Four years ago, in what could be a replay of the early years of comic strips, cartoonist and corporate engaged in an epic war (some hyperbole here) for control of intellectual property. In the end the syndicate won the battle over the creator, but it was a somewhat hollow victory as the cartoonist left the comic strip and Dog Eat Doug has been in rerun status ever since.
Now Brian Anderson has returned to the lovable characters he created: Sophie, Doug, a couple of would-be world conquering cats, “wise” squirrels, and others. But not to the daily comic strip, instead he brings the characters to Marble Press in a series of Sophie titled paperback books.
As was occasionally shown in the comic strip Sophie is partial to flights of fancy and that is the focus here as heroine Sophie is joined by her sidekick Doug, who on occasion plays the villain, in a variety of adventures: superhero, ninja, knights and dragons, outer space, the Himalayas, close encounters, down rabbit holes to a Wonderland, archeological treasure hunts, to a time and place long ago and far away, the Old West, bug-eyed monsters, and more.
The whole cast is featured in those adventures and in pages in-between the parodies reminiscent of the adorable comic strips we had come to love. Those in-between pages are mostly new material leading into and out of the adventures, but appealing to me is Brian taking the Taylor Swift model and “re-recording” some of the original strips into this new format. For example:
Both of the initial books of the series are available October 15, 2024.
