REVIEW: Bad dog AL DENTE turns dropping the ball into an art

Look, Al Dente is a bad dog. He’s not even that good at being a bad dog, every time he tries to put his foot down it ends up in his mouth. Grayson Bear’s charismatic cartoon scoundrel wreaks more havoc on themself than anyone else, but it isn’t for lack of trying. Al Dente is a collection of misadventures, worst intentions, follies, a smattering of short comics where each attempt to gain the upper hand on life ends as a train wreck.

Dente is a hot mess. Tuca without Bertie to reign her in. Bojack but service industry hipster suffering, not comfortable caucasian Hollywood world. He’s Marlon Brando absolutely splattered across a downtown intersection, the kind of hubris that gets hit by a bus. Calling every contact in your phone to ask why they didn’t like your new selfie yet, this is the comedy of Al Dente! Bad dog! You need those long puppy dog ears to wiggle when you are so furious about social media you’re ripping the stuffing out of the couch with your teeth.

Bear taps into something that is present in another Silver Sprocket book from this year, Raven Lyn Clemens’ The Paradox of Getting Better. The context is all spurious but the moment is real as fuck. The cartoon redirection is enough separation to be able to confess in earnest to what life is like. Al Dente is at heart intensely emotionally vulnerable, which leads to rash decisions that swiftly spin out of control and proportion. Paradox and Al Dente are about what it’s like, not what it is. Dente is a shambles sometimes (most of the time), but the story is about him instead of about what he’s like.

Dente is always bound to make a mess of things; some people are just bad dogs. It’s elevated and aggravated but it’s still recognizable and relatable. And while I wouldn’t say Al Dente is a comforting read, I think it sends a message. If how you act is considered bad behavior, you aren’t alone. In your anger. In your insecurity. Not alone. Muddled, conflicting desires are something everyone has. Bear paints them on the canvas large.

It isn’t romanticizing being insufferable. But it isn’t exactly a cautionary tale either. Not schadenfreude. It is someone else suffering and it is pretty funny. What’s missing is ill intent for Dente. He makes his bed but all the same I can’t help but feel bad for him. The Wile E. Coyote of the friend group, where the decisions they’re making are clearly going to end up getting them hurt in a shitty way that is also entertaining. The Teflon that keeps good advice from ever reaching a party kid like Al Dente is the same impenetrable surface that bounces him back to his same old bullshit after every self-inflicted social and emotional maiming.

When I say Al Dente is drawn cartoonishly, mostly I mean ancient ones. He’s a throwback to 20s style, the Ub Iwerks version of Oswald the Rabbit or Felix the Cat. Not Bimbo. There’s no little white minstrel gloves. Modernize the non-racist stuff from back then and you get a Sonic or Parappa the Rapper aesthetic. Bear is part that, part Peter Max Fiorucci fashion catalog, part Joost Swarte perfectly drawn roundies. Al Dente taps into Art Deco, art history, looking like a demon from A Trip to the Moon, or a harlequin from an absinthe label.

J&K by John Pham a similar thing, the cute look is more the product of being a student of comic and cartoon history than a polarizing art choice against dark writing. But there is something to the dynamic- the absurdity in Dente’s behavior is true and real. Withnail and I real. Yet isn’t Richard E Grant’s performance fit for a stage, a clown? The children’s programming look is how serious you ought to take Al Dente’s screaming fits. Like Clemens, Bear uses the opportunity of a cartoonish setting to let all hell break loose emotionally. By being more of a caricature, he cuts closer to the truth.

Very much the Silver Sprocket thing. The casual reader would mistake it for a kid’s comic; the actual reader is treated to abandonment issues and pee play by like, the second story. I could see some Betty Boop-loving grandparent pulling a Fungirl with Al Dente. Anyway, I think what sets Silver Sprocket apart from the rest, what makes it punk, is its transgressive acts have meaning.

So is it really the realness that makes Al Dente so engrossing? Withnail and Al are both uncompromisingly bitter, overflowing with life in some ways, utterly alien to it in most others. Is it assurance that we can be crushed completely and still survive? The comfort in recognizing some of our flaws aren’t ours alone? How is it possible to be so likable and such a jagoff at the same time? There’s something behind the slapstick Dente subjects his self-respect to that compels me (to ask a million questions).

Neither I nor Dente have any answers, to be honest. This isn’t about soul searching, it’s about going to work at the job you hate and then farting in the customer’s face. You probably shouldn’t do what Al Dente does actually.

REVIEW: AL DENTE

Al Dente
Written and illustrated by Grayson Bear.
Published by Silver Sprocket.

Al Dente is available from the Silver Sprocket webshop, or wherever finer comics and books are sold.

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