Comic Review: Bee and Puppycat Volume 3

Bee and Puppycat hasn’t gotten as much buzz since the cartoon episodes switched from YouTube to the VRV streaming service after its 2015 hiatus, but the comic series is still going strong. The Bee and Puppycat Volume 3 trade paperback collects several short adventures written by Patrick Seery and illustrated by Ji in Kim, as well a vignette by Ko Takekuchi and an illustration by Becky Dreistadt.

As with the cartoon, these shorts focus on the minor trials and tribulations in Bee’s life and the weird way the temp jobs she and Puppycat take on. The first story starts with Bee being unable to find her favorite scarf, and the second with Puppycat criticizing Bee’s apparent hoarding problem, and the third with Puppycat catching a cold (this one does not involve a temp job). Seery, who has worked as a production assistant on Adventure Time and actually voices Pretty Patrick in the episodes Cats and Beach, clearly translates the relationships between Bee and Puppycat, as well as Bee and the other characters, to the medium of the comic without a problem.

Kim’s artwork is a little more cutesy that the animation from the show, but it works out fine because the comic also leaves out a lot of the footnote-ish jokes that set Bee and Puppycat apart from cartoons that are more strictly created for kids’ enjoyment (see the cleavage crab from Cats and Beach). However, Kim does include some interesting visual gags here and there throughout the story, like the small giraffe chowing down in the flowerbed under Bee’s balcony.

While fans that are fascinated with the often alluded to mysterious backstory of Puppycat, there won’t be much of that in this particular volume of the comic (though previous volumes did feature Wallace’s mom!). Fans of the aesthetic and of Puppycat in general should really check out the latest volume!