Probably not to everyone’s taste—but sure to be popular with the fart and barf set.
It’s take two for Catwad and Blurmp, along with more giggles, grossness, and exaggeration.
Blue-gray Catwad hates everything except torturing his painfully naïve and pathologically happy orange roommate, Blurmp. Across 25 named episodes ranging from three to seven pages of brightly colored comic panels, the two cats play pranks and toss out one-liners at each other’s expense. In “Gaming,” Blurmp is really enjoying his video game even after Catwad points out that the controller is not connected…and the game is actually a commercial for a diarrhea remedy. In “Salad,” Blurmp makes Catwad a salad that Catwad does not want to eat. Catwad points out that koalas, cows, manatees, and pandas all eat nothing but salad and are “slow and lazy.” Blurmp realizes that Catwad doesn’t want to eat the salad because (poking Catwad’s flab) Catwad must eat a lot of salads already. In “Dumb,” Blurmp is patient zero in a dumbness epidemic that destroys the world—thankfully it’s only Catwad’s nightmare, but it prompts Catwad to take Blurmp to “save the world.” Fans of Benton’s first collection will probably enjoy this one even more (and hope for a third). The target audience won’t know Ren and Stimpy, but they may see Squidward and SpongeBob in this feline friendship. A couple of puzzles round out the collection at the close.
Probably not to everyone’s taste—but sure to be popular with the fart and barf set. (Graphic short stories. 7-11)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-32603-1
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Silly and inventive fast-paced fun
A zippy graphic-novel series opener featuring two comically bumbling reptile detectives.
As agents of SUIT (Special Undercover Investigation Team) with customized VESTs (Very Exciting Spy Technology) boasting the latest gadgetry, the bright green InvestiGators Mango and Brash receive their newest assignment. The reptilian duo must go undercover at the Batter Down bakery to find missing mustachioed Chef Gustavo and his secret recipes. Before long, the pair find themselves embroiled in a strange and busy plot with a scientist chicken, a rabid were-helicopter, an escape-artist dinosaur, and radioactive cracker dough. Despite the great number of disparate threads, Green manages to tie up most neatly, leaving just enough intrigue for subsequent adventures. Nearly every panel has a joke, including puns (“gator done!”), poop jokes, and pop-culture references (eagle-eyed older readers will certainly pick up on the 1980s song references), promising to make even the most stone-faced readers dissolve into giggles. Green’s art is as vibrant as an overturned box of crayons and as highly spirited as a Saturday-morning cartoon. Fast pacing and imaginative plotting (smattered with an explosion here, a dance number there) propel the action through a whimsical world in which a diverse cast of humans live alongside anthropomorphized reptiles and dinosaurs. With its rampant good-natured goofiness and its unrelenting fizz and pep, this feels like a sugar rush manifested as a graphic novel.
Silly and inventive fast-paced fun . (Graphic fantasy. 7-10)Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21995-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock”...
The theme of persistence (for better or worse) links four tales of magic, trickery, and near disasters.
Lachenmeyer freely borrows familiar folkloric elements, subjecting them to mildly comical twists. In the nearly wordless “Hip Hop Wish,” a frog inadvertently rubs a magic lamp and finds itself saddled with an importunate genie eager to shower it with inappropriate goods and riches. In the title tale, an increasingly annoyed music-hating witch transforms a persistent minstrel into a still-warbling cow, horse, sheep, goat, pig, duck, and rock in succession—then is horrified to catch herself humming a tune. Athesius the sorcerer outwits Warthius, a rival trying to steal his spells via a parrot, by casting silly ones in Ig-pay Atin-lay in the third episode, and in the finale, a painter’s repeated efforts to create a flattering portrait of an ogre king nearly get him thrown into a dungeon…until he suddenly understands what an ogre’s idea of “flattering” might be. The narratives, dialogue, and sound effects leave plenty of elbow room in Blocker’s big, brightly colored panels for the expressive animal and human(ish) figures—most of the latter being light skinned except for the golden genie, the blue ogre, and several people of color in the “Sorcerer’s New Pet.”
Alert readers will find the implicit morals: know your audience, mostly, but also never underestimate the power of “rock” music. (Graphic short stories. 8-10)Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59643-750-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
