Samurai Cat Goes to Hell

Fans of Miaowara Tomokato and his sidekick, Shiro, know what to expect from these anthropomorphic felines: puns, satire and loads of action--though not much credible plot. Rogers first created the characters in his paintings, and this volume continues the tradition of lavish, attractive illustrations--marked, like the story, by both gore and humor. The beginning, as Tomokato and Shiro fight Genghis Khan, is labored (including more than a page of puns on Pax Mongolica), but the story picks up when the heroes go to hell, literally. This comedic Inferno includes Nazi tyrannosaurs in dinosaur-sized tanks, characters resembling figures from the Oz books, Virtuous Pagans galore and Satan, who, though trapped in ice at the bottom of hell, wears pink panties and can send out projections in the shape of bad actors. The heroes are aided by felines from the other Samurai Cat books, a guardian angel named Henry and a mysterious ""itinerant preacher"" who looks like Clint Eastwood. The self-reference can get awfully cute (""Boy, are a lot of story threads getting tied up in this chapter or what?"") but the combined comedy and moral concerns (subtle and hence not intrusive, but very real) will appeal to many. (June)