Kennel Block Blues

Oliver is newly incarcerated at Jackson State, an unforgiving lockup that houses all manner of hardened and damaged types. His loving home life has been stripped away from him. He fights to maintain his sanity and cheery attitude in these harsh new surroundings by occasionally bursting into song and going off on flights of fancy, much to the annoyance and confusion of his fellow inmates. As tensions build to a boiling point and a revolt is imminent, Oliver and some fellow inmates seek a way out, but the odds are stacked against them. This is a well-constructed prison drama with lovely animation-inspired art, but it’s also a cornucopia of virtually every prison movie cliché, with its distinguishing gimmick being that the prison is actually a kennel and the characters are anthropomorphized animals. It is by no means bad, but readers have been down this road innumerable times. (Jan.)