I thought this was an interesting book which looks as if it might develop into an interesting series.

Alex and Julie are close friends. Alex would like them to be more but Julie hasn’t yet recognised his feelings for her. Both of them are part of an online community called Urbex and they explore abandoned buildings, posting their photos on the Urbex web pages hoping to attract a following from other Urbexers.

One night the two of them visit an abandoned mansion and they meet two twin ghosts. They manage to escape but their encounter has changed them because they now see ghosts or images from the past in the other buildings they explore. As they investigate their new found powers they realise that some of these ‘ghosts’ are actually the pasts of living people and both of them now have the power to intervene in real lives bringing peace to people who are troubled.

I liked the way the story unfolds and a number of mysteries are revealed. At the end of the story the reader is still left with issues and questions that will hopefully be resolved in later volumes. The story is interesting and the artwork is good. It does feel as if this is the intro volume and it will be good to see how the story develops in the future.

Copy provided via Netgalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

Alex and Julie go urbexing every night. Go explore the city and the abandoned places. One day, they find a kind of abandoned mansion, they go in and find some twins. From that day on, on their expeditions, they have visions of people in trouble.
The history is very interesting. Very adolescent characters, I don't know how to explain it. I personally do ship Alex and Julie. I can't wait to read the next part. I hope more people read it, I recommend it for teenagers or young people. It's a cool and somewhat funny story.

Content warning for sexual assault of a minor

Classmates Alex and Julie are ordinary school kids by day and urban explorers by night. On one of their outings, they stumble into an old villa and come face to face with two strange twin girls. From that night on, they begin seeing ghosts and their fates, as well as those of strangers, become intertwined.

Alex and Julie see vignettes of the past, and they're compelled to help make things better in the present so that they can stop seeing the past and find the twin girls in the villa again.

On page 47 (page 51 in the pdf) Alex and Julie set off to help a young man who appears to have a fear of dogs. But we learn that his fear of dogs is related to his uncle's sexual abuse of him as a child. After hearing this, Alex and Julie do not step away from the situation or find someone with more experience and trauma training to help. They instead encourage the man to tell his parents about the assault. After the young man talks about his trauma, Julie says, "We're so sorry for making you tell us all that. We were a litle harsh," and Alex continues, "But you're gonna have to do one more thing to get rid of the dog that's ruining your life."

The man's telling of his abuse and the subsequent resolution were not treated with the delicacy that they deserved. Although we do hear that Alex and Julie are unqualified to provide adequate trauma care, we see that their method of simply telling family about abuse solves the man's problems. This implies that the man was hiding a secret that he shouldn't have hid and that the onus was on him to simply tell the truth in order to be free of a burden that he was responsible for. I found this treatement of trauma irresponsible, espcially considered that this man's arc was neatly wrapped up in about 8 pages in order to further the Alex and Julie centric plot.

Overall I found this book's pacing too quick, and characters, not even Alex and Julie, were not well developed. I found it difficult to become invested in the mystery, and although I understand that elements were kept vague on purpose, the execution didn't work for me. This first book also ends very abruptly, but not in a way that makes me wondering what happens next, more in a way that I thought that my book was missing pages.


Artist: Clarke
Writer: Vinent Dugomier
Colorist: Mikl
Translation: James Hogan
Editing Anna Howell
Lettering: Cromatik Ltd
Artistic director: Éric Laurin
Graphic Designer: Rébekah Paulovich

Two friends explore the urban landscape at night, breaking into abandoned places and guessing what kind of life their occupants may have held. One night, they break into the Villa Pandora, which holds numerous secrets.

The star rating says it all: Did not really enjoy the writing style or the plot.
The pacing was off. On that day I read two grapic novels, and it feels like this was the longer one, despite the other having almost double the page count. It dragged on, and I simply did not care about the characters or the mysteries.

There were some weird things, like the guy constantly saying he's not an athlete, but when it comes to exploring he can do the most amazing things to break into buildings, and then, when the mystery is explored, he goes even farther.
Since there <i>is</i> a mystery to be explored, I'll simply chalk it up to not having the conclusion and guess it will be explained later on.

But, as I said: I don't care.

The arc was provided by the publisher.

The blurb for this really caught my attention. I loved the premise of kids seeings ghosts. Sadly though this comic left me with alot of unanswered questions.

I know this is only volume 1 and there is more to go but I didn’t feel there was enough of an explication. The writer seemed the throw so many ideas into one short comic with no context.

The illustrations were brilliant. Very eye catching and matched the stories vibe really well.

I really liked the blurb when I read it, the idea of two kids seeing ghosts in abandoned places, but sadly, it just wasn't for me. Throughout the book I was confused (still am). I know there are more volumes to come, where hopefully there's an explanation, but I'd still like to understand what is going on. I don't understand why they decided to urbex, why they hang out with the other two friends, why they suddenly got those powers that only work at night... too many questions to be honest. Also, the characters were okay and I would've liked there to be a little more development. Overall, cool concept but not for me.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Urbex by Duomier and Clarke is an excellent middle school novel about urban exploration and ghosts. The story revolves around Alex and Julie, who enjoyed forgotten buildings in their city at night. One day, they stumble across the ghosts of two girls. How can they see the dead? What do the ghosts want? And will Alex and Julie be able to help them?

Overall, Urbex would make the perfect holiday gift for the middle schooler in your life. One highlight of this book is the artwork. The art reminded me of Todd Nauck, the artist of Teen Titans Go and the original Young Justice series. If you're a fan of that art style, then you will definitely enjoy this art. I also enjoyed the paranormal-infused, action-packed storyline. I did take off 1 star, because this book was only 66 pages. If you're intrigued by the excerpt above, or if you're a fan of graphic novels, I highly recommend that you check out this book, which is available now!

Being an urbexer myself, I believe that this comic captures the essence of urban exploration wonderfully!

The art style is very suitable to the theme, and further lends the comic that hip-hop, graffiti-like feel. I really enjoyed it!

Unfortunately, though, due to the writer cramming lots of ideas in such a short story, I felt that it was too rushed. It would've been nicer to have certain aspects of the story elaborated on more.

*Thanks to NetGalley and Europe Comics for providing me with a digital ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.*

The description of Urbex really caught my eye! I really enjoyed the artwork and premise of the story, but felt it needed a lot more added to it.

Two kids take on the urban landscape and adventure of night exploration, finding more than empty buildings and abandoned construction projects. Whimsical, bordering on creepy but maintaining a welcome spooky atmosphere, I thoroughly enjoyed Alex and Julie's adventure.

Structure/Panel Design: The graphic novel is easy to read and follow, the text is clear, the eBook withstands me zooming in. I enjoy the panel layout, the style of the art, and the facial depictions. The nonverbal humor present in the drawings add a great touch. One can tell that Clarke knows their stuff, and Dugomier writes great script to go with it. The plural/single narrator (perhaps reminiscent of the split personality characters) adds a captivating touch, too.

Pacing/Dialogue: Pacing is great, both in the illustration and in the writing. Dialogue is realistic and humorous. Each character gets their own voice, which lends well to reading in my head or aloud to kids. The natural inflections in dialogue, coupled with the facial depictions and plot circumstance, all add a great rhythm to the book. Even when the plot flipped between "illusion" and "reality" the colors made it easy to distinguish between the two.

Characters: Very realistic characters, each with their own distinctive personality. Characters hold legit conversations, especially across different dynamics (parent-child, family, brother-sister, friends, established dating partners, fractured identities, etc.). Kids swear. Adults rage. Multicultural/multi-socio-economical backgrounds are present. Each character exists on their own and in conjunction with one another. The individual plotlines of each character and the illustration of their living circumstances add to their character.

Content: This graphic novel is humorous on the surface, which captivates an audience. What kept me (aside from the mystery and the characters) was the realistic, true, dark undertone of Urbex. Abandoned projects, psychology/therapy gone wrong/etc., old trauma hidden and stuffed away, economic issues, relational dysfunction, sexual assault, familial trauma and heartache--all of these aspects play a heavy hand in Urbex and it allows readers to process through it all with Julie and Alex. I was very fond of the scene where Alex and Julie confront the nephew (I can't remember his name, sorry, he was the one who was very scared by the dog and the uncle sexually assaulted him), and then apologize for dragging the truth out of him. Coming to light with old trauma is a good and hard thing, and Alex and Julie hold appreciation for that in this scene. As a future school librarian, I can see in the future having a conversation with kids about sexual assault, trauma and old wounds. This scene would lay a good foundation for that conversation. On this note, I also appreciated how the dog was only one facet of the trauma in the villa/mansion. That's a very real reality--one aspect of trauma sometimes turns out to be the linchpin for a lot of other grief, too. How Julie and Alex can only see these visions when they're alone, and usually in the dark, and "trespassing" in multiple ways lends to the vulnerability of knowing one's self, seeking out one's pain and trauma, and healing. Urbex is a vibrant book to help build awareness of trauma and grief. Students could do well from reading Urbex, and beginning those conversations.

Thank you for the read. It was a delight. I appreciated the option to read and am looking forward to seeing this book on shelves. Well done, Dugomier and Clarke. Please continue on.

I found this to be a good but standard graphic novel. Enjoyable, but nothing extraordinary.

It followed two friends as they investigated an abandoned villa which only appeared to them after nightfall. But they then discover that they’re developing supernatural powers. The story follows them as they try to learn how to use them & help other people.

It dealt with some surprisingly heavy topics for a graphic novel as I find they tend to be more more lighthearted & funny. So there is definitely a TW for abuse/grooming.

My only critique would be it felt like the writer was trying to cram in as many ideas as they could into such a small story that it felt a bit crammed and overwhelming. I think it would be better if there’d been less story lines but each one was fleshed out a bit more.

Other than that I enjoyed it though!

Unfortunately, I didn't really like this one very much. It had a lot of concepts I liked -- urban explorers who, by connecting with abandoned places and the past, start to see ghosts and are the only ones who help solve their problems? A fantastic idea. I just don't think it was well executed. There's no real addressing of the fact that they're not just seeing ghosts of the dead but also the living, despite their extended in-text attempts to analyze how they're getting these new powers. The characters don't feel believable -- their living situations seem somewhat plausible, but how they react to things feels off, with them just instantly being like "Oh I guess we have superpowers when we go urban exploring now" and none of the sense that they have to wrestle with this in themselves or sense of their feelings about this happening to them. Adding to this, there's a subplot about the boy Alex's family trying to prove that he's doing something other than his false excuse that he's in a band (to justify his spending time out late urban exploring) that goes nowhere. There's also a scene where they realize that the thing preventing them from exploring this one house further is a dog created by someone's fear, and literally bully that person into revealing an incredibly triggering trauma -- and by doing so resolve the trauma instead of, say, making it worse! It left a bad taste in my mouth. The art style is solid, but doesn't do anything particularly unique or evocative, which is a shame, because I think a surreal and psychological work like this could really benefit from having the art style itself change when they're in their 'superhuman' urbex ghost psychologist modes.

tl;dr -- good ideas, but they didn't pan out in ways I found satisfying.

Thank you to netgalley for this title in exchange for an honest review.