"Mutts to You"
A little bit of Saturday Morning cartoon committee creation logic behind this title. Hot Dog. He has a house huge on the inside, though small on the outside. Has bunches and bunches of gadgets that can do loads of plot creation for him – like, in this instance, turn dogs into humans and humans into dogs. Also he has a robot butler. And a chihuahua sidekick. And it’s all the result of some space dogs.
Or. Not. Because they don’t want to run that one. So now Hot Dog built and created this magical doghouse. Out of things he dug out of Dilton’s backyard. This raises a number of questions. With these “Astro-Mutts” there is this “poof! There it is!” dynamic. If Hot Dog were dragging items out of Dilton’s yard – Dilton and his parents would notice, and even if they didn’t I think Jughead and his parents would notice Hot Dog building things somehow.
"Transmogrifier". Could Bill Watterson sue?
The comic book succeeds at being not embarrassing – there were worse efforts in this “experimental” era. (then again, there were also more worthwhile ones.) There is a curious effect in issue 3 where Gene Colan, fresh off his Jughead Batman parody tie in for Jughead # 17, draws the Hot Dog Batman parody tie-in (groan as you will at “Barkman”) and… well, Colan did draw Howard the Duck so you can compare and contrast the anthropomorphic comic things.
