Gear »

Four incompetent cats high-jack a Giant Killer Robot! The plans are made, the cats lay in wait, the Robot comes and everything goes el stinko. This book's got everything: robots, harpoon guns, talking cats, gun shots to the head - the whole sha-bang!

VOYA

In a darkened house, one dog murders another for information not given. Meanwhile four scruffy, goofy cats manage to steal a giant robot from the dogs of DogTown. One cat loses his life, but the small country of Newton will be safer with this supplement to their own aging Guardian robot. Little do they know that Newton will soon face a combined force of dogs and ambitious Northplate cats, not to mention inscrutable Southplate insects. The Forbidden Mechanism is the prize, and if the town Elder cannot even trust his own guards, he will have to take extreme measures to keep Newton safe. The fate of four nations rests with three motley cats and Gear, a newborn robot. This graphic novel is the collected and colorized reprint of TenNapel's earliest work. As such, the story is simpler and the art rougher than his later efforts, but they still display the hallmarks that his fans know and love. His panels are creative and dynamic, the new colors adding clarity to brush-stroked ink and heavy black areas. Characters are quirky, passionate, and varying degrees of funny, and TenNapel uses them to explore his usual themes of comradeship and family (especially among men), combat, peace, and moral values. The characters who are the most "good" or least warlike are those who are young, simple, or in a state of transformation. The only jarring panel contains a cat shouting "Shiite Muslim!"-although it is unclear whether it is an epithet or an indictment of the enemy. TenNapel gets his points across well enough without this real-life intrusion.