Dog Man: For Whom The Ball Rolls

The Kiddo borrowed this from a friend at school.

Title: Dog Man: For Whom the Ball Rolls
Publisher: Scholastic / Graphix
Date: September, 2019
Writer: Dav Pilkey
Artist: Dav Pilkey
Colorist: Jose Garibaldi, Aaron Polk

Petey is released from Cat Jail, but will he be able to be the father that Li'l Petey wants him to be? When Petey's own father suddenly comes back into the picture, Petey must face his own abandonment issues, even as he finds himself part of a very nontraditional extended family with his son, Dog Man, and 80-HD.

Meanwhile, Dog Man gets some well-intentioned Pavlovian behavior modification to cure him of his obsession with chasing balls, but when a (not) new villain unleashes a horde of ball-shaped robots, Dog Man's greatest weakness becomes, well, his greatest weakness. Just in an even worse way.

Dav Pilkey drops Ernest Hemingway and Eric Carle references, confronts the reality of toxic family relationships, and expands the character development of a bunch of returning cast members.

This was a fun step forward that brought some new ideas and kept the same impressive joke-density of the previous books in this series.

Rating: 8.5/10