The First Cat in Space and the Soup of Doom slays sophomore curse

The First Cat in Space and the Soup of Doom takes the absurd happenings of The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza, keeps running and picks up speed. The Batman 1966 vibes in this all-age graphic novel series continue in this second book and are more established. By looking at the back cover it baits audiences by telling them that they’ll see First Cat, Moon Queen, and Loz 4000 again, but teases them by showing snippets of the action inside the book, a la, The Wild, Wild West as they went to commercials. This is a graphic novel that wallows in the excitement and giddy energy that mid-elementary through lower middle-school students can bring to a book when it’s one whets their appetite.

The other thing you might be wondering if you come here often (thanks mom), is that we just reviewed The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza, the first book in the series. No, we’re not on the payroll of First Cat. The two are so close chronologically on the site because we missed the boat on these when they first came out. The third and final book in this graphic novel series is coming out soon and curious readers (that one kid who I taught last week) need to find this book.

Our 13-year-old has to do a book report for seventh-grade English class. He checked out one of the Dog Man graphic novels from his school library to do the report on. If being a reluctant reader was a cake, he would be the mold. I’m confident that he chose that book because most kids in elementary school read it, and he feels like he should’ve read it. It’s also so simple that he can gloss over the details without actually reading it. And let’s be clear the fact that Dog Man is a simple, silly story, combined with its approachable art is one of the major factors in making this reluctant reader Kryptonite.

The First Cat in Space and the Soup of Doom takes the absurd happenings from the first book and wears it like a warm, silly jacket that’s able to jump back in time when it’s called for. This device could be used lazily in other books, but here it just adds to the enjoyment of Soup of Doom. It allows anyone to jump into this book and enjoy it, but also opens the curtain back to the first entry and makes those who missed it want to read that one too. Some readers are gun shy in going into a book series in the second book for fear that they don’t know the characters or missed key plot points. Don’t have those concerns with Soup of Doom, this is an all-skate, so just bring your sense of wonder and turn the page.

Much like The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza, Soup of Doom has a plot that changes quickly. Seemingly every four pages a twist is thrown at one of the main characters where one of the robots, rabbits or creature from the first book comes back into the fray. The graphic novel is broken up into chapters that allow young readers to consume it in even chunks and to stop at concrete points in the story. Ages eight and up will want to read it in nuggets or the whole enchilada, depending on their time and reading level.

This is an intelligent graphic novel that’s as smart as it is weird. The doctor is a lollipop. LOZ 4000, the toenail clipping robot is constantly correcting people who mistakenly refer to the moon as a planet. Frank the Glorious is a blue, Smurf-looking wizard who is tasked with diagnosing the Moon Queen when she eats some of the titular poisoned soup. The characters zip along to a Westworld-esque area that’s encased in a dome to a musical number (complete with a link to said song) and being shot across a giant valley with a pirate baby who has the cannon attached to his ankle.

Again, similar to the first book, it would be futile to explain the overall plot to Soup of Doom other than to grossly oversimplify it. The first cat in space and Moon Queen have wacky adventures on the moon with a variety of eccentric characters. That would be the base description one could see on Amazon or the publisher’s website, and that verbiage is correct. However, it’s so much more than that, and in this case it’s the combination of art and text.

Like Ratatouille made more from the totality of his ingredients during the process of cooking, the soft, muted art has an effect on the story in Soup of Doom. The art by Shawn Harris is different than kids normally see in graphic novels meant for this age. It’s softer and has the rubbed-out effect that you see in watercolors or chalk drawings. It does that, but also has defined edges when it needs to in order to drive home the humor. The final page in Soup of Doom shows all of the characters mentioned in the book enjoying a big picnic lunch. They’re presented in a very soft light with the artist, T. Worm, holding a paintbrush in the lower right corner. Factor in the pitch-perfect art with a computer dramatically exclaiming “misery and woe” on stage and you’ve got an idea as to how many levels of comedy this book is working on.

There are some overt jokes that young readers will immediately get. There are some older jokes that will resonate with their upper elementary friends or the parents and librarians. That type of joke is in Investigators and helps push that graphic novel series from entertaining to can’t-miss. It’s that level of smart humor that pushes The First Cat in Space to the same threshold. Some of the jokes aren’t obvious, but understanding context clues, inferences and pop-culture allusions are things that young readers are sorely lacking. Soup of Doom is the middle graphic novel in a trilogy that effortlessly checks off every block in what kids want from a book for ages eight and up. It’s simple enough for elementary school students to enjoy and intelligent enough to provide laughs and entertainment to upper elementary school students through middle school. There is also a manic quality through the illustrations and text that channel the giddy, campy, rompy fun of Batman 1966. That show, just like this graphic novel, will reverberate with audiences in 56 years as well as bam, crash, and pow do today.

The First Cat in Space and the Soup of Doom is by Mac Barnett with illustrations by Shawn Harris.

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