Review by Woodrow Phoenix
In the previous Dog Man book Big Jim Begins, an invasion of extremely cuddly-looking but highly evil aliens called the Space Cuties From Space was foiled by the heroic interventions of Captain Cupcake (Big Jim’s superhero alter ego) and his sidekick, Sprinkles (Big Jim’s cellmate in cat jail, Grampa) with a little help from Dog Man. Among the fearsome weapons The Space Cuties From Space possess was a zapper that transformed everything they zapped from normal (by cartoon standards) to big-eyed, super-deformed ‘Supa Cute’. “Gee, I wonder if that zapper works on people?” asked Sarah Hatoff, world’s greatest reporter. It did. At the end of the adventure much of the city and the people in it had been transformed. Plus, other important points were unresolved, such as the location of Big Jim’s Ring of Destiny, an object possessing great powers.
Big Jim Believes starts where Big Jim Begins ended, with Big Jim and Grampa waking up in cat jail once again as they do every day, but this time Grampa gets to tell us his origin story too. The Space Cuties From Space come back for another try at taking over the Earth, and now they have an ingenious way to prevent the defeat that befell their plans the first time. Dave Pilkey’s skilfully meandering plotting takes us all around a variety of slapstick situations before yet again surprising his kid readers with an inevitable and funny conclusion that they will be delighted to just about guess before it happens.
The framing device for this whole series has been an extended joke that these adventures are the creation of the two boys Harold and George, originally from Captain Underpants. But they and their rudimentary style of scribbled and mis-spelled storytelling have been forgotten in the last few books as the presentation has become much more polished in style and increasingly sophisticated in content. This series has evolved a long way from its initially one-joke origins, making Dog Man himself largely irrelevant in these highly dialogue-driven stories that derive much of their effects from playing with words – although he does make a triumphant save at the end of this one. Where will this series go next and will it need to find a new title?
