Dogman: Grime and Punishment is a graphic novel by Dav Pilkey, the ninth book of the Dogman book series. At the end of the last book, only one tadpole had her powers left and the Fair Fairy lost any leverage. Big Jim fell on Grampa and the fairy and stopped them. Flippy decided to take care of the tadpoles, and Petey was released from jail. Now, in this book, the Mayor visits the police and sees how naughty Dogman is, so he takes his badge away and fires him. Dogman disguises himself as “Catman” and gets his job back. Meanwhile, in jail Grampa invented a hat that gives the user superstrength, which he wore to escape jail, causing havoc across the city. ‘Catman’ pretends to be his friend, and then tries to stop him, but his mask falls off so the Mayor puts him in a bus to jail along with Chief and Sarah. Grandpa then puts living spray on a giant lunch bag and it follows him to the pond to drink water, where Flippy is teaching the Tadpoles grammar. Petey and Li’l Petey, who were having a conversation about how evil the world Grampa are and what happened to Gramma, run to help, along with 80-HD. Petey tells the kitten that the only way to defeat Grampa’s Hate is with more Hate, but Li’l Petey doesn’t think so and tries to defeat the lunch bag and Grampa with love. Will love succeed, or was Petey right all along?
This book was pretty good. Although the last book didn’t have the Notes page, it added it back at the end of this book where it explains any references to quotes or poems during the book. Pileky also managed to creatively combine emotion with humor for the method of defeating Grampa at the end of the book. I was wondering what happened to Flippy and the 22 tadpoles after the end of the last book, but they made a reappearance in this one. Because of all this, I give this book a five out of five.