The fourth entry (or “season”) in Turetsky’s upbeat, team-minded HR Doodles comic series finds the high-flying software company Orange You Playing Much blindsided. Even as the team is toasting their post-merger success—they’ve launched the top-selling VR software title—a sudden rash of employee departures in the tech departments causes concern among the HR team. Turetsky’s Doodles respond in the smart ways that have been established over previous collections of these four-panel strips: gathering data, surveying employees, checking in with AI bot Charlie, communicating with transparency, and generally demonstrating to readers all that a flexible, effective, goal-oriented HR team can be. Like conferences in a Federation starship, each of the many meetings here builds to agreement, clear action steps, and a sense of collective purpose.

Readers of these warm, colorful comics will likely daydream about how nice it would be if all HR departments resembled the Doodles. This volume cements the comic’s shift into a vehicle for book-length storytelling, as Turetsky foregoes punchlines in favor of charting how a good team would handle this situation. The revelation that OUPM workers are being poached by a competitor isn’t a surprise, but the team’s shoe-leather detective work, discussed in meetings and calls, is engaging and convincing. Turetsky’s diverse, cheery faces and playful sense of workplace environs and habits (don’t shout “SHUT UP!” when surprised at a meeting) keep the material light, even as the plot touches on corporate skullduggery and literal vengeance.

Some quirks of presentation again make reading the comics occasionally frustrating. It’s not always clear what order the speech bubbles are meant to be read in. While charmingly designed, characters tend to look straight ahead, at the reader rather than at each other, offering little indication of who is speaking to whom and in what order, which means some panels, especially those with seven characters and five bursts of dialogue, need to be read more than once to follow the flow.

Takeaway: Charming comics about a clever, team-minded HR department.

Comparable Titles: Steve Browne’s HR Rising!, Monica Frede and Keri Ohlrich’s The Way of the HR Warrior.

Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A-
Illustrations: A-
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A