Comic Review: Bee & Puppycat #1

Bee and Puppycat began life in July 2013 as two 5-minute shorts on Cartoon Hangover’s YouTube channel. A few months later, a Kickstarter campaign was started in order to fund more episodes. The series blew away its goal, earning enough to fund nine 6-minute episodes. Those will be airing sometime this summer. To keep us sated until then, a brand new Bee and Puppycat comic book series hit store shelves today!

There are actually two stories in this issue. The first is a main storyline plot written by Natasha Allegri, who also created the very awesome gender-bending episodes of Adventure Time featuring Cake and Fiona. After that, there is a side story by Bee and Puppycat series writer Madeleine Flores. It’s almost like buying one comic and getting another for free!

The main comic picks up the story about a month after the animated shorts. Bee is pretty comfortable with the strangeness Puppycat brought into her life. So, when the friends decide to take a nap instead of actually doing anything, she is unperturbed to find herself in weird situations. Actually, it ends up being her attire that concerns her more than anything else. We are left on a cliffhanger, wondering if Bee will ever get to change her embarrassing shirt.

Off to the side story! This story actually references the events from the animated shorts. If you haven’t watched them, you should probably do that first. You won’t be totally confused but you won’t really understand it either. Also, the animation style here is very different from the usual look of the show. The art has bolder lines and looks a little more amateurish. Puppycat is drawn well but Bee changes drastically from frame to frame. I like the story and I am OK with the art since it gives off a bit of a whimsical feeling but I think I would like it better if it was closer to the original style.

Between the two stories, I like the side story better. The main story is full of funny moments but there isn’t a ton of stuff happening yet. Considering this is just the first issue and they need to relay information from the animated shorts to a brand new audience who may not be familiar with the characters, it is acceptable. I am expecting the second issue to have a bigger and better story line. As for the side story, I love the plot going back to the original series. I’m not a huge fan of the artwork but it isn’t completely awful. Hopefully the artist will be able to draw Bee a little more consistently in the future. Once the Bee problem is fixed, I am confident that we will have two awesome stories in each issue.