When Art Spiegelman told his father's story of life as a Jew in Nazi Germany using depictions of cartoon cats and mice, it resonated on many levels of the reader's consciousness, including ingrained knowledge of the typical relationship between cartoon cats and mice. In BugHouse, cartoonist Steve Lafler depicts a mythical '50s jazz band as bugs. As the story progresses, the combo evolves and attracts more attention, and faces one adversary: "bug juice," a highly addictive narcotic in which two of the four members continually dabble. Why use bugs instead of actual human figures from the era? It's a mystery. Nothing makes a bi-pedal bug sticking its antennae in a vial of bug juice any more compelling than a junkie sticking a needle in his veins. One gets the sense that Lafler chose to draw bugs only because he couldn't draw people well enough. The main source of tension comes from the use of bug juice. Will he do it? Won't he? It's tiresome after the fourth or fifth time. Beyond this, the characters are rendered well enough to keep you reading until the book's abrupt conclusion—to be continued in the series, although there's no indication of that in the book. It's just a waste that Lafler doesn't do more with them.