Basically Pokemon set in an Arabian world. Younger kids will probably love this although it's quite wordy for a book aimed towards children. The art was enticing with bright colors but overly busy at times.

Cute!
I can see this being popular with fans of manga like Digimon or Pokemon. It's very much "kids with pet monsters who want to fight and evolve them." There are also a few elements from the Arabian Nights stories (the main character is one of the 40 thieves and it is set in a vaguely Aabian/Egyptian/Middle-Easternish world).
Cute character designs too, especially the costumes and Golems.

We tend to associate the world of magical fantasy, spells and demons with a much darker setting, and even in those books where there are academies training aspiring young wizards. Comic artist Nicolas Sauge with writers Josselin Azorin-Lara and Sylvain Dos Santos take a different approach in Golam, setting their adventure of young magicians in training in a brighter and more colourful Arabian Nights setting, where the worlds of magic, spells and demons is actually just as much at home.

Before we get to the training programme for aspiring alchemists, the first few pages of Golam -Volume 1: The Son of the Moon introduce us to the nature of those powers, how they are used and how one enterprising young tearaway somehow gets mistaken for a wizard and ends up on what looks to be a dangerous and challenging programme. We are in Aassima in the world of Naitoo, and a tournament between two alchemists shows how skilled individuals can call on and control the arcanic energy that flows around the planet and channel it to create Golams, monstrous chimerical beasts of energy.

On the streets of Aassima however, such tournaments only serve to provide rich pickings for the Forty Thieves, a gang of wild runaway youths under the control of gang master Khalil. Mehdi, the oldest of the thieves, is planning to escape however, but Khalil has discovered that the young pickpocket has been putting aside some of the takings for himself and he isn't happy about it. Summoning a demon to deal with Mehdi, something goes wrong with the spell resulting in Khalil himself being on the receiving end and now under the power of Mehdi as he makes his escape.

Taking advantage of a temporary portal opened up for new candidates, Mehdi finds himself transported to Tassil Arch near Hikmadrassa, the location of the best alchemy school in the world, with the latest intake of students hoping to hone their magic skills there. Entrance into Hikmadrassa isn't that easy however, and the young students are immediately tested by a Golam challenge before they even get to the school. Mehdi has no alchemy or golam quick-thinking survival instincts of a born street thief. Teaming up with a partner, there's a chance he might just survive to get as far as Hikmadrassa, but that's only going to be the beginning of his challenges.

The young adult adventures and the exploration of magic powers inevitably invites comparisons with Harry Potter, but the references of Golam are very different from the characteristics of traditional magical fantasy. The whole bold cartoonish designs and colouration aligns the adventures of these young magicians more closely with the manga and anime worlds of Blue Exorcist or Fairy Tail. Or Pokemon even, which is there to some extent in the use of personal totems used for tournaments that can be stored in little devices known here as 'kandils'. The creatures however are rather less cute in Golam and considerably more dangerous.

The real fun in Golam will undoubtedly follow in subsequent volumes, but the introductory chapter sets the scene well and is not short on epic monster battles between wild imaginative creatures. There's also a good group of characters assembled here from different kingdoms, each with their own personalities and skills, and of course you have the wildcard maverick among them, Mehdi. Even in its Arabian setting is not the most original of ideas and you can expect Golam to play out along the familiar lines, but there's a little bit of humour and comic exaggeration to create plenty of dynamic in the characters and situations here and plenty of scope to extend its imaginative use of the magical powers, creatures and adventures in future volumes.

A gladiator battle—between alchemists—leads to huge clunky info drops from the announcers. Nice way to start in general, but too much info to throw in so soon. And in the end the story isn’t about any of those characters after all, but rather a pickpocket in the stands.
“You can choose your destiny. . . dude.” Ugh, in a far-off kingdom full of magic, they still say “dude?” And when a horrifying demon says “Yikes!”. . .
That jaw gape at the Darth Vader revelation. . . too much, but still hilarious.
At the end the preppie gives an explanation of alchemy, which would have been welcome at the beginning.
Big colorful cartoonish art style; that’s not a bad thing. Can’t say the same for the story. This could have been great, but it’s basically too much too soon, going for long explanations and cheap laughs. At the end it says there’s going to a sequel, so maybe some of the info dumps could have been saved for that. As it was, all the stuff thrown at me lowered the overall quality.

Oh dear, this was a mess. A YA fantasy comic, with one of the 40 Thieves of this particular Arabic-themed world, who hates alchemists (magicians who make living monsters in a similar way to how a Green Lantern makes other things) – but has a secret past, and an unknown destiny – right amongst the people he protests to hate. Colours are OK, but the artwork is really not up to it – scale is off the wall bad, it's hard to know what's what or what is happening to who or what, and the script really didn't help guide us to a place where we had any interest in anything.

'Golam Vol. 1: The Son of the Moon' by Josselin Azorin-Lara and Sylvain Dos Santos with art by Nicolas Sauge is a fun fantasy graphic novel for younger readers.

When we start the story, we are shown an arena battle in the city of Aassima, complete with color commentary by two onlookers. Two wizards battle each other using conjured golams. This tells us we are in a place where magic is powerful. We next meet a young pickpocket named Mehdi. Through a series of circumstances, he finds himself out in the desert and about to start an initiation to join the Hikmadrassa magic school. He is confused why he is there, and hopefully he can pass the entrance exam.

The book ends with a couple short Golam gags in a manga sort of style. These give us some background into the world.

I liked it, but the art at times was a bit too busy to follow what was going on. I think younger readers would like this, and it reads like some animated series about young apprentices learning magic. The setting felt a bit unique. It was just odd to call the creatures golam when to me they seemed more like djinn, but this is a small matter.

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

I really enjoyed this graphic novel! I thought the storyline was really cool, and the world was also very interesting! I thought the idea of creating golams was fun and it was cool to see everyone's different powers and golams. I will say that I think this should be categorized in the teen genre instead of children just because the story can be difficult for some kids and there was some cussing. All in all I really liked this, and I am excited to see where this story goes.