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Kevin Wolf’s Pangaea is back with the second collection The Mongoose Phalanx. Winner of RFT Best of St. Louis – Best Comic Book award in 2008, this second collection of humor strips far surpasses the first. This time around Mr. Wolf has mastered his crudely drawn first attempt and presented Pangaea as a well crafted and well executed machine, pumping out story after story. It is in the writing where Wolf finds his strength, and The Mongoose Phalanx manages to captures a childlike whimsy and melancholy inspired by the likes of Bill Watterson and Charles Schlutz.

Follow the ever expanding Pangaea cast as they embark on stranger and stranger adventures. The inseparable trio of Henry Koala, Kyle Gator, and Zephyr Monkey are found playing jet fighter, crushing over girls, and basking in 80s nostalgia as they battle sentient computer Skynet. Boss Bird and Ivan Bird expanded the bagel shop (with disastrous results), and Phoebe dishes out the dating advice (also with disastrous results). Underlying it all though is a deep sense of longing of a world passing the characters by. Yet, through their friendships and misadventures there is still hope, and the very mature themes of confusion and depression are won over by heartwarming naivety. Like any great comic, Pangaea can find its home on the book shelves of both children and adults.

The Mongoose Phalanx also includes a guest artist section a la Family Circus. Including many of Wolf’s closest friends writing and illustrating guest strips, this section proves Pangaea’s rudimentary style is for everyone, and further reinforces that anyone can make comics. More so, it proves that if you work hard enough on the comic, like Wolf has, you can make great comics!

-Jon

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