Cat Kid Comic Club

About the Cat Kid Comic Club series

Li'l Petey -- the cloned kitten from Dog Man, adopted by Dog Man and reformed supervillain Petey -- starts a comic-making club with his tadpole friend Molly and her twenty-one frog siblings, teaching them (and readers) the basics of visual storytelling one silly, heartfelt comic at a time. Each book is a collection of comics-within-the-comic created by the different frog characters, each with a wildly different art style and voice, framed by Li'l Petey and Molly's own running story about patience, creativity, and finding your own artistic voice.

Dav Pilkey spun this off from Dog Man as something genuinely unusual for the format: a book that teaches comic-creation technique (panel layout, perspective, expressing emotion through art) directly to its young readers by showing dozens of different amateur styles side by side, all filtered through Pilkey's own relentless, cheerful energy. It leans more explicitly instructional and craft-focused than Dog Man or Captain Underpants, without losing any of the slapstick and heart that make Pilkey's books work.

It's a natural next stop for Dog Man readers who've grown attached to Li'l Petey, and a genuinely useful, low-pressure introduction to making comics for kids who want to try it themselves.

How to read this series

Read in publication order starting with Cat Kid Comic Club (2020). Each book is largely self-contained around a new round of comics from the frog siblings, though Li'l Petey and Molly's own relationship and Petey's ongoing character growth (carried over from Dog Man) develop gradually across the series.

This is a spin-off of Dog Man, itself a spin-off of Captain Underpants -- reading at least some of Dog Man first is recommended so Li'l Petey, Petey, and their family dynamic mean something, though Cat Kid Comic Club can be enjoyed on its own.