, an animator invested in revitalizing Bendy, the character that put his cartoon studio on the map a generation earlier. Buddy joins Dot, the head of the story department, in investigating Drew’s unrealistic plans for the studio’s expansion, as well as the uncanny behavior by employees who have been exposed to a mysterious batch of ink in the studio’s art supplies. The author seems to want the audience to be uncertain as to whether Buddy’s imagination is working overtime when he encounters dripping, inky ghouls, but the book’s framing sequence and trade dress prevent any true ambiguity, which cause the hallucination sequences to never really land. What is successful are the stakes, as the author’s inclusion of solid emotion and believable circumstances for the characters provide an effective, stabilizing keel. However, this is still not balanced by the silliness of the more fantastic elements that undergird the horror-story plot mechanics. There’s too great of a gap between Buddy’s grounded family tragedy and Drew’s megalomaniacal scheme for bringing his characters back, almost equal to the transformation between Bendy’s mildly devilish, Disney-pastiche origins and his xenomorphic form on the front cover.