So this time we’ve got Peter and Company, the adventures of a cartoon cat boy with an imaginary friend. Creator Jonathan Ponikvar claims that the title character is loosely based on himself as a kid. I highly doubt he was covered in brown fur growing up, or had a tail and pointy ears.
Maybe he managed to have some sort of miraculous surgical procedure to get it all removed? If he did, did he think up the imaginary friend during the anesthesia?
Peter’s imaginary comrade comes in the form of Seth, a duck dressed like Morgan Freeman in Bruce Almighty who works as a veteran for a network of Guardians. I should probably mention that these Guardians probably aren’t the type to cause any massive property damage, drink all of your booze or steal anything from you.
Still, they’re just as valiant as those other, more popular Guardians. And they’re probably better with kids.
Peter at times is pretty Calvin-esque (as in Calvin and Hobbes) and can be a handful for Seth, but he’s more painfully insecure and socially awkward than he is a truly bad kid. A better example of that would be school bully Chelsea, a mean girl bear so bad I wouldn’t be shocked if she had maybe eaten a few of her fellow students. He gets along a lot better with his gecko friend named Izzy, who has his own guardian in the form of a snake named “Skins”. Personally I think that sounds like a vaguely species-ist nickname.
There’s also these other mini-guardians who happen to be worms for some odd reason, and one of his teachers is…..Krogar. Krogar is awesome, hilarious and my new personal hero. I don’t think he’s the kind of instructor that our kids today need, but damn if he’s not fun to watch.
Peter and Company isn’t afraid to get heavy handed at certain points and up the drama once in a while. It’s a fairly good natured comic overall, so there’s no sense of awkwardness when it transitions back and forth. At its core it’s still rooted in slapstick and weirdness, so even though it stars a hero struggling to find acceptance and how to function socially, it’s not something super profound. Then again, I don’t think it was meant to be.
Ponikvar’s art is simplistic but he more or less nails all of his animals right. He gets better as the comic goes along, switching to a full page style. He’s planning to eventually develop Peter and Co. into an animated pilot to pitch to studios, so if you’re interested in supporting it, check out his comic here. Recommended, it’s pretty solid.