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Summary
Summary
In Tim's world, a cat can paint on the ceiling and a happy pig couple can wait months for the bus. A duck and a mouse love to go flying, in a plane, of course. Every page is an adventure and each character is colorful in this collection of comics. John Martz is a cartoonist and illustrator who lives in Toronto, Ontario. He is the creator of the wordless online comic strip Machine Gum , and the illustrator of several picture books including Abbott & Costello's Who's On First? (Quirk Books, 2013). His comics and illustrations have appeared in the Globe and Mail , MAD magazine, Maisonneuve , Canadian Notes & Queries , and kuš! He was a founding editor of the illustration blog Drawn.ca, and makes up one quarter of the jam comics collective Team Society League. He won the 2013 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Story for his comic book Gold Star (Retrofit Comics, 2012).
Author Notes
John Martz is a cartoonist and illustrator in Toronto, Canada. He is the creator of the wordless online comic strip Machine Gum , and the illustrator of several picture books including Abbott & Costello's Who's On First? (Quirk Books, 2013). His comics and illustrations have appeared in The Globe & Mail , MAD Magazine , Maisonneuve , Canadian Notes & Queries , and kuš! He was a founding editor of the illustration blog Drawn.ca, and makes up one quarter of the jam comics collective Team Society League. He won the 2013 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Story for his comic book Gold Star (Retrofit Comics, 2012).
Reviews (3)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 1-4-This practically wordless collection of comics for young readers features six characters, engaging pictures, and short chapters. The first entry, "Doug & Mouse," focuses on the adventures and friendship of a duck (Doug) and a mouse. Readers may have to work hard to follow the story line, as the graphics are not always presented in a linear fashion, but that is part of the tale's charm. The titular cat has his own chapter that features a few different stunts and jokes, and the following chapter with a bunny named Connie also has some funny sight gags. In the concluding vignette, Mr. and Mrs. Hamhock wait for a bus through many seasons of the year and eventually wonder if they left the oven on. Fans of Sunday comics and graphic novels with an emphasis on visual puns instead of full narratives will find these tales funny. The full-color pictures are bright and eye-catching. Some are panels and some are stand-alone images, but most chapters have several "snapshot" comics featuring the characters within. Young readers will get a kick out of finding secondary characters and amusing inside jokes in the backgrounds. This title has broad appeal for fans of comics aimed at a young audience.-Heather Massa, East Rockaway Public Library, NY (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
In four off-kilter, virtually wordless stories, Martz (Destination X) sketches out wild journeys, career mishaps, and unpredictable turns of events involving a small cast of amiable animals. In the eponymous story, Tim appears to be wrestling with career indecision: a full-spread grid shows him dressed in the gear of 32 professions (chef, judge, superhero, etc.), before a few panel sequences follow his misadventures as a basketball player, scientist, and painter (having painted himself into a corner, he simply walks up the walls). Elsewhere, friends Doug (a duck) and Mouse (a mouse), travel over waterfalls, down mineshafts, and through underground rivers on their way to a pizza dance party; a rabbit named Connie shows off her impressive inventions; and Mr. and Mrs. Hamhock, an elderly pig couple, sit on a bench for a full year before Mrs. Hamhock wonders, "Did I leave the oven on?" (Naturally, the bus arrives just as Mr. Hamhock battles their house fire with a garden hose.) Martz's crisp, graphic forms defy readers' expectations-not to mention logic and the rules of physics-delivering pleasing absurdity with every page turn. Ages 3-5. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Four whimsical cartoon outings feature an overlapping cast of small anthropomorphic animals artfully placed to lead eyes up, down, around and past page turns to mishaps and surprises. Doug (a duck) and Mouse, plainly a pair of adrenalin junkies, open with a looping airplane flight, go on to pose in 24 adventuresome settings laid out on a single spread, then take a boat ride that ends up under water. The titular cat joins the intrepid travelers for an underground pizza party, steps out himself to try on 32 different occupational outfitsagain on a single spreadand goes on to a series of amusing experiments in a chemistry lab and elsewhere. In the third episode, rabbit-eared Connie spends a day in a Rube Goldberg-ian mechanical house, attends a birthday party and enjoys a spaghetti dinner at a trattoriabefore an extra-long strand leads to an extremely long slurp. In the final chapter, elderly Mr. and Mrs. Hamhock wait at the bus stop through night and day and through seasons, a vignette clearly inspired by Waiting for Godot. Both the sight gags and the characters' comical responses are easy to track in Martz's flat, minimally detailed, graphic-style art. Visual learners and younger children alike will pore delightedly over these nearly wordless sequences. (Picture book. 3-7) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.