Kirby, Rob – Ginger the Wonder Dog

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Ginger the Wonder Dog

A cautionary tale before I get started: there’s a fine line between packaging your comics so that they’ll be safe from the vagaries of postal workers and packing them too tightly for me to get at them without risk of damaging the books. You might not even be able to see it on the scan (I stopped quickly when I realized what was happening), but this book was so solidly packaged that I made a nice long tear along the top of it just trying to get the book out. I wish I had the perfect answer to give you on this one, but a good rule of thumb is to imagine what somebody would have to do to open a package as you are putting it together. Now that my scolding for the day is out of the way, who likes dogs? I’ve always been more of a cat person, but a few dogs in my life have definitely won me over in a big way and I totally understand the person who likes them more than cats. This is a collection of stories about Ginger, with a few guest artists coming in towards the end with their own interpretations of certain stories. Rob starts with a pictorial list of all of the dogs he’s had over the years with some brief commentary and ends with a list of all of his favorite dog stories in comics. He’s right, #38 of King Cat (which was apparently reprinted by Drawn & Quarterly a few years back if you’re interested, and you should be) was the greatest family dog story ever. Anyway, stories in here include Ginger’s awkward way of greeting new people, a day in the life of the “neighborhood patrol,” the inevitable meeting with a skunk, an adapted poem that sums up dog thoughts nicely, and a short list of pros and cons. The agree of adorableness in this book will vary based on your opinion of dogs, but even the biggest dog hater in the world would have to crack a smile at a few of these stories. Well worth a look for people of all pet dispositions and pretty much indispensable for dog lovers. As always, there’s a solid chunk of samples up at his website if you’re on the fence. No price listed though, so I’m going with $3 as my random guess.