The most important thing that happened last week was the release of an adorable new graphic novel: Mr. Muffins: Defender of the Stars. Written by Ben Kahn and illustrated by Georgeo Brooks, this book is not only hilarious and filled with plenty of action, it also contains important and timely messages about showing compassion for our fellow beings, no matter where they come from or what they look like, and appreciation for where we ourselves come from.
The story follows Reuben, a boy who loves his corgi, Mr. Muffins, much more than doing homework or engaging with his own immigrant background. But when a stubborn alien, Cassara, arrives on Earth insisting that Mr. Muffins is the only one who can stop a ruthless alien empire from destroying even more planets, both boy and dog are whisked away on the space adventure of a lifetime.
Despite being so far from home, Reuben ends up learning some very down-to-earth lessons. One of those is about immigration in general and refugees in particular.
Reuben is the son of Egyptian immigrants; while Cassara’s family was driven from their homeworld by the same armada she is now risking everything to stop. Ben Kahn told me in an email interview that this aspect of the story “was something that developed while I wrote…I knew that beneath [Cassara’s] toughness and bravery, there was a deep sadness for her lost homeworld. Reuben and Cassara come from wildly different planets, but her being a refugee and him being the child of immigrants, it gives them a connection to bond over.”
Another more subtle lesson comes from the bad guys, the Hakar. Early in the story, several Hakar bungle their mission and elect to stay on Earth rather than risk execution by going home. As a result, they themselves become refugees, struggling to adapt to life in a new environment. This plot point came from two distinct creative desires: to make people laugh (“I thought the image of these scary aliens trying to work at a coffee shop or act in plays would be really funny,” says Kahn) and to show that no group is a monolith.
“I didn’t want to depict a whole species as just uniformly evil,” Kahn explains. “I think that sends the wrong message. Even if they’ve wound up part of something terrible, I wanted to show that even the bad guys are individuals.”
All of this comes wrapped in a colorful, engaging story filled with characters who are, in Georgeo Brooks’s words, not just “fun to look at, but also fun to draw” and fun to follow on their adventures. Both creators turned to a real-life source of inspiration when looking to make the story the best it could be: their pets.
“When I really needed to be in that ‘Mr. Muffins is the cutest’ headspace, my cat Blargy was there to bring adorable inspiration,” says Kahn. Brooks says, “I got my dog Mai about a year or two before we started making this comic. Perhaps I secretly wished that she, too, would be a superpowered dog. But in truth, I feel there’s always an innate desire to visit cool new places with your pet, and I think we really captured that feeling. It was nice to live a little vicariously through Reuben and Mr. Muffins’ adventure.”
It’s certainly hard to argue that our world wouldn’t be a better place if everyone could learn to appreciate their own and other cultures, like Reuben did, and to fight our hardest against injustice while still remembering to have fun, like the magnificent Mr. Muffins.
