Buy This Book: Derek Charm’s ‘Demon Dog’ #1

Those of you who have already read Trip Fantastic, one of ComicsAlliance's favorite comics, probably don't need any additional convincing when I say that Derek Charm's Demon Dog is a book you need to buy right now. For the rest of you, well... first, read Trip. Then go buy Demon Dog for a buck. It's that simple.

As you might be able to tell from the title, Demon Dog is about a demon dog, who appears with absolutely no backstory whatsoever in order to battle a demonic cell phone robot that a hapless lackey stole from a pair of supervillains. Needless to say, that's the kind of oddball premise that I can get pretty excited about, especially when it's done by a guy like Charm, who's able to pack an insane amount of energy into his panels along with all the cartoon goofiness. What's really crazy about it, though, is that Charm wrote and drew the entire sixteen page comic in in one week.

The idea behind it, according to Charm, was to capture the feeling of "late '70s Scooby Doo knockoffs," much in the same way that his work with Jason Baxter and Mac Hamilton on Trip is vaguely inspired by Baywatch Nights and the '90s Superboy comic.

When I asked him about it, Charm told me "I just wanted to do a quick, funny comic about a dog in a vaguely Hanna-Barbera style.  I liked the idea of a wandering hero-dog with no back story, just doing good wherever he could. For now it's a one-shot, but there might be more. There was originally a backup story about him saving the 2012 Summer Olympics that needed a little more work, but I might come back to if anyone cares enough."

I care, Derek.I care.

The sixteen page comic is available in completely DRM-free .pdf, .cbz and .cbr right now at GumRoad with a pay-what-you-want price that starts out at one thin dollar, and it's well worth picking up.