Fish Police comic review

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Way back before anyone had ever heard of SpongeBob SquarePants, before The Little Mermaid, there was a comic set under the sea. And there was also an unfortunate TV show made from it that we all prefer to forget (and wish had never existed). Steven Moncuse created a wonderful under the ocean story called Fish Police. Populated with wonderful, quirky characters, a fun mystery plot and art that started off decent and ended up great, Fish Police is a forgotten classic cartoon. The first collected volume even had an introduction by Harlan Ellison. So, what is Fish Police?


Inspector Gil is a little naive, a little mischievous and very confused. Gil seems to remember being a person, not a fish and seems confused about why he remembers feet and hands. He works for a very exasperated Chief of Police, is interested in the Chief’s secretary Goldie and has a source from the newspaper (Oscar). When Gil gets seduced by the dangerous and mysterious Angelfish, he finds himself working security for Hook, the evil leader of S.Q.U.I.D. But is Gil really bad or just an immature fish.

There seems a mystery around Gil that many people (especially Hook and Oscar) know about and there seems to be a game afoot. Across the 26 issues (through three different publishers) Moncuse develops a wonderful story that slowly gets deeper and more interesting as it goes on. The story is also extremely funny. Moncuse has a real eye for humor and does a great job of creating the humor from the characters and the situation. He also doesn’t let the humor get in the way of the story (or vice versa). Moncuse’s art also gets better as the series goes on:

Issue #1

Issue #22
As you can see, Moncuse’s designs are much better and his art is sharper. It’s wonderful to see an artist develop over a period of time.
The publishing history of Fish Police is interesting. Moncuse self-published the first 7 issues of the series himself. Then the series had enough attention, that Comico brought him on and published the next 10 issues. After Comico went bankrupt, Apple comics published the remaining 10 issues. A few years later Marvel started reprinting Fish Police (to coincide with the TV show), but when the show was canceled, so was Fish Police.
Overall the series is a fun story that appears to be deceptively simple, but is actually a deep story that is well told and well drawn. As far as I know there was only a single collected edition which covered the first storyline and the rest can only be read by tracking down the individual issues. I highly recommend that you track it down, it’s worth the time. But do NOT track down the TV series. You will be disappointed. Highly recommended.