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IT'S ME, TWO by Jim Benton

IT'S ME, TWO

From the Catwad series, volume 2

by Jim Benton ; illustrated by Jim Benton

Pub Date: Sept. 17th, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-32603-1
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic

It’s take two for Catwad and Blurmp, along with more giggles, grossness, and exaggeration.

Blue-gray Catwad hates everything except torturing his painfully naïve and pathologically happy orange roommate, Blurmp. Across 25 named episodes ranging from three to seven pages of brightly colored comic panels, the two cats play pranks and toss out one-liners at each other’s expense. In “Gaming,” Blurmp is really enjoying his video game even after Catwad points out that the controller is not connected…and the game is actually a commercial for a diarrhea remedy. In “Salad,” Blurmp makes Catwad a salad that Catwad does not want to eat. Catwad points out that koalas, cows, manatees, and pandas all eat nothing but salad and are “slow and lazy.” Blurmp realizes that Catwad doesn’t want to eat the salad because (poking Catwad’s flab) Catwad must eat a lot of salads already. In “Dumb,” Blurmp is patient zero in a dumbness epidemic that destroys the world—thankfully it’s only Catwad’s nightmare, but it prompts Catwad to take Blurmp to “save the world.” Fans of Benton’s first collection will probably enjoy this one even more (and hope for a third). The target audience won’t know Ren and Stimpy, but they may see Squidward and SpongeBob in this feline friendship. A couple of puzzles round out the collection at the close.

Probably not to everyone’s taste—but sure to be popular with the fart and barf set.

(Graphic short stories. 7-11)