Dog Man Unleashed

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness and death.

Much of the story’s humor depends on absurd situations and characters. This motif of absurdity begins with the story’s very premise—that the head of a dog has been surgically implanted onto the body of a human, resulting in the creation of the world’s greatest police officer, Dog Man. Dog Man’s habits are absurd—he is a police officer obsessed with balls and licking both bones and his fellow officers, and he loves to roll in dead fish. The villains he chases are absurd—a habitually criminal cat, a paper representation of that same cat brought to life with “Living Spray,” and a pet fish described as “the fishy face of evil” (42). This fish is made super-intelligent and granted telekinetic powers by the accidental ingestion of “Supa Brain Dots” (53), a supplement the police chief is taking for his poor memory. Even Dog Man’s eventual defeat of the story’s bad guys relies more on absurd chains of events than it does on logic and planning. The story’s motif of absurdity is also supported by its language, art, and tone. The use of techniques like

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