Odd Cat Couple! It's Me! (Catwad) by Jim Benton

Catwad looks like a cranky cat.

He may not really be cranky, but we'll never know--as long as he's stuck with his dumb companion Blurmp. Not just the usual slowcoach, your everyday dense and dumb dolt, mind you. Blurmp is a boneheaded blockhead. But Blurmp has his good qualities, too.

Here's a sample:

"I'M A CRIMEFIGHTING HERO NOW!" SAYS BLURMP.

"OKAY," CHALLENGES CATWAD. "LET'S HEAR YOUR ORIGIN STORY!"

Blurmp tells Catwad that he considered being one of those inscrutable-heroes-with-a-past, those Angry Heroes of the Night. But he has to go to bed too early for that.

He considered being the type of hero who gets his super powers from the bite of an irradiated insect, but he worries that the bug might have spent too much time in proximity to dog poo.

He was tempted to be one of those heroes who grows huge and powerful whenever he's in a bad temper.

"BUT GETTING BIG AND STRONG WOULD MAKE ME SO HAPPY THAT I WOULD JUST SHRINK AGAIN!" SAID BLURMP.

So Catwad questions Blurmp about the scope of his superhero powers.

"WELL," SAID BLURMP, "WHENEVER I SEE A CRIMINAL GETTING READY TO STEAL SOMETHING... I JUST GO AHEAD AND BUY IT FOR HIM!

THE BEST WAY TO FIGHT CRIME IS TO MAKE SURE IT NEVER HAPPENS!"
Catwad has no comeback to counter that kind of logic!

But finally Catwad comes up with a way to at least keep Blurmp quiet:

"HEY, CATWAD. LET'S PLAY TRUTH OR DARE!"

"OKAY," SAYS CATWAD. "TRUTH OR DARE?"

"DARE!"" SHOUTS BLURMP!

With a wicked grin, Catwad executes his clever plan.

"I DARE YOU TO STOP PLAYING AND NEVER BRING IT UP AGAIN," SAID CATWAD.

Blurmp sits silently, snickering to himself. Days and weeks and years pass....

"OH, MY GOSH, I'M WINNING." HE THINKS GLEEFULLY....

"I'M STILL WINNING...."

But thanks to Jim Benton, the New York Times best-selling cartoonist has plenty more graphic comic books like It's Me. (Catwad 1)(Scholastic Books, 2019), spoofing this star-crossed couple, with the crotchety Catwad and his quirky companion playing the perfect straight man and noodle-head character. This one offers perfect comic relief that will appeal to the fans of Dav Pilkey's The Adventures of Captain Underpants and its sequels.

P.I. Fly: Joey Fly, Private Eye, in Creepy, Crawly Crime by Aaron Reynolds and Neill Numberman

Life in the bug city. It ain't easy. Crime sticks to this city like a one-winged fly on a fifty-cent swatter.

Crime. Invading the lives of innocent bugs just trying to get through the daily grind. Normal everyday bugs just trying to put three feet in front of the others.

No literary archetype has been ripped off more often than that of the hard-boiled detective, his bumbling assistant, and the beautiful dame who comes to his office in need of help.

Aaron Reynolds' and Neil Numberman's comic graphic novel Creepy Crawly Crime (Joey Fly, Private Eye) sticks to every cliche like fly feet to flypaper in this takeoff on the detective film noir.

J. Fly, Private Eye, finds his coffee-fueled reverie shattered by the appearance of Sammy Stingtail, a brash, wise-cracking youngster who talks himself into a job as PI assistant despite the fact that his long stinger makes it nearly impossible to do surveillance and causes chaos behind him wherever he goes.

In typical plot line development, a voluptuous swallowtail breezes in with a problem. Not the sharpest bee in the hive, as Joey puts it, but a fine floozy of a flutterbye, Delilah finally comes out with the reason for her visit--she wants a detective to prove that her friend Gloria the Ladybug has stolen her diamond-studded pencil box. As slowly and methodically as Colombo, J. Fly, Private Eye, sets out to gather evidence, with no help from the inexperienced Sammy, who steps on most of Joey's best lines of interrogation.

The case itself is a bit clunky; there are the usual suspects--the jealous friend and the lying witness, serving mostly to provide opportunities for Reynolds and Numberman to spoof the usual conventions in the hard-boiled genre along the way. Sure, the intended audience won't recognize the sendup of Sam Spade and Spenser, but hey! most of us didn't learn the conventions from the originals anyway, but from Deputy Dog and a hundred other cartoon characters. Still Joey Fly's ruminations in the P.I. style are a lot of fun. Here he is, regretting his impulse to hire Sammy ("This kid is greener than a leaf-bug in a lettuce patch") as he tries to impart the finer points of the detecting business:

You ever have one of those moments when you wonder if having your wings slowly plucked out with tweezers might be less painful than hanging out with your new assistant?

Guess what? I was having one of those moments.

It's a fun first entry in what might, with a bit of plot tweaking, become an engaging series for the elementary and middle school devotee of the graphic story. And Sammy has a little, um, undercover fun for the reader, a list of "secret clues" hidden in the drawings throughout the book:

What are you looking at? The story's over. Well, since you've got so much free time on your hands, see if you can find all these items in the pages of this book. Now hit the road before I send my fly friend here to buzz in your ear and dance all over your lunch. Do you have any idea where his feet have been...?