Space Cops

by Steve Bowkett, Liz McIntosh (Illustrator), Chris Kreie

The Space Cops see something strange on their radar screen. Its a machine, and its bigger than a planet! When they investigate, they find the universes most evil leader at the controls.

66 pages, Library Binding

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Steve Bowkett was born and brought up in the mining valleys of South Wales. He started writing for pleasure at the age of thirteen and had his first book published in 1985.

Steve's background is in education. He taught English for 18 years though is now a full-time writer, storyteller, educational consultant and also a qualified hypnotherapist.

In his time he has written fantasy and SF for teenagers, adult and teen horror, romance, mainstream fiction for pre-teens, fiction and non-fiction for younger readers and poetry for all ages. He has also published a number of educational books, principally in the fields of literacy, creativity, thinking skills, philosophy and emotional resourcefulness. To date Steve has published over eighty titles plus numerous short stories and poems.

Reviews

[Freyja · Rating 1 out of 5]

Give this book to early to mid-grade school kids to teach them how to pick apart a science fiction graphic novel. If you give it to them too early in their schooling they might swear off reading entirely. This is a graphic novel, yet the author and illustrator describe action that should be drawn.

Off to take an antacid.

[Nick · Rating 1 out of 5]

The story is an okay 50's-ish space opera, but it looked like the artist was totally unfamiliar with the concept of sequential art. Imagine a graphic novel where the artist thinks there's a special effects budget, and doesn't want to run out of ink before the end of the story...In one panel, the reader is watching a character describe what's on a viewscreen...it would have been interesting to see it, but apparently that would have cost too many drops of ink. This kind of thing happens several times during the story. Sometimes, the captions simply describe the visual aspects of the panel In one panel, the caption is "Mr. Sleek clenched his fists." Sure enough, that is the only thing taking place in that panel...
When the story first came out, in England in 2000, this level of quality would have been poor, but believable. The marketplace for graphic novels was still developing, and some folks just didn't get it yet. For an American company to pick this up and reprint it eight years later is inexcusable.