In space no one can hear you bark: Pug Davis

Pug Davis is certainly a labor of love, while ostensibly it looks like sci-fi the artwork veers between primitive sketchiness and squidgy detail. This strip is breathtaking in its consistent insistence on long-term infinite canvas within its somewhat slow paced strips. Guided by a stoic warped pug dog as its hero accompanied by an uh....odd sidekick, Blouse.

There's a tragic back story here that gives what could be a throw-away space opera cowboy bebop riff a certain level of poignant, there's little fables popping up here amidst the minimalist scrawl and they are easily matched by the painterly subtlety on display here. The relationship between the two characters is not outlined at first so this is a discovery and finally this becomes a meditation on growing friendship.

At first glance though this looks like a mishmash of disparate angles and the off-level sections add to the erratic flavor of this strip, the shading and linework certainly helps the stream of consciousness story-lines present here stretch out into the ethereal nothing of outer space.

 This strip is willing to mix science fiction and surrealist tropes mix-up, there's a lot of wordless emotion here and Rebecca Sugar is quite willing to let the artwork alone convey the narrative, a concise use of silence to direct the action, but more awe and empathy than undercurrents of Pinterersque malice, this is a strip about the occasional downsides and the endless oddity of space exploration .