by Christopher P.N. Maselli
2025 / 160 pages
The Robinsons are an undercover spy family working for the UK. When someone hacks the British spy database, the Robinsons are the only spies whose cover wasn’t blown, so they are called up to see if they can track down the hacker. Mom and dad are up for it, and brother and sister Edgar and Christie are ready too.
In a nod to James Bond, they have their own super secret spy gadget supplier, a genius named W. The four of them end up traveling around the world, fighting an evil AI set on ruling the world.
This is an explicitly Christian comic from Focus on the Family, an organization dedicated to building up the family. They’ve had a decades-long-running audio drama called Adventures in Odyssey, and the “author” of this comic, Wooten, is one of the fictional characters from that drama. The comic itself was first serialized in Focus’s Clubhouse magazine for kids, with two-page spreads each issue. My daughters read a few of these chapters so they were very excited to get their hands on this complete collection of the whole 44-chapter Sleuth Family Robinson adventure.
That amounts to 88 pages, so what’s in the rest of this 160 page book? There’s some Sleuth Family Robinson trivia, and some background bios for the characters, but the bulk of the rest of the book is two page almost-devotional type reflections on the adventure. They explore questions like: What is a family?, Is it okay to fight? and The deal-o on adoption. I don’t know if kids will spend much time in this second half, but if they do, it offers a solid conservative Christian perspective
Cautions
The only caution I’d offer is for this second half, and only because the “author” Wooten will sometimes ask questions that would be better addressed together with parents, and not by a kid reading alone. For example, on page 142 Wooten asks, “Do you believe God answers prayers? Why or why not?” I like the question, but I would like to help my kids answer it.
But, again, I don’t know how much time kids will even spend in this second half, unless a parent is reading it with them.
Conclusion
Christian comics are noted for their lack of nuance – the bad guys will change from story to story, but subtlety is always the enemy, and right and wrong will always be belabored.
There’s some of that here too, but the art is fantastic, the story fast-paced, and the target audience young enough that being a bit obvious isn’t so bad. I’d pitch this to 10 and up, maybe all the way up to 16 if your family ever got Clubhouse magazine. I think even older teens will enjoy it then for the nostalgia.
