AMY GETS EATEN

A kernel of corn takes an exciting and informative trip through the digestive system.

Continuing to work the proposition that science is more fun when it’s silly and gross, the creators of Kay’s Anatomy (2022)—a gleefully daffy alternative to Gray’s Anatomy—double down with an alimentary odyssey that begins in the mouth of a tan-skinned youngster who gobbles up pizza topped with lime, an egg, and a piece of corn named Amy (“Hey, don’t judge him. We all like different things on our pizza”). With a wise old raisin providing explanations as they go, the giddy if indigestible grain meets her consumer’s past few meals in the stomach, surfs on a wave of digestive juices into the small intestine, passes into the large, and finally waves at readers from atop a brown mass of poop in a school toilet before being flushed into a Rube Goldberg–esque tangle of sewage pipes and waterways. “WOO-HOO!” shouts Amy. “I wonder what my next adventure will be!” Leaning heavy on humorous dialogue and asides, Kay clearly conveys the science of digestion. Shepherding the wide-eyed kernel from stage to stage, Paker puts faces on the wormy apple, ketchup-covered cake, and other mixed-up stomach residents that flow along until they’re absorbed into the twisting, turning intestinal walls.

Rarely if ever has the anatomical food-to-poop connection been made with greater gusto.