If the Pokémon phenomenon has illustrated one thing, it's that childhood is a world to itself, complete with folkways and obsessions glimpsed but never fully understood by those on the other side of puberty. Before it became almost unreadably repetitive, Matt Groening's Life In Hell understood this. So does Steven Weissman's Yikes, which creates what amounts to an alternate version of Peanuts starring such unusual children as Pullapart Boy, a pair of brother-and-sister cowpokes named The Li'l Tin Stars, and Li'l Bloody, a junior vampire. It sounds gimmicky, but one of Weissman's gifts is his ability to integrate such concepts into a world in which they're just part of the scenery. Champs extends the childhood-as-alternate-universe conceit of Yikes into a graphic novel, and it benefits from the expansion. The story centers on a big-wheel tournament that threatens to divide the Yikes gang when Pullapart Boy befriends a highly competitive pro racer. Not much happens in Champs—races are run, lessons learned—but Weissman's creation, not to mention his distinctive comic-strip style, remains charming from start to finish. It's an odd exploration of an odd little world that indirectly captures childhood better than most literal representations do.