Check Out This Exclusive Clip From Lunch Lady: The Cyborg Substitute

Random House Children’s Books has provided ComicBook with an exclusive first look at their upcoming reissue of cartoonist Jarrett J. Krosoczka’s Lunch Lady series of all-ages graphic novels. The first four books in the series are about to be reissued for the first time as hardcover, full-color two-books-in-one editions: Lunch Lady: The First Helping and Lunch Lady: The Second Helping. The books both hit stands on February 22, 2022.

To celebrate the release, an excerpt from the first book, titled “The Cyborg Substitute,” can be seen below. According to Krosoczka, the story of a superhero lunch lady happened when, at age 23, he bumped into his childhood lunch lady out in the world.

“Remember being a kid and that overwhelming feeling of shock to run into a teacher at the grocery store? ‘Wait. Huh? My teachers are actual people who don’t live at the school,'” Krosoczka said in a statement to ComicBook. “I had that same sort of realization with my lunch lady, except I was 23. I had returned to my old elementary school with my first published book, a picture book called Good Night, Monkey Boy. As I set up my slide carousel in the cafetorium (this was 2001), I heard an unmistakable voice. I spun around, and there she was — Jeanne, the beloved lunch lady of my youth. We got to talking, and she told me all about her grandkids. And that is when it hit me. She didn’t live in the cafeteria. She had a life that I knew nothing about. WHAT?! That night, I opened my sketchbook and began to dream up a story about the secret lives of lunch ladies.”

The Lunch Lady books were a big hit, surpassing the book that actually touched of the encounter.

“That chance encounter not only led to my graphic novel series about a spatula-wielding superhero, but it also sent me zig-zagging across the country on book tours,” Krosoczka explained. “And in these pandemic times, I really miss those connections made with readers and friends at comic cons and library conventions. I have filled that void of comradery via my new podcast, Origin Stories. While I can’t hang with Gene Luen Yang or Raina Telgemeier in person, technology allows us to keep these connections going. But I look forward to soon having these chance encounters in real life again because small observations spark something in us to open up our sketchbooks and start scribbling.”

You can see the results of some of that scribbling below.