Kennel Block Blues

A hard-bitten prison drama with anthropomorphic animals, because why not? But even to characterise this as Oz meets The Unfunnies (the Mark Millar comic that isn't soon to be a major motion picture, ever) doesn't quite capture the strangeness. Everything we see or hear about life before prison suggests the animals were formerly just animals in a human-run world like this one; the prison guards are disembodied arms of darkness; and the lead is not right in the head, so keeps overlaying his grim surroundings with something closer to a saccharine Disney musical, until even his fantasy world curdles. On one level, none of this makes a lick of sense, yet somehow it has an intuitive, emotional coherence that holds everything together. I don't know why this comic exists, but I'm glad it does.

'Kennel Block Blues' by Ryan Ferrier with art by Daniel Bayliss is the kind of graphic novel I had to think about before reviewing. It's that strange and unusual.

Oliver is a dog sent up to Jackson State Kennel. He sometimes bends reality, so when things around him get stressful, he sees everything as a cartoon musical. He's certain he's not supposed to be in this grim world where the cats seem to run the place and the guards are nothing but shadowy arms.

He makes some friends, like Cosmo, a bulldog, who tries to show Oliver around, or his hardened cellmate Sugar, a chihuahua, who just wants to escape. An escape attempt is made and that's when the reality of what happens to these unwanted animals is revealed.

There is so much being said in this comic. It deals with abused and unwanted animals, mental illness, incarceration, race relations and probably a bunch of other things I missed. Yet it does it in such an unusual way. It's still ultimately a depressing comic, but it's just so darn strange that I couldn't help but really like it. The art by Daniel Bayliss was good. Grim when it needed to be and overly colorful and sappy when Oliver goes around the bend. I'm really glad I had the chance to read this graphic novel.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Boom! Studios and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.