Gabrielle's Reviews > Stranger Things Omnibus: Afterschool Adventures

This book is a cute little graphic novel about what happens to the younger characters of “Stranger Things” between seasons. I fully admit that I had not paid close attention to the content before I got my copy, so word of warning: this is definitely aimed at a young adult audience: the stories are fun, but some little teachable moments are added in there, for good measure.

“Zombie Boys” is about the AV Club gang getting together with a new student to make a zombie movie, which helps Will, who still feels quite rattled by his experience in the Upside Down and by his new nickname. “The Bully” is about Troy, the mean little bully El put back in his place twice over the first season, and his attempt to understand what happened. And finally, “Erica the Great” is about Erica Sinclair’s attempt to get her girlfriends to play D&D, and how that doesn’t quite work out the way she expected.

The first story was cute, and I do appreciate the underlying message, that art can help us heal and reclaim who we are after trauma – and that scary movies can actually help us cope with real-life scary stuff, and I simply loved the last story, but then Erica is one of my favorite supporting characters: she is utterly terrifying and tragically underutilized, I hope they fix that in season 5. The middle story about Troy was an interesting choice: it shows that bullies usually learn their behavior somewhere, and tend to be just as terrified as the people they pick on, albeit for different reasons. And this will sound harsh, but Stranger Things does disgusting bully characters so-well that I am kind of indifferent to attempts at redeeming them.

Overall, a cute and fun little collection of bite-sized stories, but I would not consider it a significant addition to the universe’s cannon.