Natasha Allegri

Bee and Puppycat is really, really cute. It is also funny, bizarre, and occasionally wistful. Above all though, it is cute: there’s the pastel palette, the fat pink bows on Bee’s shoes, the warm roundness of its characters, literally everything about Puppycat. Its absurdism is soft and its softness is absurd -- “I got fired today,” Bee intones flatly, the rain spattering her cat-faced pinafore dress. She’s a dumpster-diving Sanrio character, Strawberry Shortcake late for her appointment at the temp agency. The beginnings of a plot prod gently at her from time to time, but never with anything like urgency -- two issues into its run, Boom! Studios' Bee and Puppycat comic has meditated on strawberry donuts, embarrassing pajamas, and platform shoes, but not much else. Creator Natasha Allegri (along with collaborators Madeleine Flores and Garrett Jackson) would rather devote three pages to QR-coded music boxes than set about untangling Puppycat’s origins or the nature of their magical, mysterious employer. In these qualities, Bee and Puppycat is right in line with Adventure Time, Steven Universe, and Bravest Warriors, its closest brethren in tone and form. Beyond the creator overlap between the four franchises and the fact that all of them now span both animation and comics, they’re all content to hunker down in that pocket of the zeitgeist that brings together childhood nostalgia and bizarre Internet-age humor, where atmosphere reigns over plot. But Bee and Puppycat stands out among them, and marks a sea change in comics -- particularly in how franchises are formed, what is considered marketable, and what demographics are seen as worthy of being catered to. In its weird, witty way, I believe that Bee and Puppycat emblematizes the future of this industry.

Thanks to a hugely successful Kickstarter, Natasha Allegri's Cartoon Hangover series Bee and PuppyCat is set to return with nine new episodes later this year. Fans don't have to wait that long to enjoy their favorite characters, though, as Allegri and Garret Jackson's comic book series debuts on May 14 with Bee and PuppyCat #1 from Boom! Studios. Click through to get your first-look at the new adv

When Cartoon Hangover launched its Kickstarter to fund a full first season of Natasha Allegri's Bee and PuppyCat animated series back in October, fans quickly noticed that comic books were among its backer rewards -- and just as quickly deduced which publisher would be bringing them to life. Boom! quickly confirmed it was working with Allegri (with a teaser that playfully read "Of Course we'r

  We make a regular practice at ComicsAlliance of spotlighting particular artists or specific bodies of work, as well as the special qualities of comic book storytelling, but because cartoonists, illustrators and their fans share countless numbers of great pinups, fan art and other illustrations on sites like Flickr, Tumblr, DeviantArt and seemingly infinite art blogs that we’ve created Best Art E

It's not often that you get a piece of comics news that's completely unsurprising and completely welcome at the same time, but that's exactly what we got this week when Boom! Studios announced that their Kaboom imprint will be publishing a comic book version of Natasha Allegri's Bee and Puppycat. The official announcement about Bee and Puppycat joining its fellow Frederator shows, Adventure Time a

Between its Superbook and Sailor Moon-inspired aesthetic, hearty humor and intriguing premise, it's not hard to see why Natasha Allegri's two Bee and PuppyCat shorts from Frederator's Cartoon Hangover have amassed more than 4 million views online over the past few months. With fan demand fully in tow, Cartoon Hangover has turned to Kickstarter to expedite the creation of six (or more, according to

If you've read ComicsAlliance comments for any amount of time, you'll know that if nothing else, we are bitter, jaded (hipster???) dinosaurs. As a result, it may seem rare that we get excited about something like a variant cover or a convention exclusive, unless it's something pretty, pretty awesome. Fortunately for our tiny, blackened hearts, that exact thing happened today when Boom! Studios rev

Check out all the links from Monday after the cut.

Here at ComicsAlliance, we were already pretty big fans of Natasha Allegri thanks to her amazing art and her work on Adventure Time, where she created the female version of Finn, Fionna - the most cosplayable character of the past five years (and wrote and illustrated Boom!'s Fionna and Cake comic miniseries). Now, we've been given another reason why her work's amazing in the form of Bee and Puppy

The silent battle of superiority between "Cat People" and "Dog People" has just been won with Cartoon Hangover's release of the "Bee and PuppyCat" trailer. Neither dog nor cat, but perhaps both simultaneously, Natasha Allegri's adorable hybrid and its human companion will officially begin captivating those who favor furry friends of any variety on July 11.