I certainly hope no one ever sells this issue to a kid. It’s–wow. Let’s see. It’s about a dog with two missing puppies. The team (do they have a team name?) investigates and ends up in the forest where they try calling the puppies spirits. That attempt works, but has the unintended side effect of loosing all these other spirits (of dead animals) who the team tries to protect themselves against.

Except the team members who are possessed by some of the spirits and run off and kill the teenage boy who’s been killing cats and dogs and dumping them out in this pond.

So you’ve got murder, vengeance, then the possessed team members (once unpossessed) filled with guilt and the other team members all messed up because they should have tried the spell in the first place.

It’s a heavy, heavy read.

Real glad I bought this series.

Here’s an idea: dogs and cats who fight the supernatural (animals). It sounds Disney on paper, but the execution of Beasts of Burden has a lot of darkness and a lot of oomph. Dorkin’s killing off animals left and right here; admittedly, they’re all off-panel deaths (at least of the cute animals), but the survivors describe what’s happened in detail.

Jill Thompson’s art somehow makes everything–whether it’s an easy subject like a pug or a cat–or a more difficult one like a demonic toad–look adorable. It’s painted art, so there’s this definite “Dogs Playing Poker” thing going on.

There’s some uphill resistance when getting into this first issue as there are previous adventures in some Dark Horse anthologies (something I didn’t know as I picked up the comic to read). Dorkin does a good job of filling in the new reader through dialogue.

Adorable, if hardcore.