THE BARK KNIGHT RISES! Dog Man and the Cat Kid by Dav Piikey

George:"What up, Poochies? We're George and Harold."

Harold: "Me, too! As you may remember, we're in 5th Grade now."

George: "That means we're totally mature. Anyhoo, our new teacher has been making us read all of these old-timey books lately. So anyway, East of Eden is actually a pretty cool book about good and evil and stuff."

Harold: "It totally inspired us! So now we started making a brand-new Dog Man graphic novel!

It's a tale of good... ... a tale of evil... and STUFF!"

Yes, dear readers, Dog Man (that modern medical transplant miracle--a canine police dog's head on a sturdy human cop's body) is back again. It seems that Petey (The World's Evilest Cat) is back, bent on revenge against his arch enemy, Dog Man. In the last installment of their story, Petey attempted to clone himself, the better to defeat Dog Man, but to his dismay, his clone comes out of the box as Petey, an itty bitty kitty, too sweet for maleficent mischief, who is adopted from the Free Kitty box by the unknowing Dog Man.

But Pete the Evilest Cat has plans to pervert his clone by way of the worst sort of cat chicanery. Disguised as the Mary Poppins-ish Kitty Sitter, Pete tries to flip poor Petey into an instrument of evil, but it's a hard sell--until Pete discovers that kittens are suckers for ice cream cones--and pretend-play as supervillains.

Pete the Evilest Etc.: "Finally I get to dump this old lady disguise and dress like my true self... A filthy...rotten... deplorable... despicable... loathsome... IGNOMINIOUS... SUPERVILLAIN!

And now it's your turn! We start with a mask... add a cape... and finish with retractable steel claws....

Dude! We are TOTALLY rockin' these bad guys costumes!"

Petey the Kitty: "This is just for PRETEND, right?"

Pete the Evilest: "Sure kid! It's ALL just for make-believe!"

Can Pete the Evilest Cat corrupt Petey the Kitty's innocence in a nefarious plot to sink the hortatory movie of Dog Man's crime-fighting career being filmed at Gassy Behemoth Studios? Or will Petey's basic goodness and a bunch of Dav Pilkey-esque gizmos overcome evil once more? Will Pete find himself foiled yet again? It's all there in the already best-selling sequel, Dog Man and Cat Kid: From the Creator of Captain Underpants (Dog Man 4) (Graphix/Scholastic Press, 2018). Filled with Pilkey's usual story-telling devices, hilarious sight-gags, fun flip pages, kooky characters, a cameo, er, ending from Captain Underpants, and a bunch of sly John Steinbeck take-offs that adults will appreciate, this one is yet another example of that certain brand of frenetic silliness unique to Pilkey's trademark type of graphic comic novel.  Pilkey is surely the genius of his particular and peculiar genre.

Other books in this series are Dog Man: From the Creator of Captain Underpants (Dog Man 1), Dog Man Unleashed: From the Creator of Captain Underpants (Dog Man 2), and Dog Man: A Tale Of Two Kitties (Dog Man 3) (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition), and the forthcoming Dog Man: Lord of the Fleas: From the Creator of Captain Underpants (Dog Man 5).

Watch the terrific and appropriately clamorous book trailer here!