It’s colder, now. You could sense the cold was coming last issue, with the crisp autumn air and pale sunlight, but now winter is here, and the missing Cormac Guffin’s trail has gone cold. Her friend Joe Bradley is still hot on her trail, however — but if she’s not careful, it’s only a matter of time before she’s burned. It’s Dead Dog’s Bite #2, written, drawn, colored and lettered by Tyler Boss.
Dead Dog’s Bite is always going to have a special place in my heart. Not just because it’s an excellent comic, but also because it’s the first comic I got to review for ComicsXF. In the time since, I have learned much about writing for comics. In the 58 days since we last saw Joe, however, she has learned a lot less about Mac Guffin’s disappearance — though it’s not for lack of trying on Joe’s part.
I’m of two minds about the time jump. On one hand, it means we move from autumn well into winter, and Tyler Boss draws a gorgeous winter. Bare trees, snowy grounds, a sharper paleness to the sunlight — as Bangalore heats up, it’s as refreshing as it is beautiful to be reading through these pages. Boss’ renderings of Pendermills are inviting enough to want to linger in as Joe makes her way to the abandoned trailer that houses her conspiracy board for the case. I’m grateful for the cold.
On the other hand, 58 days haven’t done much to advance the plot. Though Joe seems to have accumulated a lot of information, we don’t really get a closeup on any of it, and it appears the only plot-relevant clues are the ones she discovers this issue. Two months is a long time for Joe to just be making a break in the case. It feels like it wouldn’t have made that much of a difference if time had just jumped ahead a week instead.
Don’t get me wrong, though, I like that the reader gets to discover all the important clues right along with Joe. Boss’ instruction manual style of storytelling makes Dead Dog’s Bite feel a lot like a How To guide for Solving a Mystery in Pendermills, USA. We’re presented clues as orderly as possible while a story’s being laid out at the same time. Mystery solving in this charming little town is a unique experience, because Pendermills is weird.
Where last issue focused on getting inside Joe’s head, this issue has us meet the townsfolk, and like I said in last issue’s review, they seem to be living in another comic entirely, to a degree that feels surreal. Almost everyone seems to have moved on from Mac’s disappearance, to live out their silly, Star’s Hollow-esque sitcom lives. Very few people feel real, but as silly as they are, there’s an unspoken resistance to Joe’s attempts to get to the truth. It’s entertaining, it’s charming, but it also stinks uncomfortably of conspiracy, especially with the frequent appearance of that wavey Pendermills symbol everywhere (Sidenote: That symbol looks a lot like the vibrant warp that appears in front of my eyes whenever I get an ocular migraine, making parts of this series a little nauseating to read).
Two issues into this four-issue series, I could not tell you what kind of mystery Joe’s even unfolding. While that would normally frustrate me, the quiet, cozy, intimate pacing of this series has me quite enjoying the ride. We see Joe amusingly con her way into the Mayor’s Office, steal a look at town records, start to uncover a larger mystery tying into her absent father, and have her first brush with thrills and danger by issue’s end. Despite the clues, I still have no idea what’s going on aside from the fact that I am having a harder and harder time accepting the reality presented here — and that Joe’s playing with fire in more ways than one.
I definitely want to take another moment to appreciate our blue-suited omniscient narrator. Always drawn to face the reader, at odds with the world around him, bright, vibrant and as hard to ignore as a warning of an oncoming migraine. He only really steps into the world of the comic, away from the reader, to stand invisibly by Joe’s side as her world falls apart. He’s a constant reminder that all this is just a story. That some things are real, and some things are not. That while stories come and go, the feelings they elicit remain, and that’s more real than anything else in the story can be.
I’m feeling confused, concerned, charmed and melancholic. Hooked by the mystery and dreading what it could reveal. I can’t wait for #3 to make me feel the same way again.
Armaan is obsessed with the way stories are told. From video games to theater, TTRPGs to comics, he has written for, and about, them all. He will not stop, actually; believe us, we've tried.
