Review by Ian Keogh

Pigmund and his best mate Lizárdo are sick of being petted at the petting zoo, so organise an escape involving a toy train and chickens. Read all about it in the opening chapter. Once out in the wide world, though, there comes the problem of their future feeding and comfort, but Pigmund has an idea about that: they’ll be freelance pets, an open-ended agreement, but with a definite no-petting clause.

Dennis Messner comes to The Unpetables via a long career in animation, which accounts for the formidable cartooning skills and an ability to compress the necessities for a dense comedy experience. This is a relatively slim book at ninety pages, but Messner packs a lot in.

Pigmund and Lizárdo are a classic comedic duo, with Pigmund the smart go-getter, the brains of the outfit, yet with an unfailing loyalty to the millstone around his neck in the form of Lizárdo, who’s a random wild card. Even Pigmund acknowledges the lack of common sense. Their mortal enemy is Maintenance Man Kenny, who may only be the maintenance man at Uncle Milo’s All-Natural Petting Zoo, but takes any escape very seriously indeed.

Messner’s method is combined text and illustration serving as Pigmund’s illustrated recollections from escape onward. The drawings are busy and expressive, taking the absurd situations and passing them off as reality. They’re beautifully composed, each a little cartoon joy.

There is a plot thread connecting the chapters, but these are excuses to gather a selection of jokes around a topic, such as the search for a client and the assorted failures, each scene ending with Pigmund and Lizárdo running away in horror. Young readers will recognise the types of people seen and share the panic. Eventually a client who wants quirky pets is found, but the adage of something being too good to be true applies. Holding everything together is the expressive anarchy of Pigmund and Lizárdo, a toned down youngster-friendly form of Evan Dorkin’s Milk and Cheese.

The Unpetables is a great graphic novel, to be enjoyed by children and adults alike. The stream of consciousness events are hilarious, the cartooning expressive and the imagination immense. It all leads up to a perfect final panel, and the pair return in Unpetable in the City.