Captain Ginger: Season 2 #2 continues the story of a ship full of cats–lots and lots of cats! It’s one of the best books out right now! Take the jump for our review of the issue from AHOY Comics.

CAPTAIN GINGER: SEASON 2 #2

Writer: Stuart Moore
Artists: June Brigman, Roy Richardson
Colorist: Veronic Gandini
Letterers: Richard Starkings & Comicraft’s Jimmy Betancourt
Publisher: AHOY Comics
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: March 11th, 2020

SOLICITATION: When a deadly trap closes around the cats, they’ll have to use all their feline instincts to survive. This is the big one-the issue that will change Captain Ginger and his starship crew forever!

‘STAR TREK’ WITH CATS

This comic is fun for me as a Star Trek fan since it goes “where no cat has gone before.” Some of the cats on the startship are “evolved” into more anthropomorphic forms while others are regular cats, mostly housecats. There’s a struggle between the characters’ cat nature and the way the humans who disappeared acted previously. What’s the better way to deal with life?

The ship is a busy one, of course, and the “human” cats in charge are trying to explore space and survive while doing it. The other cats are always busy just being cats, running around and occasionally getting underfoot.

As the issue opens, the ship is under attack by a ship full of dogs called the Lumen. The captain hears, “No surrender is asked. No response invited. We suggest you simply close your eyes.” And the pounding continues.

Some of the fun in this comic are the various cat officers fulfilling different roles on the ship. One pair of cats, when they talk, has one start a sentence, which follows with the other finishing it. The science officer is fighting a debilitating disease while trying to keep it secret. Mittens is a rough cat who wears an eye patch. There’s a mom cat who wears a dress and fusses with the cats around her. Again, all around them are the regular cats, meowing and providing background noise.

The ship has already taken some damage from a previous encounter with the dogs, so the battle is short-lived. Ginger, who really does have reddish fur, takes one of the few courses of action left to him. If you read the column just after the art pages conclude, you’ll read about how “everyone loves a spaceship crash.” It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out how this issue ends.

More fun is found in the dialogue of the cats. They make reference to cat behaviors, such as when the ship is “declawed,” meaning the weapons are down. Also, one cat says that, after the ship’s being pounded, “we’re gonna look like the inside of a litterbox.”

One of the great things is the cover, which is a rework of a previous cover. It features Captain Ginger holding a cat with the characters around him running the ship. On this version of the cover, everything’s red and the ones around him are franticly trying to get somewhere or get something done. Frantic city, and a very self-aware kind of cover that I enjoy!

CAT-ASTIC ART

The important thing about the art in this book is its ability to portray the various cats in ways that tell us what they are thinking or feeling. As always, I want great facial expressions as well as powerful action sequences. This book does an excellent job of that, with things moving on every page and the cats dealing with disaster all around them.

Even though the characters are trying to be more cat-like in their actions and perspective, the facial expressions and movements still need to be human enough for us to understand what they are up to. Great job!

BOTTOM LINE: GINGER-IFFIC STORYTELLING

Even though I’ve read many starship-centric stories, the cat characters and their situation make this something unique to me. I love it when I don’t know what’s going to happen next, and that’s a pleasure I really enjoy in this comic.

I particularly remember the Star Trek: Voyager episodes when the crew was separated from the ship, and how disconcerting that was. Now that the cats are on their own, it’s going to be fascinating to see where they go and what they do! I highly recommend this book particularly if you think space shows have done everything they could possibly do. You’ll see just how wrong you are, to let the cat out of the bag!

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