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From School Library Journal

Starred review from December 6, 2024

Gr 2-5-Though Dog Man takes a backseat in this 13th installment, the perennially bestselling series does not suffer from his absence. Rather, the colorful ensemble cast of familiar Supa Buddies and side characters, this time led by the effusively optimistic Big Jim (alias Captain Cupcake), only enhances the series' wild appeal. In this volume, we learn about Big Jim's unlikely origin story, as told to his roommate in "Cat Jail," Grampa, who humorously serves as Jim's cantankerous counterpart. Readers may remember Grampa as a villain in previous volumes, but here he reluctantly dons a pink sparkle unitard and joins Captain Cupcake in battle against the "Space Cuties from Space"-a species of adorable aliens who lure all of the heroes in with promises of free cake only to use their laser beams to transform everything into cuteness. Captain Cupcake, who only eats CUPcakes, steps up to save the day. Through Pilkey's trademark absurdist humor, imaginative characters, and entertaining flip-o-ramas, readers will find depth in a very poignant backstory about the loss of Jim's parents and a hopeful message inspired by Fred Rogers's famous reminder to "look for the helpers." VERDICT A must buy for school libraries; kids will be clamoring for the continuation of Big Jim's story.-Catherine Cote

Copyright 2024 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

From Publisher's Weekly

Starred review from May 16, 2016
Dog Man, "a brand-new crime-fighting sensation" created by surgically attaching the head of a police dog to the body of a policeman, gets his own full-color adventure in this terrifically funny spin-off comic from Pilkey (the character's origins were previously revealed in Captain Underpants and the Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers). Dog Man doesn't play by the rules, whether it's the rules about being housebroken or the ones about not giving the police chief slobbery dog kisses. But desperate times require maverick behavior: Petey the cat, one of the loopiest villains in children literature, has four chapters' worth of evil plots aimed at taking Dog Man down-from destroying all books to make the world "supa dumb" (a tactic that will be familiar to those who read Pilkey's contribution to Comics Squad: Recess!) to unleashing a "weenie-lution" of oversensitive living hot dogs ("We're not cute, either! We're gangsta!" insists their very touchy leader). Jose Garibaldi's coloring makes every page of this superlative police procedural spoof look as sharp as it is silly, and readers (of any age) will be giggling from start to finish. Ages 7—up.