First debuting online last year as a serialised webcomic, the adventures of canine space adventurer Astrodog come to us from the witty mind of British artist Paul Harrison-Davies. Behind that stirring, slightly retro-futuristic cover we are invited into the world of an admirably intrepid four-legged friend on her own personal nocturnal mission to proudly go where no pooch has gone before…
Unlike the average family pet, Astrodog leads a secret life of rather epic proportions. As soon as her family have settled down for the evening she dons her astronaut costume, revs up the secret spaceship she keeps hidden under the garden lawn, and begins another night of cosmic cavorting. We’re witness to her misadventures as she visits an outer space fast food joint, explores a tasty (bone-shaped!) dog star, runs into a clowder of angry extraterrestrial cats there, and makes an enemy of a rather volatile alien. It’s all told in wordless yet wonderfully expressive style with a frenetic energy to Harrison-Davies’s ever engaging cartooning.
Astrodog is built on an intriguingly contradictory narrative foundation. On the one hand it’s a frantic, fast-paced page-turner that hardly gives the reader time to catch a breath before it throws its titular heroine into all manner of deep space spills. On the other – and before I say this let me emphasise that this is no bad thing – it’s essentially plotless. And therein lies a certain proportion of its charm. It’s simply the tale of one doggy adventurer travelling into space, having scrapes and reacting to them, with one perilous situation throwing her into another before her return to Earth.
Harrison-Davies has been on my radar for a while. His two stories in David O’Connell’s ink + PAPER #2 (reviewed here) and #4 (reviewed here) were both touching and full of very human warmth. Feelgood without being twee; adorable but in a quieter way that never descended into mawkishness. He has that ability to construct comics that are truly all-ages in appeal, embodying a childlike innocence in subject matter but also unafraid to employ a knowing wink at a slightly older readership.
That shows here because beyond the obvious cartoon-like feel of the main action there are plenty of moments in which a more (allegedly at least!) mature audience may discover pop cultural references. From the slightly Peanuts notion of a beagle with a double life to Astrodog’s Wonder Woman-type twirl to transform her into her astral alter ego, for example, or in something that looks suspiciously like a Scooby Doo-style sandwich in a bar with Star Wars cantina overtones. Even the £5.00 Earth money price tag may take you back to a cherished age of a certain Galaxy’s Greatest Comic…
Rich colouring brings the world of Astrodog to vibrant life with its eye-catching, attention-grabbing detail. Harrison-Davies is an artist able to pull of the big bangs and crashes of the slapstick space opera on offer here but he’s also someone with a nuanced eye for subtler visual character moments: Astrodog’s triumphant launch into space while family life obliviously goes on in the foreground for example, or our heroine nonchalantly enjoying her fast food while a barroom brawl breaks out around her.
I do, admittedly, have a heavy bias for print over digital so while the whole Astrodog saga is available to read online I still found it a more satisfying experience in its physical, landscape format. Besides which, when you’re sharing the fun of this wonderful book with a younger family member – as really should be obligatory with this comic – you’re going to get far more out of the old school feel of turning individual pages than you ever will from a computer screen…
You can order Astrodog here priced £6.00 from Paul Harrison-Davies’s online store. For more on Paul’s work visit his blog here.
