Review – Boo, The World’s Cutest Dog #1 (Dynamite)

Publisher: Dynamite Entertainment
Writers: Kristen Deacon, Audrey Elizabeth, Fernando Ruiz, Joelle Selner
Artist: Tony Fleecs, Fernando Ruiz, Rob Robbins
Release Date: 7th September 2016

World’s Cutest Dog is something of a subjective title, is it not? I mean, there are people out there who’d rate a pug as ‘cute’ – hideous bug-eyed snot-monsters that they are – and given that Boo is a Pomeranian, we’ll already have people disagreeing with the title’s bold assessment. I prefer German shepherds myself, but hey! 17 million Facebook likes and counting, and the relative success of the Grumpy Cat comic made this new series based on a celebrity dog all but an inevitability right? Yes, this is the world we live in. Embrace it. For it is embracing you.

Despite what I will admit is a rather grumpy opening paragraph, I won’t be able to keep it up. Because this is ultimately fun and frothy, and absolutely, completely inoffensive, unlike some of the more egregious examples of the meme-to-comic trend.

Featuring three stories – each with a vaguely puntastic title, a lá Angry Birds comics, only less rage-inducing – not a one of them is long enough to outstay its welcome, despite the first delving into saccharine contrivance rather too swiftly.

Ruiz’s second story – which he writes and draws – is the most fun, featuring Boo and his friends panicking slightly over their owner sleeping in and (shock horror!) not feeding them. It’s a tried and tested pets-as-protagonists tale, but Ruiz has a fun take on the animals’ internal monologues which punts it along quite nicely. The final story has Boo become an unexpected movie star, and Robbin’s art renders the action-y beats of Selner’s script in a perfectly fun way. Each of them is drenched in a sugar-coated palette that indicates that this is not exactly aimed at those of us who’ve been mired in the gritty, gritty greys of DC, or even the gritty, gritty all-of-the-other-colours of Marvel.

If you’ve custody of a tiny human, you can do infinitely worse than read this book with them – it’s not got epic, sweeping arcs or particular nuanced and compelling storytelling, but it’s got some silly jokes that’ll raise a chuckle and lovely, colourful art. Whether or not this’ll appeal to dogs themselves – presumably they’re the bulk of the 17 million likes on Facebook? – we’ll leave to your discretion. But one thing we can all agree on, I imagine, is that… yeah, Boo’s pretty cute.

Rating: 3/5.

PREVIEW ARTWORK
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