'Aspen Mascots Vol. 1' by Vince Hernandez with art by Joie Foster feels like an attempt to create another licensed toy empire based on cute characters for kids.

A group of strange animals is brought together by Wormier, a millipede. When his home is threatened, he uses a time travelling device that doesn't ever seem to work. Along the way, he picks up a kind of idiotic griffin named Griff, a cat, a seahorse and a horse. The second story is by Agnes Garbowska and doesn't seem to feature any characters we've met up to this point. There are also pages to color and pages with puzzles to solve. And lots of pages of black and white art. I don't know if they are supposed to be colored, or if the review copy wasn't completed.

It's all just not very good. The art by Garbowska is better than the sub-par art in the first story. I just didn't find it very interesting in the least and I can't imagine children would either.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Aspen Comics, Diamond Book Distributors, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

This wasn't too bad, but I was definitely under the impression you'd only enjoy it if you had prior knowledge of most of the characters and events in it (and a liking for a Jewish stereotype or two) – which I didn't.

I had a great time reading Aspen Mascots Vol 1. This story started simple enough, but before you knew it the adventure began. The journey was exciting with no clue where it was going to take you next. Once this story came to a close, there were two other amazing stories that kids were free to color however they wished. It wasn’t what I expected it to be, but that was actually a good thing. If your kids are looking for something new to read this is a comic they will want to check out.