Review by Woodrow Phoenix

The Scarlet Shedder is the twelfth graphic novel in the Dog Man series. For those who may have noticed that over the last few adventures our canine hero has largely been relegated to the background as just another member of the extensive cast, this book is a welcome return for him closer to the centre of the action. Perhaps not all the way back, but much moreso than the last three books.

The pressure is on: the Chief has married Nurse Lady and now he’s leaving to go on his honeymoon. He’s left another cop in charge. But the new Chief is Maude who just happens to hate Dog Man (he keeps pooping in her filing cabinet). If that isn’t bad enough, Dog Man gets sprayed by a skunk and creates mayhem with his stinkiness. A bath in gallons and gallons of tomato juice neutralises the odour but leaves him red all over, “…as red as a thousand sunsets,” L’il Petey observes. That’s a lot of incident already, and we haven’t even met the villain yet. Before we do meet him, there is one more piece of bad luck for Dog Man that will have kids incredulous at the injustice.

Dav Pilkey has plenty more twists for the cast of characters in this adventure as Petey is presented with a terrible choice. He can help Dog Man out of his unfortunate situation, if he’s prepared to make a very big sacrifice: he’ll have to commit a crime to do it. Can he bring himself to take this backward step and break the law when he’s worked so hard to be good? Robot doubles, artificial intelligence and several more cliffhangers mean another funny, silly and friendship-affirming episode of this series.