Impossible Possums
By Justin Colón
Carl is bad. Bad to the bone. The only thing that would make being this bad even better would be someone to share it with. Cue the Possum Populator and a whole bunch of bad guys.
Perfect for fans of Despicable Me and Lilo & Stitch, this exceptionally goofy picture book stars aspiring villain Carl the possum, who is on a mission to create a like-minded conspirator.
Life as an aspiring villain is lonely for Carl the possum, so he’s on a mission to create a like-minded conspirator. But when his Possum Populator arrives, it requires assembly (and villains don’t have time for that). So, Carl tosses the instructions, leading to a series of outlandish mishaps and mounting frustration as the contraption pops out all the wrong creations.
Hilarious and imaginative, this picture book will have readers laughing and eager for more diabolical misadventures with Carl at the helm.
This is the book where I had the most creative freedom of my career. Disney-Hyperion, my editor Sylvie Frank and my art director Tyler let me run wild, and I took full advantage. I designed every speech bubble and all the lettering inside them, from Carl’s villainous rants to the way the computer “talks.”
Kirkus called the illustrations “dynamic” and “riotous,” praising their “typographical creativeness.” That’s exactly the energy I was after.
Fun fact: I hid a ridiculous number of Easter eggs throughout the book: nods to the ’90s and early-2000s cartoons I grew up with, and to movies like Alien, The Warriors and The Terminator.
How many can you spot?
On the bookshelf in my room sits a little statue of Pinky and the Brain, hunched over blueprints, plotting to take over the world. So when Alex called saying, “Oh my goodness, this is THE book for you,” and pitched it as a hilarious possum version of Pinky and the Brain, I literally turned around, looked at that statue, and smiled. It felt like the universe had made the decision for me.
Justin reached out early on to tell me he’d love to see Carl as a cartoon someday, and after reading the manuscript, I felt exactly the same. My background is in visual development, designing characters and backgrounds for animation, so I approached Impossible Possums and its sequel like animated features: every page a frame, every possum a character model, every room a set. Then I got to work.
My favorite spread in the book. The Possum Populator goes haywire and buries Carl’s world in pasta, pizza, pickles, pelicans, pythons, piranhas and piñatas. If you want to know who Carl is, it’s all right here: absolute chaos.
Under the jacket. For Impossible Possums, I designed the hidden case cover as Carl’s stolen blueprint for the Possum Populator: the logo, the type, every line of fine print, and his red-pen “improvements,” plus the spine. The “official” manual is riddled with typos on purpose, from a company that clearly couldn’t care less. It was my first time designing a case cover separately from the jacket.
Impossible Possums was published by Disney-Hyperion on October 22, 2024, and Carl’s villainy continued in Impossible Possum for Mayor! in 2025.
