Review by Frank Plowright

Before discussing the multiverse or indeed any mix-up occurring in it, let’s take a moment to appreciate Jamie Smart conceiving one of the all time great comedy pun titles in ‘With Snails & I”. Skunky introduces the Mongolian Death Snail, but discovers the limitations of instructing them to ravage the woods. Even before then we’ve seen the threat of the Underground Mammoth.

Yes, Smart continues to expand the minds of readers with brilliantly silly concepts, and with some real scientific theory. The idea of the multiverse is so simply introduced via a portal opening in the woods one day from a universe where the natures of the cast are reversed. A meek Skunky is forced to create inventions for an aggressive Bunny, and when the dust clears two Pigs find themselves on different worlds.

Smart uses that to reinforce the “vs” aspect of the title, having the characters gather and realign into new teams now that Evil Pig is part of the mix. Because Smart does it so well, it sometime seems as if the chaos has a recipe. Let Monkey make a bulldozer to knock down all the trees in the woods, but it doesn’t work because he’s made it from plasticine, yet there’s planning here that plays out in future volumes. The first glitch occurs here, yet that’s trial run for a plot playing out three books down the line in The Great Big Glitch! Even Pig being swapped for an alternate Pig is used again in The Impossible Pig! It’s not just the big ideas, though, as the little ones are so great, such as the portal to another universe needing a jam sandwich stuffed into the machinery to make it work.

That’s a preface to the nearest there is to a title story, which begins with the mind-boggling idea of Skunky sitting outside time and space rescuing bubbles containing alternate dimensions. Bunny is transferred from one to the next with Smart mixing a series of genre parodies with nutty ideas like an organised Monkey running a company, until they reach the End of Existence! It’s a constantly shifting miasma of nightmare variations that finishes with a clever tying in to the strip in which Pig is replaced.

Toward the end there’s another continuing plot as Monkey is replaced by his orderly counterpart, an idea obviously worth repeating. Unlike the usual Monkey wanting to destroy the woods, this version finds them too irregular and sets about tidying them up. Imagine Monkey smart enough to make good use of Skunky’s inventions. Scary, huh?

All the conceptual intelligence could be entirely wasted if Smart didn’t also give his readers a solid slapstick laugh in every strip. Seven volumes in, he’s long mastered the perfect pacing for his five page strips and this is another selection of gems.