Mr. Amperduke

Last updated

Mr. Amperduke aka Mister Amperduke is a fictional comic and graphic novel created by Bob Byrne.

Contents

Sherman Amperduke is a retired senior citizen whose hobby is creating and tending to the miniature world he has created and keeps in his basement. The inhabitants of Amperville closely resemble Lego minifigures due to the plastic casing that is applied to them, yet they are living, sentient creatures. The buildings and vehicles are also made from a Lego type building system. He has appeared in three stories: a six-page story in issue 3 of MBLEH! published by Clamnut Comix in 2003, a 160-page A5 size graphic novel released in 2008 (which also included the original story), and a six-page story in 2009, in issue 271 of the Judge Dredd Megazine (which had reprinted the first story in issue 247 (2006)).

The original story deals with the reaction of the larger community when three new citizens are introduced without the casings. The graphic novel deals with Mr Amperduke begrudgingly taking care of his young grandson, Scampi, one summer. After a disagreement, Scampi throws a garden vermin, a Nechradon, into Amperville as revenge. The creature causes havoc among the mini utopia.

The stories are notable as they are all told silent, without words and use the same 16-panel layout for each page.

Themes

The original six-page story has been described as a "powerful allegory", dealing with racism and intolerance.

The graphic novel features themes of man's willingness to play God, and the role of science and eugenics (the sophisticate technology used to create and sustain life for Amperduke's simple "hobby") versus Mother Nature (the Nechradon, the unstoppable force that ruins Amperville and ultimately devours its inhabitants).

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dalek</span> Fictional alien race featured in the Doctor Who universe

The Daleks are a fictional extraterrestrial race of extremely xenophobic mutants principally portrayed in the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who. They were conceived by writer Terry Nation and first appeared in the 1963 Doctor Who serial The Daleks, in casings designed by Raymond Cusick.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lego</span> Plastic construction toy

Lego is a line of plastic construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. Lego consists of variously coloured interlocking plastic bricks made of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) that accompany an array of gears, figurines called minifigures, and various other parts. Its pieces can be assembled and connected in many ways to construct objects, including vehicles, buildings, and working robots. Assembled Lego models can be taken apart, and their pieces can be reused to create new constructions.

A graphic novel is a long-form work of sequential art. The term graphic novel is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comics scholars and industry professionals. It is, at least in the United States, typically distinct from the term comic book, which is generally used for comics periodicals and trade paperbacks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chris Ware</span> American artist

Franklin Christenson "Chris" Ware is an American cartoonist known for his Acme Novelty Library series and the graphic novels Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth (2000), Building Stories (2012) and Rusty Brown (2019). His works explore themes of social isolation, emotional torment and depression. He tends to use a vivid color palette and realistic, meticulous detail. His lettering and images are often elaborate and sometimes evoke the ragtime era or another early 20th-century American design style.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Clowes</span> American cartoonist and writer

Daniel Gillespie Clowes is an American cartoonist, graphic novelist, illustrator, and screenwriter. Most of Clowes's work first appeared in Eightball, a solo anthology comic book series. An Eightball issue typically contained several short pieces and a chapter of a longer narrative that was later collected and published as a graphic novel, such as Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron (1993), Ghost World (1997), David Boring (2000) and Patience (2016). Clowes's illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker, Newsweek, Vogue, The Village Voice, and elsewhere. With filmmaker Terry Zwigoff, Clowes adapted Ghost World into a 2001 film and another Eightball story into the 2006 film, Art School Confidential. Clowes's comics, graphic novels, and films have received numerous awards, including a Pen Award for Outstanding Work in Graphic Literature, over a dozen Harvey and Eisner Awards, and an Academy Award nomination.

Bionicle is a line of Lego construction toys marketed primarily towards 8-to-16-year-olds. The line was launched in 2001, originally as a subsidiary of Lego's Technic series. Over the following decade, it became one of the company's biggest-selling properties, turning into a franchise and subsequently becoming one of the factors in saving Lego from its financial crisis of the late 1990s. Despite a planned twenty-year tenure, the theme was discontinued in 2010, citing low sales, but was rebooted in 2015 for a further two years.

<i>Bone</i> (comics) Comic book series by Jeff Smith

Bone is an American fantasy comic book limited series written and illustrated by Jeff Smith, originally serialized in 55 irregularly released issues from 1991 to 2004. The series is primarily self-published by Smith's Cartoon Books; it was also briefly published by Image Comics. The issues were collected into nine volumes, as well as a single omnibus volume. From 2005 to 2009, color editions of the original volumes were published by Scholastic's Graphix imprint. The series intertwines comedy and dark fantasy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rick Veitch</span> American comics artist and writer (born 1951)

Richard Veitch is an American comics artist and writer who has worked in mainstream, underground, and alternative comics.

<i>Pokémon: The Electric Tale of Pikachu</i> Manga series

The Pokémon Graphic Novel, more commonly known as Pokémon: The Electric Tale of Pikachu, is a Japanese manga series created by Toshihiro Ono. It was serialized in the children's manga magazine Bessatsu CoroCoro Comic Special and CoroCoro Comic from April 1997 to December 1999. Individual chapters were collected into four tankōbon volumes by Shogakukan, who released the first volume on October 28, 1997 and the fourth volume on January 28, 2000. The characters and storylines are all drawn from the Pokémon anime series, although some events and depictions of characters diverge slightly from the anime, and the world itself has a visibly higher level of technology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bat-Mite</span> Fictional comic book character

Bat-Mite is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Bat-Mite is an imp similar to the Superman villain Mister Mxyzptlk. Depicted as a small, childlike man in an ill-fitting copy of Batman's costume, Bat-Mite possesses what appear to be near-infinite magical powers which could be considered nigh-omnipotence, but he actually uses highly advanced technology from the fifth dimension that cannot be understood by humans' limited three-dimensional views. Unlike Mxyzptlk, Bat-Mite idolizes his superhero target and thus he has visited Batman on various occasions, often setting up strange and ridiculous events so that he could see his hero in action. Bat-Mite is more of a nuisance than a supervillain, and often departs of his own accord upon realizing that he has angered his idol.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lego minifigure</span> Plastic figurines manufactured by the Lego Group

A Lego minifigure, often simply referred to as a Lego figure or a minifig, is a small plastic articulated figurine made of special Lego bricks produced by Danish building toy manufacturer The Lego Group. They were first produced in 1978 and have been a success, with over 4 billion produced worldwide as of 2020. Minifigures are usually found within Lego sets, although they are also sold separately as collectables in blind bags, or can be custom-built in Lego stores and on lego.com. While some are named as specific characters, either licensed from already existing franchises or of Lego's own creation, many are unnamed and are designed simply to fit within a certain theme. They are highly customizable, and parts from different figures can be mixed and matched, resulting in many combinations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kevin Grevioux</span> American screenwriter (born 1962)

Kevin Grevioux is an American actor, screenwriter, director, and comic book writer. He is best known for his role as Raze in the Underworld film series, which he co-created, as well as his voicework in the cartoon Young Justice as the villain Black Beetle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lego Rock Raiders</span> Lego theme

Lego Rock Raiders was a Lego theme focused on mining equipment that released in 1999 and 2000. It was the only underground-based Lego theme before Lego Power Miners. The theme, while short-lived, featured sixteen construction sets and numerous story-related media, including three books and a video game.

<i>Frankenstein</i> in popular culture

Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, and the famous character of Frankenstein's monster, have influenced popular culture for at least a century. The work has inspired numerous films, television programs, video games and derivative works. The character of the Monster remains one of the most recognized icons in horror fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nick Abadzis</span> British writer and artist of comic books

Nick Abadzis is a British comic book writer and artist.

Bob Byrne is an Irish comics writer, artist, and independent publisher, based in Dublin.

The Dresden Files is a series of contemporary fantasy/mystery novels written by American author Jim Butcher. The first novel, Storm Front—which was also Butcher's writing debut—was published in 2000 by Roc Books.

Papercutz Graphic Novels is an American publisher of family-friendly comic books and graphic novels, mostly based on licensed properties such as Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and Lego Ninjago. Papercutz has also published new volumes of the Golden Age-era comics series Classics Illustrated and Tales from the Crypt. In recent years they have begun publishing English translations of European all-ages comics, including The Smurfs and Asterix. They publish several titles through their imprint Super Genius.

<i>Hero Factory</i> (TV series) TV series

Hero Factory is an animated television series based on the Lego toy series of the same name and produced by Threshold Animation Studios for The Lego Group and Geely. The series revolves around the Hero Factory, a crime-fighting organization that manufacture robotic heroes to fight and apprehend criminals across the galaxy and protect a similarly robotic populace. The main characters are a group of heroes that make up Team Alpha 1, the Hero Factory's most successful and praised team.

References