Miracles for the Entrepreneur

Les Harding is the author of The Voyages of Lesser Men: Thumbnail
Sketches in Canadian Exploration and The Journeys of Remarkable Women:
Their Travels on the Canadian Frontier.

This is a book of black-and-white cartoons about the business world that
has some semblance of a continuous story. The cast of characters include
turkeys as CEOs, aliens, moles, cats, and cows as lawyers, computer
geeks, and bankers. But the principal characters—who are,
appropriately enough, up to their whiskers in the rat race—are Joe
Rat; his wife, Babe Rat; and their children, Ratilla and Brat. The Rats
pass from the uncertain world of the employee to the uncertain world of
the entrepreneur and thence to the Great Beyond. Along the road to
business success, the family becomes involved in bizarre money-making
ventures, encountering leech farmers, purple-milk–drinking aliens, and
pigs in serious need of liposuction.

Although meant to highlight the humorous side of the entrepreneur’s
life, unfortunately it doesn’t. The book just isn’t very funny. The
cartoons have an amateurish quality, and the whole thing is a confusing,
pointless mishmash.