The Scarlet Shedder

Starred review from May 16, 2016
Dog Man, “a brand-new crime-fighting sensation” created by surgically attaching the head of a police dog to the body of a policeman, gets his own full-color adventure in this terrifically funny spin-off comic from Pilkey (the character’s origins were previously revealed in Captain Underpants and the Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers). Dog Man doesn’t play by the rules, whether it’s the rules about being housebroken or the ones about not giving the police chief slobbery dog kisses. But desperate times require maverick behavior: Petey the cat, one of the loopiest villains in children literature, has four chapters’ worth of evil plots aimed at taking Dog Man down—from destroying all books to make the world “supa dumb” (a tactic that will be familiar to those who read Pilkey’s contribution to Comics Squad: Recess!) to unleashing a “weenie-lution” of oversensitive living hot dogs (“We’re not cute, either! We’re gangsta!” insists their very touchy leader). Jose Garibaldi’s coloring makes every page of this superlative police procedural spoof look as sharp as it is silly, and readers (of any age) will be giggling from start to finish. Ages 7–up.

May 1, 2024
Dog Man takes on AI in his latest adventure. Guess who wins. Since AI is built on predictive models, it hasn't got a chance in the Pilkeyverse. The story gleefully whipsaws readers from Chief and Nurse Lady's nuptials (not an eye will be dry after Li'l Petey and Molly's rendition of the traditional wedding theme) to Dog Man's encounter with a skunk (his subsequent tomato-juice bath turns him red, leading to his new Supa Buddy incarnation as the Scarlet Shedder) to Dog Man's imprisonment for the crime of "moral turpitude" to Dr. Scum's evil plot to "crush the world" with an army of AI robots to Petey's poignant flashbacks to his childhood experience with homelessness. Add in some truly inspired Flip-O-Rama sequences and many terrible jokes, and it's clear that Pilkey's in top form here. In between gales of helpless laughter, readers will engage with serious themes. The author leverages the silliness to explore the algorithm's dark side with the AI robots' plot to "distract, divide, [and] dominate" humanity, using stratagems readers may well recognize from real life. Hilariously, the robots' dialogue is rendered in a pixelated typeface straight from 1980s computing, undermining their boasts that they're "SMARTER... / ...FASTER... / ...and STRONGER than" humans. A concluding page of thoughtful notes provides some additional context (and defines turpitude). Human characters are racially diverse; Dr. Scum is a sickly green. Wise foolishness from the master. (dramatis personae) (Graphic adventure. 8-12)

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