The Scrapyard Detectives

The Scrapyard Detectives
Issue #1 by Bill Galvan and Chad Denton
Issue #4 by JM DeMatteis and Bill Galvan
Published by Diversity Ink

The book is about a group of kids named Jinn, Raymond and Robert who try to figure out answers to different problems. In the first issue a new family comes to live in the neighborhood and everyone is wondering about them. The kids want to be friends with the new boy that lives there and everyone is becoming friends. The new boy, Lisan shows everyone a bunch of flowers that his mom planted on the day they moved in. The flowers were special because the family was so happy to move into their new home.

At night someone sneaks into the new family’s home and crushes all the flowers. Lisan was really upset because the flowers meant a lot to them and they didn’t have anything to remember the day by. Lisan and his family were from a different country and the detectives thought that someone ruined the flowers and were upset at the family because they are different.

The real person that was the one who ruined the flowers was one of the detectives little brother. He was angry because his sister wasn’t paying a lot of attention to him. He was mad because she was spending more time with Lisan and not with him. Jinn told her brother that what he did was hurtful. She said sometimes people do bad things against people from different countries or that look different and those are called hate crimes and her brother felt bad because he likes Lisan and didn’t want anyone to think he hated the family.

Another issue takes place awhile later and Lisan is a member of the group. Jinn is really upset because it’s the two year anniversary of the day someone hit her with a car and put her in a wheelchair. Jinn was practicing how to walk again with a doctor but was tired and angry and didn’t want to do it again. The other detectives are mad when Raymond’s cousin Katie comes to visit. Katie wants to be a detective too but Raymond doesn’t want her to be part of the group because he says she’s annoying and always follows her around. The other people in the group want Katie to be part of the group because she is really nice and made her own cool t-shirts with Scrapyard detectives written on them.

Lisan doesn’t know why Jinn is upset and the other boys tell him that a few years ago a boy named David hit Jinn with a car while she was skateboarding. David went to Jinn’s house to apologize to her for the accident but Jinn is very mad and will not accept his apologize and doesn’t care why he did it and calls him a spoiled rich kid. Later Katie goes out on her own to talk to David to find out what’s going on with him and Jinn. David’s mom died and his dad was really upset and it was making David really sad. He wanted to run away because he didn’t think he had anyone to talk about and he wasn’t thinking right. He ran a red light in his car and accidentally hit Jinn. Jinn eventually forgave David, which made him happy and Raymond apologized to his cousin for being a bully.

At the very end of the comic it says that the story is 7 months later and it’s snowing out and Jinn knocks on David’s door. She is standing instead of in a wheelchair and asks David if he wants to go for a walk and he is smiling.

These comics are pretty easy to read. I like that they are about kids who do cool stuff like build inventions and do detective work. I also like that sometimes they think there are people like witches in town and later on they think that aliens from a UFO are living in someone’s basement. I think it’s funny when they plan to go after someone and it turns out that they’re wrong. There are a bunch of different issues with the Scrapyard Detectives but I just wanted to read the first and fourth issues so far. They were really good and I’m going to read and review the other issues soon.

My Rating: 9 out of 10

http://www.smilesfordiversity.org/scrapyard.php