4 out of 5

While I’m admittedly coming back to Lafler’s initial run of self-published Dog Boy books after years of rereading familiarity with Fantagraphics’ volume 2, I’m pretty sure the same magical nonsense that made me an instant fan of that run would’ve worked here as well: pretty much from the start, all of the DB tenets of 4th-dimensional thinking, anti-corporate / -capitalist rants, and plenty of improv jazz-flecked plottings are in place, alongside Dog Girl, Benb, Knoot, and full-frontal anthropomorphic dog nudity. Lafler seems to very briefly fiddle with the comic being more of a gag strip – shorter vignettes – perhaps owing to it starting out in anthology mags like Buzzard, but that gets “smoothed” out as soon as the second issue, leading to some minimal carry-over story elements, but at the very least a relatively linear story for each book.

The subjects of which, when tracked on a graph alongside Dog Boy vol. 2, make a lot of sense: the book starts out completely nonsensical and rant-y, and then gets incredibly metaphyiscal (though still laugh out loud silly!); the Fanta series would pick this up and evolve it into slightly more serious fare.

Lafler also quickly makes progress on his art, which is as loose as ever, but character dimensions and panel layouts are just wildly varying for the first 3 issues or so, and then it gets standardized, and is very strong thereon out. Again, this never limits Steve’s creativity; if anything, having some more reliable elements ended up giving him more freedom to experiment without it impacting the readability.

In short: Dog Boy volume 1 is absolutely in line with what followed; the latter series is fully an extension, just with a different publisher. This first volume is rougher at the outset, with the first book feeling very zine-y, but it quickly finds its tone and pacing thereafter, as Steve carved out his own particular voice in the underground. All issues of Dog Boy are essential.