YOU AND ME AND THE PEANUT BUTTER BEAST

At the enticing suggestion of Plotty the talking book, two adventurers fall into series of really deep plot holes, with a peanut butter disaster waiting at the climax.

As readers of the series opener, You and Me and the Land of Lost Things (2025) will expect, daffy doings await the clueless duo, whose heads are, hilariously, concealed in cardboard boxes throughout Hope’s large and comical drawings. As he pitches the unnamed pair into one seemingly bottomless hole after another, Griffiths delivers some doozies—from remarkably springy giant mushrooms and subterranean flowers with names like Smellius Buttoxium and Carnivorous Horribilis, to a ravening, sluglike monster with but one thing on its mind: “PEANUD BUDDAR!” Along with persistently dueling with blocks of narrative for page space, the droll line art occasionally takes over entirely with inset minicomics and several elaborately detailed full-spread scenes. The highlights include a cutaway view of the Peanut Butter Beast’s very insides, complete with ingested adventurers and a half-digested T-Rex. Following climactic peanut butter mayhem, all comes round right, with a blank Official Adventurer License at the end as a lasting reward for staying the course. “That was our deepest and darkest adventure ever!” exclaims the narrator. Not to mention the nuttiest.

A gooey goof, featuring one sticky situation after another.