Review by Woodrow Phoenix

Public protector Dog Man may have a human body but he is still a dog, and like all dogs easily distracted by squirrels, which absolutely must be chased, and especially distracted by the sight of a ball of any size. After the third incident in one week where a crook escapes justice by tricking Dog Man into fetching a ball instead, the Chief sends him home in disgust. Being unable to ignore a bouncing ball is definitely a problem for his crime-fighting effectiveness, but Dog Man has the natural instincts of any canine. What can he do about that? Maybe there is a solution. Can Li’l Petey and HD-80 help him by training him to stay focused and block out these distractions that trigger his chasing impulses?

After the trauma of being on the wrong side of the law in Brawl of the Wild, Dav Pilkey‘s hero undergoes quite a personal trial in For Whom the Ball Rolls. He’s not the only one having major personal issues. Petey the world’s most evil cat has told his better-natured kitten clone about his childhood traumas, and now Li’l Petey is trying in his own way to fix them, but that just leads to more complications. Meanwhile, there’s a new villain and a new hero, and more colourful crimes for everyone to get mixed up in. Dog Man continues to evolve Pilkey’s mixture of ridiculous gags and profound emotional moments into unusually complex territory for what began as a cartoony slapstick-filled joke machine, and the ending of this book indicates there’s plenty more character development to come. Next in the series is Fetch-22.