Twenty Thousand Fleas Under the Sea

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, 2023
When Dog Man accompanies Chief and Nurse Lady on a date, it kicks off a series of events that find the doughty hero deep in the evil Piggy's sweat gland facing off against a microscopic parasitic mite. The plot of Pilkey's latest adventure featuring his canine-human hybrid cop is characteristically Rube Goldberg-ian, with such cheerfully bizarre twists as the rupturing of the mini-jail containing Piggy when a dog named Mister Stinkles picks it up and drops it. That Mister Stinkles is being walked by the dog-hostile restaurateur who tried to refuse service to Dog Man a few pages earlier is just one of this outing's many delights. The fleas of the title are actually the Fuzzy Little Evil Animal Squad, but only one of them--the aforementioned Piggy--can be called evil. Indeed, his henchcreatures are so amiable that they've joined the Friendly Friends with Daryl the moth, much to Piggy's disgust. Threading through the silliness are some serious themes, and readers who peer past the madcap antics will find critiques of the carceral system and the social media feedback loop of fear and anger. Fueled by loud, frenetic colors (courtesy of Garibaldi and Dzioba), this adventure's got something for just about everyone, including a heartwarming conclusion. Chief presents Black; most other human characters present White. Supa satisfying. (cast of characters, drawing tips, notes & fun facts) (Graphic adventure. 8-12)

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