Monster Locker
A near apocalypse at the hands of an Aztec Earth goddess has led to the impossible: Pablo Ortiz is popular again. Since the publication 
of the first Monster Locker in October 2024, Pablo and his friends Takashi and Maggie have been working to banish the demons and mythical creatures that use Pablo’s basement locker as a FastPass into the human world back into their own dimension. Most of our trio is burnt out with all of their monster fighting, but Pablo is feeling the rush of finally being seen in a good way again and is pushing his friends to keep the monster banishing and their social capital up. The problem with being seen, though, is sometimes the wrong things are looking.
Monster Locker: Nine-Tail Trouble, scheduled for release April 21, 2026, sees creators Jorge Aguirre and Andrés Vera MartÃnez diving back into the world of the first book with a new focus and an equally lovely story. While monster banisher Pablo still acts as the protagonist, this story is really about his friend, the charmingly unhinged Takashi Rosenberg. Takashi is not overly thrilled with their heavily monster focused schedule and has a lot on his mind. He wants to get back to RPGs and becoming a J-Pop sensation and worrying about his upcoming Bar Mitzvah and missing his mom in Japan. Like many children from different, distinct backgrounds, Takashi doesn’t know how to reconcile his Judaism with his Japanese heritage and vice versa. He feels out of place in both, a situation escalated by his parents divorce and his mother’s physical distance. And this also leaves him vulnerable when a new, dangerous monster threatens not just the trio’s school and popularity, but the roots of their friendship.
I loved the first Monster Locker when it came out but felt like the side characters, like Takashi, didn’t get a lot of fleshing out and it’s like Aguirre and MartÃnez were reading my dream journal. This second volume not only gives Takashi amazing depth and a massive struggle with identity, but pulls folkloric characters from both of his heritages into the story. While the first book was like an ode to Pablo’s Meso American ancestry and Aztec gods, Nine-Tail Trouble sees Kitsune (the Japanese nine-tailed fox trickster) and a Golem (an animated, humanoid chunk of clay from Jew folklore) doing battle, turning Takashi’s internal struggle into a visibly destructive one.
With the shift in focus comes a shift in artistic style. While the first Monster Locker took a lot of visual inspiration from Meso American art, this one pulls in references to Medieval Jewish art to draw in the Golem’s background and soft Japanese watercolor for the Kitsune. It’s lovely to look at and the emotional heft is clear without being overpowering. Takashi’s struggle is universal and makes a powerful framework for this story.As much as I love the focus on Takashi, much like the first Monster Locker, the other characters are not given much time to grow. The story sees many of the characters from the first book return but all, even Pablo, our protagonist, take a backseat. I would love to see more balance between the characters and their growth in future volumes.
Aguirre and MartÃnez have created a world that has some of my favorite things about graphic novels: the stories are fun and surprising, the characters are unique but grounded in real emotional stakes, and the art is gorgeous. This series continues to please and I can’t wait for more.
Monster Locker: Nine-Tail Trouble
By Jorge Aguirre
Art by Andrés Vera MartÃnez
Macmillan First Second, 2026
ISBN: 9781250749765
Company Age Rating:Â 10-14
NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11), Teen (13-16), Tween (10-13)
Creator Representation: Colombian-American, ,
Character Representation: Japanese, Mexican-American, Jewish ,
