Pooch Café: All Dogs Naturally Know How to Swim

by Paul Gilligan

Pooch Cafe‚ is creator Paul Gilligan's first syndicated strip, and this book collects the strips from its successful first year of syndication. When Poncho's beloved master Chazz marries cat lover Carmen and forces them to move in with her and her feline brood, Poncho's world is shaken to the core. Carmen's attempts to bribe Poncho with cheese cannot overcome his inexplicable but undeniable disdain for all things cat, and now that his home has become a haven for them, his only recourse is to seek refuge in the cafe, where he, Boomer, and his other canine pals pore over their top-secret plans to construct a giant catapult with which to hurl all the Earth's cats into the sun. As much as he dislikes kitties, he's equally passionate about his love for Chazz. Poncho will do just about anything to keep his position as man's best friend secure, including enduring the physical torments of Chazz's passion for biking, camping, and mountain climbing, which he can only get through with the help of classic Russian literature and a nice cup of tea. Pooch Cafe‚ captures the intensity of the human-dog bond in a way that will resonate with pet lovers everywhere.

Genres: Comics, Humor, Graphic Novels

128 pages, Paperback

First published March 2, 2003

About the author

Paul Gilligan writes and draws the syndicated comic strip Pooch Café, which has been twice nominated by the National Cartoonist Society for best strip. He’s the author/illustrator of the early-reader graphic novel series Pluto Rocket, the chapter book series King of the Mole People, and the graphic memoir Boy Vs. Shark. He lives in Toronto with his wife and kids, where he still rides his bike, and quite comfortably swims in lakes and pools, as long as nobody makes any “du-nuh” sounds.

Reviews

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful comic strip! Laugh-out-loud count: 20 times in 128 pages. (Quite high!)

Paul Gilligan has created an excellent, funny character with Poncho: snarky, self-serving, cowardly, sarcastic, but also just a dumb, goofy dog. Pooch Cafe has found a really interesting dynamic in the level of anthropomorphism it has going on. The dogs are basically goofy little people, but subject to the same compulsions and social dynamics that dogs are in our own reality. A lot of humor comes from Poncho being almost but not quite like an actual dog, spritzing trees with air freshener to mark his territory, staining the rug to express his displeasure... but with grape juice, etc.

Poncho is a 5-star, classic comic strip character and Pooch Cafe is an excellent strip on the merits of Poncho alone. In this first collection, none of the other characters--Chazz, Carmen, Boomer, etc.--quite hold a candle to him, thus the 4(.5) stars, though the fish is fun and the chill cats are amusing. But I expect the rest of the characters fill out more as the strip goes on. Pooch Cafe is now in my comic strips Top 10. I'm glad there are two more books + GoComics archives, and very happy Gilligan is still writing more every day.

[⋊ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun.