Yago wanted to use his computer skills to earn extra cash and support his family. But something went horribly wrong: his teacher, the greatest hacker in the country, is accused of a crime he didn't commit-and an innocent girl is blackmailed. Thus begin the adventures in Hackerteen . You know that the Internet is amazing because it opens up new worlds, but not all of them are safe. While you're communicating with your friends, you could be leaving yourself open to viruses, identity theft, and all the creeps on the Web. You need to know what you're doing and-more importantly-what other people are up to! As you follow Yago and his hacker buddies in their fight against crackers, the bad guys of the internet world, you'll learn

• How Internet technologies work

• How some people try to hurt others online

• Key ways to protect yourself

• How people can work together on the Internet to make the world a better place You have a choice: be a victim of the skeezers or be part of the solution. Fight back with Hackerteen !

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 9 Ratings

Fun read for teens and comic book fans - 2008-06-22
Reviewer Rating:
When I picked this book up, my first thought was "This is a very non-traditional O'Reilly book". I dare say, this is O'Reilly's first technology book published in comic book form. But it absolutely makes sense as to why they did it. Take your typical teenager. How many of them would willingly pick up a "traditional" computer book to read up on open-source, linux, and internet crimes? Unless they're ber-geeky, I'd say pretty much none of them would do that. This is what is so absolutely perfect about this book: it's exactly what I would have picked up as a teen--both for fun and as a way to learn more about technology.

The story is about Yago, a young assistant teacher at "Hackerteen", an elite school for gifted computer students. While trying to get some money to help his family out of a tough situation, he writes a program he shouldn't have. Shortly after, he must race to undo the damage his actions have done.

This is a graphic novel, which is a lot of fun to read. It shows teens examples of risky internet behavior and what some of the serious consequences of that behavior can be. I'd highly recommend this book for teens who want to learn more about internet technologies and ways to protect themselves online. It's a fun read and I loved the drawings. I can't wait for volume 2!

Not A Bad Introduction to Some Technology Concepts for Middle Schoolers - 2009-01-25
Reviewer Rating:
/InternetBlackout/ is a graphic novel about Yago, a computer-obsessed teen whose parents send him to a Hackerteen, a school for children to learn ethical computer programming and use. While he is there, he's approached by someone requesting that he write a tracking program to follow someone's online movements. Wanting to help his father who's been having financial difficulties running his bakery, he agrees, and the program ends up being used by unethical hackers.

The art is a mix of computer generated and manga, but is clean and easy to read. The story introduces a number of technical and ethical concepts from open source software and voting machine security, to plagiarism and cheating. Not really aimed at an older (or technically sophisticated) audience, it is probably a good book for middle school kids.

Good but needs to be less predictable... - 2008-09-23
Reviewer Rating:
The following review was written by my 10 year old daughter:

Hackerteen is a comic book about a boy named Yago, who has exceptional computer skills. His worried and clueless parents enroll him in a school for hackers, which has a reputation for teaching hackers to use their skills for good (white hat hacker school).

I think it was a very good idea to make something that kids will read that shows the good side of the word _Hacker_. I personally thought it should have had some twists or something of the sort that would make it less predictable. I can see that the girl that Yago helped out is going to turn into something but she is obviously not a hacker. There is a girl hacker on the Yago's team but she doesn't really do anything. All we girls out here need girl role models. All in all I think it's a good idea yet it still needs a little help to get it on the right path.


And here's a short review by myself:

Hackerteen is a good guy hacker story for tween and teen boys. Young boy becomes good guy uberhacker, fights bad guys, faces moral dilemmas, saves the family, and tries to win the girl. The plot and character development are fairly 2 dimensional. The other downside is that girls are portrayed as weak, beautiful, and contribute little beyond needing to be saved.

Tossed into the mix are footers with url links for interested kids to find out more about technological and organizational references. There is a lot of not so subtle healthy propaganda against the abuses of big business and central governments. But not much more than the anti-establishment vigilantee leanings you'll find in your typical comic book.

Two things I liked very much were that the hero, Yago, isn't perfect. He makes a bad choice and has to deal with the consequences. Also, in the end, the bad guys are defeated not through the heroic efforts of a single individual, but by people working together.

Not bad at all! - 2008-08-12
Reviewer Rating:
Story - I read this book in one sitting, and overall enjoyed the story and direction. Granted, this is a comic book for children, the story can be childish and simpli. However, hackers are usually portrayed as criminals, and Hackerteen shows these geeks in a positive light. I enjoyed that the author made the protagonists almost super heroes. There were some really cliche moments with the bad guys being the stereotype sunglasses-indoors wearing tech baddies. We see our protagonist go from youngster to full-fledged super-hacker karate kid style, as the book description implies. There's also some teen tension and a small love interest subplot; exactly what teens are looking for!
My favorite part was when the protagonist recommends a webcam to another character based on it having open source drivers. Not only is that how any of my nerdy friends would react, but I know what model real-life camera that's referencing!

Art - The biggest problem I had with this graphic novel is the art production. Sure, the full color pages are awesome, but the actual design is pretty low production. It reminds me of a comic I did in junior high! My friends have described the art style as a South American anime rip-off. There are plenty of low quality backgrounds like one color gradients and things.

Misc - Including URLs to the technical vocabulary was an awesome touch. At times, I found the highlighted terms to be extremely novice and other times too technical for beginners. Perhaps this was the author's vision. I also do not know why they were all php documents? A directory redirect would have sufficed and been cleaner. But this review just got really nerdy.

Overall, I applaud the book's efforts for putting out a tech based action story that rivals hacker movies. I look forward to checking out future volumes in the series.

A little "corney" for older kids - 2008-06-16
Reviewer Rating:
I used to read comic books as a kid (I'm 30 now), so I was looking forward to this comic book about "Hackerteen". I work in IT, so the subject was especially interesting to me.

The quality of the binding, artwork and colors is very good. However the dialog and story fell short of my expectations. The story starts out with a one page intro in the current time. Then we flash back to 6 years earlier, and start to learn about Yago (weird name, I keep wanting to call him Yugo, like the automobile), the main character.

My main issues with the story were that it felt a little silly, and the technology terms felt like they were kind of just thrown in. By silly, I mean the dialog sometimes sounds like its aimed at an 8 year old. I don't know what age bracket O'Reilly was targeting with this book, but I didn't even start reading comics until I was around 12 or 13.

The way the technology was talked about in the book made it seem like it was being written by someone with a very cursory knowledge of the terms they were throwing around. Like - ok we need to mention "OpenOffice", how do we work that into the story? So at one point there is a frame of Yago getting a text message on his cell phone that says "Yago, your contribution solved the OpenOffice.org problem". There had been no mention of any problem, OpenOffice or otherwise before this nor was it brought up again afterwards. I get they are trying to "tease" you and leave it up to the reader to track it down and figure it out, but it just didn't seem to flow very well. Another example is when they talked about DNS. It feels forced, like they wrote the story around the buzzwords.

Most of the terms have an asterisk by them, and if you look at the bottom of the page there is a URL you can go to for more information. But they don't all work. Taking off the ".php" may get you better results. The book has been out for at least a month now, I don't know why they haven't fixed this yet.

I plan to give this to a 14 year old I know and then get his thoughts about it, I'll try to update my review when that happens.

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