YouNeek Studios

Iyanu the Child of Wonder Vol 3

Here we go! Y'all know I'm a big fan of everything YouNeek! It's hard not to get excited for a new release of the Iyanu series. Does this one maintain the awe of the first two issues? Well...

OK, I get it, it's geared more towards young folk than us crusty 40-somethings like me who read too much McFarlane growing up. But I feel this edition misses the mark on some ways. While I was very happy with the action and the leadup, I felt there was a bit too much chatter and drama. I'm concerned that some readers might only go halfway into the volume or skip over the dialog and focus on the visuals. At any rate, we find Iyanu and Biyi escaping the invasion and they rescue Toye the bookworm along the way to the source, while the people of the walled city rebel.

Speaking of the visuals, the artwork, pacing and framing remain top notch. The sequence is easy to follow, the proportions seem correct, and the animals enemies seem to pop out of the page. I wasn't a big fan of how they drew Iyanu as it wasn't as consistent throughout and I often got her mixed up with Biyi in some scenes. 

With the series set to go on the air on HBO MAX soon, I'm considering the possibility they frontloaded a lot of key material here to have enough for the show writers & animators to work with. Sometimes that's a bad thing (see later seasons of X-Men 93) but here I think it works. Another decent winner from the minds of YouNeek!

You can find Iyanu Vol 3 pretty much anywhere like Amazon and Kobo.

IYANU: CHILD OF WONDER Vol 2

Another great work from YouNeek studios finds its way to my blog! I was quite happy with this sequel to Volume 1, though the art was a bit lacking at times and I wasn't a big fan of some framing. Still we got a lot of good story to complement the art and give us an idea as to what the hell is going on in Yorubaland and how the Corrupted animals got that way. Iyanu gets the obvious student choice: Complete the mission or save the beloved master? But first, she needs training at the hands of Biyu's village matriach. Answers will fly out of the page in this issue, but it isn't a lot of infodumping like other works. 

You can find Iyanu at the links here. In fact, you might even see it on TV soon.