2 out of 5

Why are we letting Ennis get away with this kind of laziness?  I didn’t read the entire internet’s offering of reviews, but I hit up some major sources after giving this a go through issue 3 (I believe it’s a 6-issue mini?) and just… just being incredibly unimpressed and unmoved.  And I don’t expect aces from Garth on every outing, but this seemed like a nice outlet for him – a tale from the point of view of three dogs post some Crossed-like event that’s caused humanity to turn on itself.  Why does it seem like a nice outlet?  Because Garth has, several, several times out scripted serio-comic man-bondings effectively, whether its the absurdity of Hitman or the extremity of Preacher or the brotherhood of his War Storys, and “man’s best friend,” all tail-wagging and tongue-panting and butt-sniffing, would seem like a good, fresh avenue down which Ennis could find bendy and twisty versions of his usual paths, meanwhile allowing for a new point of view on his social commentary.

Instead… we get some predictable ‘cats suck’ bits and tired gross-out humor.  It’s possible this is building to something more effective, as the dogs find their way to safety and maybe they’ll ‘grow’ and we’ll get that commentary along the way, but I haven’t gotten a sense of it at all in these three issues, and I’m not doing a ‘Boys’ 30 issue buy-in before I quit this time, regardless of it being a mini-series.

This is also one of the few examples from Garth’s career where I don’t get a sense of originality from the writing.  Admittedly, his modern stuff has been rubbing me this way, with the exception of ‘Crossed’, but the dearth of inspiration is more apparent as the seed idea is fresh (ignoring the ‘The Other Dead’ which IDW put out around the same time about zombie animals), and yet the setting can’t help but feel like a parody of ‘Crossed.’  That series is a great example of how a tired setup can bear wondrous fruit, as are any of the countless “man’s gotta’ do” storylines Garth’s written to greatness over the years.

Michael Dipascale’s art is friendly, giving the animals the lively, believable and yet personifiable-look of Jill Thompson’s Beasts of Burden stuff, but at the same time, the tone just doesn’t sit well with the stiff writing, and larger scale sequences (common in the first issue) feel flat.

Just as a side note – this is all aside from the “I’m a dog” gag.  I’m actually okay with that.  Garth chose his translation of animalisms and got the gist across without having to explain it to the reader, and I wouldn’t even call it a gag: it made sense, if you’re having these dogs “speak” to one another, that they wouldn’t hear ‘woof’ as woof, so Ennis decided on ‘I’m a dog’ and sticks with it.  ….Thaaaat being said, we have to deal with three characters with limited vocabularies and understandings, and a typical Ennis cockney character (Rover the Beagle… or whatever accent that is), and I accept that challenge in writing a story where your leads can only say a small selection of words… but it adds to my inability to get into things and put much faith in ‘Rover Red Charlie.’

But I maintain the faith, and will check out the next project Ennis gives us.  Though if those reviews are any indication, maybe RRC will be ridiculously popular ’cause people are suckers for name writers and quirky ideas and it’ll become an ongoing….