The mushers in this funny, thoughtful and slightly disquieting graphic novel have a job to do: pull a sled and run like hell. Their workplace is a snowy, remote northern outpost where their human "boss" and his "mate" live a rustic, off-the-grid existence. Like all jobs, there exists no small amount of BS--backstabbing coworkers, performance insecurities and sexual harassment. Glen Eichler, a staff writer for The Colbert Report, and artist Joe Infurnari are clearly aiming for a sitcom-esque canine version of office politics here, but Mush! can't help absorbing some of the dark existentialism inherent to its arctic setting, rendered in a color palette that evokes the chill of winter. The result is a satisfying mixture of goofy-faced, talking-animal satire with a grim picture of an existence where work, death and survival are brutally intertwined.
Eichler and Infurnari have plenty of fun with the set-up. Dolly, the lead dog, worries that her passion for the run is the sum of her worth and, when she miscalculates the trail and crashes the pack, she wonders whether she has the mettle to lead. Venus is sick of being a puppy-making machine and wants Buddy to stop trying to breed with her. Guy uses Iago-like manipulation to get Winston to do his bidding. Meanwhile, inside the cabin, the boss's mate is starting to buckle under the austere and lonely conditions. At one point, two dogs debate whether the boss really exists or whether they have conjured him by their need for a higher power. It's all absurd and entertaining, but harsh and unsettling, too. After all, if Mush! is analogous to the human workplace, what does it mean that the only options are frantic running and irrelevance? --Cherie Ann Parker, freelance journalist and book critic