cover image Spacedog

Spacedog

Hendrik Dorgathen, . . Gingko Press, $12.95 (64pp) ISBN 978-1-58423-365-7

Originally published in 1993, this wry, wordless, densely packed fable for adults about a little red dog who finds enlightenment in outer space is utterly charming. It starts out fairly straightforwardly—a puppy on a farm hops on a train and ends up in a cruel, confusing city—but before long, NASA has poached the young dog and sent him into space on a rocket ship. He encounters a race of peace-loving green aliens, who teach him to communicate and send him back to Earth as their emissary. Human society isn't quite ready for the dog's message, though, and he ends up achieving a victory that's much more on his own canine terms. Dorgathen's artwork, rendered with ragged brush strokes and raw geometrical shapes, pushes about as far into the realm of abstraction as he can manage without obscuring his characters and settings. Still, the broad pantomime of Dorgathen's storytelling is funny in its own right, and he manages to communicate some complicated concepts without words—a sequence in which the dog explains the aliens' vision of society in a speech at the United Nations is a little marvel of visual shorthand. (Aug.)