[Comic Book Review] Bee and Puppycat by Natasha Allegri

Natasha Allegri's smash hit YouTube animated series comes to comic books!

A quirky new take on the magical girl genre with Bee, the forever unemployed main character who can't seem to figure out life, and the mysterious PuppyCat, a stray...whatever it is...that she stumbled across who has a powerful secret. You might already love it if you're one of the thousands who supported the Kickstarter campaign, but for those of you just joining us, if you like stories that feature magical girls like SAILOR MOON, MADOKA MAGICA, and POWERPUFF GIRLS, you will enjoy BEE AND PUPPYCAT! It's a slice-of-life story with a twist, and it has so much comedy and enchantment you can't help but be swept up. Natasha Allegri is simply amazing. She built up a big fan-following on Tumblr while working on the Adventure Time cartoon, then created gender-swapped characters (FIONNA AND CAKE) that became so popular they put them into the show. Then, she created BEE AND PUPPYCAT and it became the most funded web series project in Kickstarter history. How could we NOT publish it?

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Bee and Puppycat are the coolest! I love the show so much and have always been connected to Bee for so many reasons, her personality and mine are so similar, so watching the show has always been a comfort. Because of this, when I saw that my library had the first volume of the comic book I had to pick it up! 

Issue One is my favorite in the entire volume. It's so cute and the creator, Natasha Allegri does a really clever thing! In a section of the story Bee and Puppycat have to fix a music box, but there's a big room of them so they don't know which one is broken. So they go through the boxes and listen to them to find the broken one. The really clever part is that there are QR codes for each box they play and you can scan the code and listen to the song on YouTube! I am so easily impressed, which means I loved this so much. I love when books, comic books, graphic novels, etc do an extra thing like that. 

The art is absolutely stunning. I love Natasha Allegri's art style with my entire soul. I think her pastel colors, the bubbly style, and the cuteness are all perfectly paired and it makes it a great style for me. There are other artists that are showcased in this volume, and honestly I don't remember seeing any of them that I disliked. There were so many covers in the cover gallery that made me want them as wallpapers for my phone. Cover gallery's are one of my favorite sections of volumes of comics. 

However, I think if you haven't watched the show, or if you don't have a lot of knowledge about the show, you're going to be a bit lost. I've watched the show, so I didn't have many issues. I only had one, which was more of an annoyance. A plot gets cut off in the middle of the volume, gets "to be continue"d, and then a random comic that has nothing to do with Bee and Puppycat starts. I would have preferred the ending to the comic I signed up for. 

Also, this may be a preference thing, but after the first issue we are mostly given very short mostly one page comic strips. I prefer when each issue (20ish pages) is it's own story or even if they're connected to an arcing bigger story. I'm not the biggest fan of the quick 1-3 little quick stories. Even if some were cute, I would have preferred it the other way.

Overall, I really enjoyed issue one, and then kind of enjoyed the rest. I think if I didn't absolutely love all the art, I may have DNFed. It makes me want to re-watch the show, definitely. I also recommend watching the show, one because it's great, but also because if you plan on reading this volume you're going to want some sort background on the show. 

Thanks for reading!