Review by Ian Keogh

Five volumes in, Mango and Brash the InvestiGators are proven laugh guarantees for regular readers, but don’t feel you have to start at the very beginning (although that’s a very good place to start), as John Patrick Green ensures new readers can pick things up quickly. Quite apart from anything else, the premise is there in the title. They’re alligator investigators.

The cheery sample art shows how Mango and Brash have put the now defunct RoboBrash, deactivated during Ants in Our P.A.N.T.S., to good use by converting it into their new headquarters, complete with new fittings. Yes, the second page shows them joyously swimming through the toilet pipes, which is the quickest method of transportation around the city, and as can be seen, the journey is accompanied by one of Green’s jolly jingles.

Green gets plenty of fun from the assorted other S.U.I.T. agents having new bases of operation after their HQ was destroyed, and as ever, there are plenty of diversions before Green stumbles into the main plot. People all over the city are picking up Boulder Buddies, glowing green rocks at $100 a pop, yet one morning they all disappear, along with the only person who’s been selling them. Clues point to someone called the Rock Mobster, and it means Brash and Mango going in disguise as gangsters Mikey Eyebrows and Vinnie Beardface.

As ever, Green’s simple cheerful cartooning is an instant access point to his world of silliness. Over five volumes he’s introduced a fine selection of eccentric characters, most of whom are given at least a cameo here, and several new personalities mark their presence, the highlight being Red Mobster. He’s not to be confused with Rock Mobster, and is crustacean with a claw in every criminal area of the city and he loves a nautical pun, some of which are really rather clever. So is the way in which the skimpy evidence eventually coalesces into the return of an old enemy.

Fun, fun, fun, with more to be had in Heist and Seek.