GRAPHIC NOVEL
Wallace & Gromit
The Whippet Vanishes

Authors: Simon Furman and Ian Rimmer
Artist: Jimmy Hansen
Titan Books
RRP £5.99, US $8.95
ISBN 1 84023 498 9
Available 22 October 2004


Winter has come to 62 West Wallaby Street, but Wallace & Gromit's Arctic antics on their new Sno-Blo Skis are cut short when they careen into a plot to part animals from their owners. It's the first confounding case for Wallace & Gromit: pet detectives...

The Whippet Vanishes is the latest original Wallace & Gromit graphic novel to be released through Titan. On picking this collection up, my first reaction was: "Oh! It's a bit thin!". But this large format (A4) paperback collection makes up for content what it lacks in page count (there are only 41 pages devoted to this story).

This story really felt like a true Wallace & Gromit tale. I could almost see the claymation models come to life as I turned each page - which is a credit to Jimmy Hansen's art work.

It's got everything a really good Wallace & Gromit story should have: inventions, cute animals, misguided villain... but wait... where's the cheese and crackers? You can't have a Wallace & Gromit story without cheese and crackers! Thankfully, the lack of either of these edible items doesn't detract from what is a fantastic story.

However, I was at a loss to explain why there were images and information on the following characters at the start of this book: Wendolene,Shaun, Preston and Feathers McGraw. While they are obviously an integral part of the Wallace & Gromit universe, they play no part in this collection and I felt that their inclusion was a little pointless - other than to pad out a couple of additional pages.

This is one cracker of a story, Gromit - with no cheese in sight.

Nick Smithson

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