We’re wayyy ahead of ourselves this year, perhaps due to climate change. But it’s still fun to talk about DC’s Dog Days of Summer!

This 80-page giant is crammed full of stories about animals. Not just dogs, but cows, bulls, and all sorts of mammals and reptiles!
There are eight stories in this special one-shot $10 comic, and some of them are especially doggone good!

Take “The Crucible”, for example. It’s a boy and his dog story, except that it’s SuperMAN and Krypto, his canine pal. It’s really good tale (tail?) written by Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing and fantastically well illustrated by Cully Hamner, with Dave McCaig on colours. Hamner’s work reminds me slightly of the best of Gil Kane’s style. Linear strengths with particular attention to shapes and anatomy. Nicely told.

Another really effective story is “Rio Celeste”, with Animal Man. Phillip Kennedy Johnson writes about Animal Man’s family vacation in Central America when things start to get savage and untamed. Christian Duce is on art, with fabulous colour work by Luis Guerrero. This one pulls out all the stops, bringing us loads of dramatic developments!

“Panic at the Midnight Rodeo”, with Dan Didio on script (!!) and Tom Raney on art, with Hi-Fi on colours, is a very unusual tale of rodeo weirdness. It’s extremely well handled, or perhaps ‘wrangled’ by all involved!

And more… So there ya go, it’s the Dog Days of May, I mean… Summer and all is well!

DC Dog Days of Summer, $9.99 for 80 pages of content, Rated Teen +

By Alan Spinney

After a career of graphic design, art direction and copywriting, I still have a passion for words and pictures. I love it when a comic book comes together; the story is tight, and the drawings lead me forward. Art with words... the toughest storytelling technique to get right. Was this comic book worth your money? Let's see!!