Characters / The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!

Here's a list of characters from the webcomic The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!.

The webcomic's own detailed character descriptions can be found here.

Bob Smithson

Bob is a very nice but very ordinary man, whose life had been "uneventful almost to the point of noteworthiness, but not quite," who one day, for reasons he does not understand, became a magnet for all things paranormal. He runs a newsstand in the suburb of Generictown. Bob has a kind and very mellow personality. He's no intellectual, but he's wiser than he looks—he's good at both debating with megalomaniacs just why they shouldn't destroy the world; and at figuring out solutions to problems which seem obvious once he's said them, but not before then. He's physically unremarkable, but he will push himself to the limits of his strength and endurance for the sake of those he loves. And by now, he's become very adaptable to the absurdities constantly being thrown into his life, and it takes a lot to faze him—though this may be more due to being thick-skulled than being broad-minded.

"Oh boy! Crunchy peanut butter! If I get it home in time, I can have peanut butter fluffer-nutters during the Laverne & Shirley reunion show!"

"I guess Generictown isn't the most exciting town in America. When a good bake sale comes up, most of us don't want to miss it! Myself, I stayed home 'cause they're showing Love Story on cable this afternoon."

"Huh?"

• Action Survivor: Bob rarely if ever goes looking for trouble. The central conceit of the comic is that it always finds him, and he somehow manages to deal with it.
• Buffy Speak: Prone to this. Almost any piece of high technology or paranormal exotica will be described as a "_____ thingy."
• Casual Danger Dialogue: He tends to understate everything, as if he can never quite wrap his head around how dangerous the situation actually is.
• Children Raise You: Raising Molly has been a defining part of Bob's relationship with Jean.
• The Comically Serious: It takes a lot to garner more of a reaction from Bob than a quiet little "Wow!"
• Disembodied Eyebrows: Usually visible floating above his head even when seen from the rear.
• Dull Surprise: His default expression is to just look perpetually mildly startled at life. The giant eyes and small mouth help this effect.
• The Everyman: Described as "the world's most average man."
• Fantastically Indifferent: It rarely seems to occur to him that the things that happen to him are particularly unusual. When a spaceship lands on his roof for the third time, he asks Jerry if maybe he should put up screens.
• Hidden Depths: As Jean has observed, he's smarter than he looks.
• Humble Hero: Bob once got a Congressional Medal of Honor for saving the world. He keeps it on his mantle, tends to forget it's there, and most of his neighbors don't seem to realize he has it.
• Indy Ploy: Always ends up making things up as he goes along. Fortunately, he's pretty good at it.
• Limited Wardrobe: Like so many cartoon characters, he has been shown to own a closet full of identical red turtlenecks and blue bellbottom pants.
• Minnesota Nice: While Generictown's location is deliberately vague, the town in general and Bob in particular have this sort of vibe to them.
• Muggle Foster Parents: He and Jean are raising Molly the Monster.
• Muggles: A very ordinary human surrounded by weirdness.
• Nice Guy: He’s quintessentially nice, kind, quiet, and unassuming.
• The Nicknamer: The first to call Galatea "Golly." He also named Coney, and unintentionally inspired Golly to name Gosh.
• Official Couple: With Jean.
• Only Sane Man: Up to a point; see Jean, below.
• Papa Wolf: Has a calmer temperament than Jean, but he’s every bit as protective of Molly as she is.
• Riddle for the Ages: Why do things happen to him? It’s inexplicable.
• Roofless Renovation: A running gag that his roof gets destroyed and needs to be fixed at least once per storyline.
• Simpleminded Wisdom: Can seem like a bit of a dope a lot of the time, but when push comes to shove, he's usually got the most common sense of anyone in the room.
• Surrounded by Smart People: While most of Bob's neighbors in Generictown do seem to be idiots, most of Bob's close companions on his adventures (Jean, Molly, Voluptua, Galatea, or Hibachi) are much more "book smart" than he is.
• Talking the Monster to Death: He's very good in this department. Lampshaded here. This is partly out of preference, and partly from being fully aware that he's a lousy combatant.
• Too Dumb to Fool: When he first meets Riboflavin, he instantly sees the "obvious" flaw in Riboflavin's scheme, while Riboflavin had assumed Earth's "primitives" would be too dumb to notice it.
• Underestimating Badassery: No one is ever even slightly impressed with Bob on first meeting him.
• Unfazed Everyman: Bob is pretty unflappable.
• The Watson: While Jean will accept a more scientifically literate explanation of things, Bob will hold out for the layman's version.
• Weirdness Magnet: And Jean is more than capable of exploiting it. She's even considered studying it, but the potential consequences of doing so worry her.
• What the Hell, Hero?: A mild case. Both Golly and Molly have criticized him for always being too dull and sedentary, left to his own devices, until the next new weird thing gets thrown at him.
  • In the earlier strips, Molly could always "guilt bomb" him and Jean for sending her to live with Cestus.
• Whoopi Epiphany Speech: Goes hand in hand with Talking the Monster to Death, mentioned above. Usually done in words of one or two syllables.

Dr. Jean Poule

Jean is a biologist at Generictown University. She met Bob when they collided on the sidewalk. She was carrying her life's work, a genetic experiment in a test tube, and Bob was carrying a jar of peanut butter—the two combined to form Molly the Peanut Butter Monster. Bob asked Jean to coffee, and after a couple of dates they hit it off very well and began going steady. Jean is much better educated than Bob, and better able to grasp the implications of much of what goes on in his life (this is not necessarily an advantage, as it freaks her out a lot of the time). She is far more emotional than Bob, and when in a bad mood her fury has been known to frighten Sasquatches. She is currently raising Molly, and loves her deeply. She laments the state of her career, because her experiment was ruined (and she's reluctant to expose Molly to much scientific scrutiny).

"If I can make it to Algy's House of Discount Agar before closing time, I can start the test tonight!"

"Egads... the awful thing is I'm so far gone I believe you."

"ARE YOU CLINICALLY INSANE?!?!"

• Brainy Brunette: A young and attractive brunette with a PhD in polymicrofragilistic monoclonalexpialidicous.
• Catchphrase: "Egad!"
• Children Raise You: Raising Molly has been a defining part of her relationship with Bob.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Feels a rivalry with Voluptua for Bob's affections. This at first seems to be paranoia, but later turns out to be justified.
• Country Mouse: Subverted. Jean was raised on a farm, says she's descended from "hill folk," and was the first member of her family to attend college, but she doesn't display classic "country mouse" behavior and is one of the more erudite people in Generictown.
• Deadpan Snarker: The member of the cast most likely to make a sarcastic comment, particularly at the author's expense.
• Fangirl: Of Carl Sagan. And Dr. Benton Quest.
• Girl Next Door: Well, living just down the block, anyway. Generally pretty down to Earth in her attitudes, despite her high intelligence. She was raised on a farm.
• Life's Work Ruined: Her collision with Bob destroyed the experiment she was carrying. Granted, this resulted in Molly's creation, but it's not like Jean can tell her bosses that, so her career was horribly damaged.
• Mama Bear: Do not threaten Molly around her. Her boss did that, and she almost "smashed [his] skull open like a Gallagher melon."
• Meet Cute: They met by literally bumping into each other.
• Motherly Scientist: Regards herself completely as Molly's mother, and somewhat halfheartedly as Golly's, as well.
• Official Couple: With Bob.
• Only Sane Woman: Probably deserves this title more than Bob himself, poor girl.
• Punny Name: Jean Poule = "gene pool." She's a biologist.
• School Is for Losers: Toyed with. Jean was an extremely gifted student as a child, but she despised school. She says others had a hard time understanding this. Ironically, she grew up to be a teacher — and still basically hates it, wanting to do pure scientific research.
• Screw You, Elves!: The one most likely to put Voluptua in her place when she gets condescending.
• Scolding the Fourth-Wall Breaker: Scolds other characters for breaking the fourth wall, but is really just as prone to doing it herself — though in her case, it's usually to bicker with the author rather than address the audience.
• See the Invisible: A variation. After spending some time handling and manipulating objects with More than Three Dimensions with her bare hands on board the Cone Ship, Jean permanently develops "tesseract vision" which lets her see things that exist off in an inaccessible dimensional direction.
• Surrounded by Idiots: How she feels about herself in Generictown.
• Truly Single Parent: Molly spontaneously generated from a beaker of formula and a jar of peanut butter.
• Tsundere: Sweet tempered until she isn't.
• Unstoppable Rage: When she loses her temper, she becomes a force of nature.
• Wild Take: These are one of her signature characteristics.
• Wacky College: Generictown University
• The World Is Just Awesome: Jean's in spaaaaaaayce...!

Molly The Peanut Butter Monster

Molly Smithson is a lab accident, a pink furry monster with a peppermint striped tail, who grew to human size in the space of one month. She is superhumanly intelligent but not very wise (the opposite of Bob), able to build advanced technology like robots and interstellar communicators out of scraps. Her personality is childlike and generally very cheerful, reflecting her happy if brief childhood, raised by Bob. She is currently living with Jean, and she wants her "parents" to get married. Her speech patterns are unusual, reflecting her broad reading and TV-watching interests, so she intersperses bits of teenage slang, outmoded medieval language, technical jargon, and kindergarten talk into the same sentence without giving it a thought.

"Zounds and jeepers!"

(to Galatea) "Who-wha? But that's dumb! Nobody wants you to be me! I'm already me! And you're you! An' it's like totally mete that you should remain you! I pinky-swear that everybody here'd treat the integrity of your self-identity as superdy-duper, profoundly inviolable and stuff and junk! Word!! Do you savvy?

"I'm buildin' a new interstellar transmitter! So I need an umbrella, a Speak n' Spell, and a baloney sandwich! The sandwich isn't part of the mechanism; I'm just hungry!"

• All Girls Like Ponies: Wants one for her birthday. Absolutely loves Unigar the Vast Unicorn.
• Benevolent Monsters: Cheerfully self-identifies as a "monster," but wouldn't hurt a fly.
• Big Eater: A result of her fast metabolism.
• Cartoon Creature: She's just a cute, pink, furry... thing.
• Cheerful Child: Perpetually enthusiastic and innocent.
• Cute Monster Girl
  Lari: "But you are a monster!"
  Molly: "Yes, but only in the Sesame Street sense!"
• Ditzy Genius: Where Bob basically has a low intelligence score but a high wisdom score, Molly is the reverse, if only due to lack of real world experience.
• Drives Like Crazy: A terrible driver with no license, who none the less likes to hotwire cars.
• Feminine Women Can Cook: Enjoys making fancy French meals.
• Fluffy Tamer: To Snookums, the shrunken kaiju she made a pet.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Invents high-tech stuff on the fly effortlessly.
• Genki Girl: Very outgoing and upbeat.
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Her teddy bear Callisto.
• Homemade Inventions: Mostly robots.
• Hybrid Monster: Has DNA from humans, cats, dogs, flamingos, and presumably other stuff.
• The Ingenue: Molly is very sweet and rather naive.
• Instant Expert: She can educate herself on any subject very very rapidly.
• Naked People Are Funny: Exults in the fact that being furry means she doesn't need to wear clothing.
• Poster-Gallery Bedroom: Her bedroom has had posters for Gamera, the Three Tenors, High School Musical, Stephen Hawking, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, and William Shatner as Alyosha in the 1958 film of The Brothers Karamazov. She is identified as a "fuzzy pink fangirl," and her fandoms are many.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Biology, physics, mechanics, it's all the same to her.
• Plot-Relevant Age-Up: Grew to full size in one month.
• Refuge in Audacity: How she blends in with human society despite being naked and furry.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Having rapidly educated herself about the world from any source she could get her hands on, her speech is a mishmash of sophisticated academic vocabulary, antiquarian English, little kid-speak, assorted types of slang, and pop culture references from long before she was born.
• Super-Speed: Goes with her fast metabolism. She has modest super-speed. She can outrun a charging bear.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: It took some doing for her to be accepted in Generictown, and Jean still worries about her safety if she is revealed to the outside world.
• Wonder Child: Almost literally appeared out of nowhere, giving Bob and Jean a child to raise.
• Younger Than They Look: She looks vaguely 16-ish. She's less than a year old.

Princess Voluptua

Voluptua is heir to the throne of the interstellar Nemesite Empire. Their homeworld circles Nemesis, an undetected brown dwarf not far from Earth's solar system (yes, that Nemesis Star). Earth is part of the empire, though humanity doesn't know it; they've designated Earth as a nature preserve, and consider humans part of the local wildlife. In their natural form, Nemesites resemble man-sized butterflies, although Voluptua usually uses a shape-shifting device to appear as a strikingly beautiful woman when dealing with humans. Voluptua has recently taken the title of Vicereign of Earth's solar system. She is a good and just leader who takes her responsibilities very seriously, although she views many of the conceits of royalty as being a bit ridiculous.

"Ah, and I see you've established yourself with the planet's intelligentsia."

"Well, yes, we have held the lease to your planet for half a billion years... but we're not going to start charging rent or anything... I mean, charging rent from the wildlife would be silly!"

"I am Voluptua, heir to the throne of Nemesis, and you will stand down!"

• Can't Argue with Elves: While she's certainly the nicest Nemesite we've met, she can still act rather condescending. Jean, at least, has no patience for it.
• Character Filibuster: While hardly a stereotypical chatterbox, she does like to talk, giving expository infodumps and making inspiring if slightly pompous speeches. Has been lampshaded repeatedly.
• Dragon Rider: Can frequently be seen riding Hibachi the dragon.
• Fallen Princess: At some point in her youth, she got lost in a corner of the empire where she couldn't prove her identity, and had to live as a commoner for some time. She describes herself as a "guttersnipe" in this period. She's embarrassed talking about the experience, but says she hopes it gives her some perspective the rest of the royal family lacks.
• Dreary Half-Lidded Eyes: She was drawn with half lids in her early appearances, to appear both sexy and somewhat weary of the idiocy of those around her. She tends to be drawn more bright-eyed lately, though.
• Fascinating Eyebrow: A frequent facial expression, with her huge antenna-like eyebrows.
• Fiery Redhead: A strong-willed woman with an enormous mane of red hair.
• Flight: In her natural form, she resembles a semi-humanoid butterfly.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: Usually disguises herself as a beautiful human woman when dealing with Earthlings.
• Freakiness Shame: Admits to Jean that she kept the ridiculous sexy appearance for Bob's sake.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: Sexy-looking space princess.
• Head-Turning Beauty: By accident. She was initially trying to disguise herself as a normal human, and only later realized that her adopted figure was completely unrealistic. She's given various explanations for why she keeps it, ranging from that it's just comfortable, to that she's trying to impress Bob, to that she just does it to annoy Jean.
• The High Queen: Tries very hard to be a responsible ruler, such that even Zippobic, who hates the Nemesite government, concedes that she's an honorable person whom he respects.
• I Just Want My Beloved to Be Happy: The reason she avoided coming between Bob and Jean, before she paired off with Hibachi.
• Impossible Hourglass Figure: Lampshaded. She's embarrassed when she realizes that the supermodel-like appearance she's adopted is not even slightly average-looking.
• Insectoid Alien: She's actually a humanoid butterfly-like alien.
• Interspecies Romance: Since Nemesites live two thousand years, they don't have a very strong reproductive drive; but they do get lonely, and will sometimes pursue a romance of sorts with an alien purely on the basis of personality. In this case, she fell in love with Hibachi, a giant fire-breathing dragon.
• Intrigued by Humanity: Having come to appreciate humans from her friendship with Bob and Jean, she is now our only real advocate in the Empire... not that it stops her from sometimes referring to us as "little critters" or the like.
• Lightworlder: Her homeward has lighter gravity than Earth, and she's more prone to injury here than a human would be.
• Mayfly–December Romance: What any romance between her and Bob would be.
• Mr. Exposition: "I don't lecture. I exposit."
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: All Nemesites have four arms in their natural form.
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: Apparently they're actually ovipositors.
• Older Than They Look: She's centuries old, but in human form looks like she's in her twenties.
• The Pessimist: Both Zippobic and Jean have pointed out that she rarely looks on the bright side of things.
  Jean: "Shut it! You're always saying we're doomed!"
• Politically-Active Princess: She's very politically savvy. She has to deal with the awkward relationship between the dragons and the Nemesite Empire, she's expressed a desire for political reforms in the empire, and she's made it her personal mission to help ease Earth into full membership in the Empire peacefully.
• Pretty Butterflies: Her true form is a semi-humanoid butterfly.
  Hibachi: "You fly on wings like unto the stained glass of a cathedral."
• Really 700 Years Old: She's a few centuries old.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Generally trustworthy, responsible, and competent. Even Zippobic, who hates the Nemesite government she represents, grudgingly admits he sees her as an honorable person and that he respects her.
• Rebellious Princess: We first meet her trying to get out of an arranged marriage, and she seems to have problems in general with how the Empire is run.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: She ends up doing a fair amount of adventuring, as well as leading the defense of the planet when Riboflavin attacks.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Routinely disguises herself as a human. In the "cone" story arc, she gets stuck this way for a while, and reveals that it's dangerous not to be able to change back in a reasonable span of time.
• Winged Humanoid: A butterfly alien.

Galatea (Golly)

Galatea Martin (or Golly, as Bob has nicknamed her) is a clone of Molly secretly grown by Jean's boss, Dean Martin (no, not that Dean Martin). During her one-month childhood, the dean treated her as a lab specimen, never showing any love or parental compassion, though he did allow her access to his library full of books by Nietzsche and Ayn Rand. When she finally escaped from him, she had become intensely paranoid and bitter, and believed herself and Molly to be ubermenschen destined to overthrow mankind. Thanks to Bob, Molly, and Jean, she has calmed down, and her megalomaniacal ambitions have abated somewhat. She has apparently become a successful burglar (Bob, Jean, and Molly are unaware of this), thus financing a ritzy life for herself in Paris (Molly knows she's been living in Paris, but has been too naive to ask how she's supporting herself). She has invented a holographic projector disguised as a hat, with which she can appear human, though she usually gets by without it through sheer audacity (most people are too polite or too startled to point out how weird she looks). She can be distinguished from Molly by the fact that Golly likes to wear clothes, while Molly is a happy furry nudist.

"We are a new race, more intelligent than man and obliged to supplant him! We... are the ubermensch!... Or is that ubermenschen? Or uberfrauen...?"

"Ahhh! The sky is bleeding!... Oh. 'Rain.' Right, I read about that."

"I'm here! I'm the Singularity and I'm ready!!"

• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Fell for Fructose Riboflavin, of all people. She got over it, thankfully.
• Big Eater: Like her sister, her fast metabolism gives her a bottomless appetite.
• Clones Are People, Too: After her initial story arc, the fact that she's a clone of Molly comes up surprisingly rarely. She's very much her own person.
• Daddy Issues: She hates the Dean, who raised her as a lab specimen (he himself has shown remorse after seeing her reaction to him), but she does consider him her father (it's probably never even occurred to him) and uses his last name.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Her childhood lasted only a month, and the scientist who made her treated her as a lab specimen, with no affection at all...
• Divergent Character Evolution: ...As contrasted with Molly, who was raised with fatherly love by Bob.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Her reaction when Bob finds her all alone, shivering in the rain.
• Drama Queen: Extremely emotional, and does not have a subtle bone in her body.
• Emergent Human: Raised as an unloved lab specimen, she is gradually becoming more "human" or at least humane as she interacts with the world around her.
• Freudian Excuse: Her erratic behavior is the result of her lousy upbringing.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Like her sister, she can easily cobble together insanely complicated and powerful devices on the fly.
• Gay Paree: Spent a memorable stint living in Paris, scooting around on a Vespa in a striped sweater and beret.
• Hologram: The holographic beret.
• I Am a Monster: And she's proud of it!
• Identical Twin ID Tag: Unlike Molly, who doesn't bother with clothing because of her fur, Golly is quite fashionable with her wardrobe.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: While her supreme confidence about her intelligence is real, she has a very hard time fully believing that anyone really likes her and has a crippling fear of abandonment. And even the faintest suggestion that she's acting as heartless as the man who raised her will send her into paroxysms of self-loathing.
• Instant Expert: Like Molly, she can rapidly become an expert on any topic just by reading about it at high speed.
• Insufferable Genius: She's the smartest girl in the room and won't hesitate to let you know it.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: For all her bluster, when the chips are down she can be counted on to do the right thing. Eventually.
• Large Ham: When she really gets going, she could probably out-pompous Doctor Doom.
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: Has a habit of letting her schemes get away from her. After a particularly calamitous example of this, Voluptua calls her an "omnicidal nincompoop."
• Nietzsche Wannabe: Was raised on the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand, giving her a streak of nihilism and a fondness for ubermensch theory.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Invoked. Galatea accidently injures Jolly, and when she realises her mistake, she becomes horrified at the prospect of being like the scientist who raised her.
• The Power of Love: What redeemed her.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Galatea was the name of Pygmalion's statue who came to life.
• Sexy Sweater Girl: Fond of tight, striped sweaters.
• The Singularity: Seems very keen on the theory, probably because (as an artificial, superhumanly intelligent being herself) it would make her very important.
• Social Darwinist: Is keenly aware of how smart she is, and frequently cites Übermensch theory as a justification for doing whatever she feels like doing. Has a low opinion of the rank and file of humanity, with the exception of Bob and Jean.
• Super-Speed: Like her sister, she has modest super-speed. She can outrun a charging bear (it was the same bear!).
• Theme Twin Naming: Golly and Molly.
  Molly: "We're a Little Richard song!"
  Golly: "I don't know what that means."
• True Companions: Has identified Molly, Bob, and Jean as the only three people in the cosmos whom she loves.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Has a Freudian Excuse and tries to conquer the world repeatedly.

Fructose Riboflavin

Fructose Riboflavin is the greatest criminal in the Nemesite Empire, and has dedicated his life to overthrowing its government and becoming emperor. At 1,900+ years old, he is very elderly, even by the long-lived Nemesites' standards. He keeps himself in good shape and is an excellent hand-to-hand combatant, though he will grumble about aches and pains afterward. On the one hand, Riboflavin is a clear villain, complete with cackling laughter and a complete disregard for the lives of others. Yet on the other hand, he's a lonely, even pitiable old wretch who has wasted his entire life desperately seeking an outlandish goal he set for himself as a small child in a moment of grief after witnessing his highway bandit father's death at the hands of the emperor's guards. He's fully aware of how empty his life is, and it's not unusual after a scheme has failed for him to literally break down in tears, because after almost two millenia of trying to conquer the empire, he just can't do it. But he always finds the determination to return to his mad goal for yet another try. He is terrifyingly resourceful, good at manipulating others, and almost impossible to keep locked up. When dealing with Earthlings, he uses a shape-shifter unit to appear as a handsome and muscular man; unlike his real form as a withered old moth-creature with frayed wings.

"I said BOW, you half-sentient lemur!"

"That was taken out of context. And I like heads on pikes. I find them charmingly decorative."

"Nyah-hah-hah-hahahahahaha!!!"

• Bad Boss: Threatens the Pirates of Ipecac constantly when they wind up working for him.
• Big Bad: Considered the most dangerous criminal in the Nemesite Empire, and he has returned the most often of any antagonist in the strip.
• Determinator: He's been trying to overthrow the Empire and murder the royal family for almost two thousand years. "If it's the last thing I do the last thing I do the last thing I DO!"
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Considers this to be a Fate Worse than Death.
• Mr. Fanservice: His phony human appearance is muscular and handsome.
• Evil Laugh: Big time.
• Fragile Speedster: How he compensates for being a Light Worlder. He doesn't hit hard, but he hits fast.
• Freudian Excuse: As a child, watched his highway bandit father get gunned down by the Nemesite Emperor's guards.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: His backstory is actually quite tragic; yet, as Bob points out, it still doesn't justify anything he's currently doing.
• Galactic Conqueror: At least he tries to be!
• Glass Cannon: In hand to hand combat, he relies on speed to make up for physical weakness due to being a Light Worlder. This serves him surprisingly well, but even a single solid punch from an Earthling will put him down for the count.
• Good Wings, Evil Wings: His are much plainer than Voluptua's, and frayed with age.
• Grumpy Old Man: Even by Nemesite standards, he's very old and haggard.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Kind of a screw-up in his first couple of appearances, and prone to pathetic emotional breakdowns when his plans failed. Underwent a significant villainous upgrade in his third appearance, though.
• Insectoid Alien: He's a Nemesite, a bug-like alien.
• Jerkass: Aside from being a ruthless Space Pirate hell-bent on conquering the galaxy, he's also an asshole.
• Large Ham: Largely a conscious affectation to scare and impress people, but he can monologue with the best of them.
• Locking MacGyver in the Store Cupboard: Very good at jury-rigging equipment for escape attempts.
• Manipulative Bastard: Shamelessly manipulates Galatea from the moment he meets her.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Nemesites have four arms.
• Never Found the Body: When we first meet him, the Nemesites had declared him dead centuries ago.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Obsessed with his vendetta against the Nemesite royal family.
• Stealth in Space: One of his inventions is a cloaking device.
• Time Abyss: He's almost 2,000 years old.
• Villainous Breakdown: He doesn't take defeat gracefully.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Can use a portable shapeshifting device to appear human (or, once, as a dragon).

Hibachi The Dragon

Hibachi is a fire-breathing dragon. In the age of the dinosaurs, Earth was ruled by dragons. However, a botched first contact by the Nemesites made the dragons panic and start a war among themselves. This culminated in their detonation of an iridium bomb, which wiped out the dinosaurs and destroyed the dragons' civilization. The Nemesites helped them recover, on the condition that they join the Empire. The dragons shunned most technology after the disaster, living as "rustic philosophers" in the Earth's wildernesses. When humans came along, the two races clashed, and the dragons chose to leave Earth for a world in the Kuiper Belt which they terraformed and named Butane. Hibachi is a Butanian dragon, in service to his vicereign, Princess Voluptua. He secretly harbors a crush on her. Generally a good guy, even chivalrous, he has a low opinion of most humans but counts Bob and Jean among his trusted friends. All dragons talk in "pseudo-medieval speak," a lot like Marvel Comics' Thor.

"When yon wee box goes up, it shall mightily smite all things for leagues in every direction!"

"Ought I not to... breathe fire at them, or some such? I feel... restless."

"Grrrr!"

• Ancient Astronauts: Inverted; the dragons started on Earth then moved to another planet.
• Courtly Love: Loved Voluptua from afar long before he learned she also had feelings for him.
• Delightful Dragon: For a giant fire-breathing dragon, Hibachi's a pleasant fellow.
• Dinosaurs Are Dragons: Dragons had a civilization on Earth in the dinosaur age.
• Giant Flyer: He's a big dragon.
• Interspecies Romance: With Voluptua, a butterfly-like alien.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Evolved on Earth in prehistoric times and left for another planet in the Middle Ages.
• Punny Name: A hibachi is a type of outdoor barbecue grill.
• Space Amish: They shun unnecessary technology after almost destroying themselves with it in a war that wiped out the dinosaurs.
• Time Abyss: Their civilization dates back 65 million years.
• Ultra Terrestrials: Dragons came from Earth, originally.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Talks like a parody of Marvel Comics' Thor.

Rocko Sasquatch

When Bob briefly wound up in prison, his cellmate was humongous scary goon Rocko Sasquatch. Rocko actually turned out to be a pretty nice guy (he was locked up for beating the living daylights out of some guys who were trying to evict his adoptive mother), and he and Bob corresponded by mail until Rocko was finally released. He was adopted as a baby, and only learned recently that he is a bigfoot, abandoned by his clan because he was born bald. He has now been reunited with them. The bigfeet have access to very large diamonds and gave him one, with the result that Rocko is suddenly very wealthy. Rocko has a thick Brooklyn accent he picked up from his adoptive mother. He has an innocent crush on Molly, ("I've always dug hairy chicks! Dunno why!") and was disappointed when she rejected him (although Bob was relieved). He is younger than Bob, although he looks older. He is a gentle giant, but it is still unwise to provoke him.

"Da etiquette school didn't hire me. Dey said I was 'uncouth.' Whatever dat means."

"I beat th' tar outta some dudes."

"It's kinda borin' bein' rich! I need somethin' ta do!"

• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Like two giant woolly bear caterpillars on his face.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: He's a bald Bigfoot...
• Big-Hearted Bigfoot: He's a literal Sasquatch, and he's very kind.
• Boisterous Bruiser: A good-natured but sometimes loud and rambunctious giant goon.
• Changeling Fantasy: ...who, until recently, didn't know he was a bald Bigfoot.
• Eyes Always Shut: He squints almost constantly.
• Face of a Thug: And secretly self-conscious about it.
• Gentle Giant: Usually very sweet to those smaller than he is, unless you give him a good reason to pound you.
• Meaningful Name: we knew his last name was Sasquatch before we learned it was literal.
• Prison: Where Bob met him.
• Rags to Riches: Now owns a huge diamond mine.

Agent Ben and Agent Jerry

Two FBI agents who frequently get stuck investigating the strange events in Bob's life. Much to their own displeasure, they have recently been promoted to being full-time "paranormal investigators," so now they're constantly stuck with assignments like checking out fish people reports in Innsmouth and stuff like that. Ben is tall and thin, and fairly easy-going. Jerry is short and fat, and has a bad temper. In their black suits and dark glasses, they look rather like The Blues Brothers, and Bob in fact mistook them for them when they first met. "Oh Mr. Belushi! I always knew you weren't really dead!"

"A 'paranormal taskforce.' We are a 'paranormal taskforce' ... How the $#?!! did that happen? I used to be a real cop! We both used to be real cops!"

"Hi, Bob. Don't try to hug Jerry this time; he's packing heat."

"Ben, don't side with this anarchist!"

• Butt-Monkey: Nothing ever goes well for them, though their bad luck is largely deserved.
• The Government: The government representatives Bob is most likely to encounter.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Bob has mentioned that Jerry can't hit the side of a barn.
• Jerkass: Jerry is a trigger-happy, Lawful Stupid jerk with a grudge against Bob.
• Lawful Stupid: While theoretically on the side of law and order, they never serve any purpose in a story except as obstacles to the heroes.
• The Men in Black: Their current job as a "paranormal taskforce."
• Occult Detective: Jerry at least resents that they've been shunted into this. "I used to be a real cop! We both used to be real cops!"
• Punny Name: To Ben & Jerry's brand ice cream. To keep up the pattern, two local Generictown cops were then named Baskin and Robbin, and then a third one named Sorbet.
• Sunglasses at Night: Never seen without them.

Roofus the Robot

Since spaceships and other large objects are always crashing into Bob's roof, Molly decided to do her daddy a favor by building a robot to fix his roof. (She used parts from Jean's uncle's milking machine, much to his chagrin.) The result was Roofus, a hulking big robot that is very good at fixing roofs. However, Molly did the job a little too well, and was surprised to discover Roofus was sentient and wanted to find some meaning in life once his first repair job was done. Roofus is very simple-minded and doesn't talk much, but he has an appreciation of beauty and has a need for a sense of purpose; "soulful" is probably the best word for him. Princess Voluptua agreed to take him away to raise on Butane, where they were more used to dealing with artificial beings. He is now an official member of her court, and wears a fancy sash to display this. Still, his favorite pastime is fixing roofs, and he will gladly jump at any opportunity to do so. His catch phrase is a matter-of-fact "I will fix the roof!"

"I will fix the roof!"

"Will I see... the sky... when I am off?"

"I have... touched the sky... walked on other worlds... and I will go back to them tonight, and I am glad... but till then... I really, really like fixing roofs!!! (contented happy sigh!)"

• Catchphrase: "I will fix the roof!"
• Cyber Cyclops: A one-eyed robot.
• Do Androids Dream?: "Will I see... the sky... when I am off?"
• Gentle Giant: A hulking robot who loves to chase butterflies.
• Homemade Inventions: Molly made him out of a milking machine.
• Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: Molly didn't even intend for him to be sentient.
• The Quiet One: Doesn't talk that much.
• Caped Mecha: He adopts a ceremonial sash once he becomes part of Voluptua's royal court.
• Stay with the Aliens: Stayed with Voluptua on planet Butane.

Snookums the Tentacle Bunny

Snookums is Molly's pet space alien. One of Riboflavin's evil schemes once involved unleashing a gigantic tentacled monster on the Earth (it was really only peripheral to his main plan, but nonetheless, Snookums ended up dropping through the atmosphere onto Bob's roof). However, environmental conditions on Earth caused Snookums to shrink to the size of a basketball. He's not the least bit hostile, and doesn't seem to mind his size change very much. Molly named him Snookums and keeps him as a pet. He still has all of his original mass, however, and the ground shakes with a loud WHAM! every time he hops around. He resembles a bunny rabbit with six tentacles instead of forelegs, and another two tentacles instead of ears. He has super senses, because he still has just as many nerve endings packed into a small space as he did when he was big, and this makes him an excellent tracker. He has only animal intelligence and cannot speak, though he does make noises like "Iggy wiggy bappa fazoo!" and "Glib!" that would probably mean something to another member of his species.

"Glib! Glib glib glib!"

• Alien Animals: An alien "tentacle bunny."
• All Animals Are Dogs: Acts like a cross between a friendly dog and a bunny.
• Cute, but Cacophonic: He's is little and cute, but also very heavy, so when he hops, the accompanying noise is WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!
• Incredible Shrinking Man: A giant monster shrunk to the size of a basketball.
• Kaiju: He used to be one till he got shrunk.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: Despite his cute appearance, he weighs many tons, and he's strong enough to carry that weight around.
• Shapeshifter Baggage: Even now that he's little, he still weighs tons.
• Super-Senses: An odd side-effect of getting shrunk. He still has the same number of nerve-endings as when he was big, now packed close together. Usually demonstrated by acting as a bloodhound to track people.
• Team Pet: A pet for Molly, Jean, and Bob.
• Waddling Head: Has no neck and can barely be said to have a body apart from his head.

Oswald Blivius Bystander

A regular customer of Bob's newsstand, and an antisocial grouch.

"I know you're self-employed, but you really should consider firing yourself!"

• The Napoleon: Short and eternally bad-tempered.
• Punny Name
• Unsatisfiable Customer: Almost never has a kind word for Bob — just wants his newspaper, and is furious when he can't get it.
• Weirdness Censor: Common in Generictown, but this is Mr. Bystander's defining character trait. No matter what lunacy is going on around him, he notices absolutely none of it — until it inconveniences him in some way, in which case his reaction is invariably rage instead of fear.

Floyd Fitznewski

An annoyingly hyperactive little man who lives in Generictown, who has been a friend of Bob's since childhood. His wife left him with their two sons, a pair of delinquents who like to shoplift from Bob's newsstand when he is frequently called away from it.

"Flying tackle!!!"

• '80s Hair: Has a gigantic poof of backward-swept hair. In his earliest appearances, it bore more resemblance to Bart Simpson's spiky hair.
• Catchphrase: "Flying tackle!" He will take any halfway plausible chance to tackle anyone or anything.
• Childhood Friends: Has been shown to have been one of Bob's circle of friends as a boy, along with Herb Gardener and Heywood J. Lookathat.
• Fan Boy: Buys comics from Bob's newsstand. His wife Frig allegedly left him for a Kree Skrull War Reenactor.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Bob's the first to agree that Fitz can be a jerk, but he's still generally pretty tolerant of him.
• Generation Xerox: His son Garfunkel is like a miniature version of him, only more obnoxious. His other son Zeppo seems nicer, but tends to follow Garfunkel's lead.
• Genki Guy: Seems to live his life on a perpetual sugar rush.
• Suddenly Ethnicity: When the subject of characters' family backgrounds came up, he abruptly announced that he's two thirds Mexican.

Narrator: "Two thir... It doesn't work like that..."

Fitznewski: "Awesome! Tacos rock!"

Nessie

The Loch Ness Monster is very cute. She was kidnapped by a bad guy but escaped and now lives in Lake Generic. She follows Bob around sometimes, unobtrusively.

"Coo!"

• The Ageless: 65 million years old without a single wrinkle.
• Beware the Nice Ones: She's cute, but never make her mad enough to eat you. Okay, she didn't swallow Slick, but she chewed on him and spat him out.
• Cute Monster: She's adorable.
• Dinosaurs Are Dragons: She's a newt mutated by radiation during the dragons' war that wiped out the dinosaurs.
• Gentle Giant: Very cute and emotionally sensitive.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: She can hide herself almost instantly, wherever she is. She's had millions of years of practice.
• Mutants: Mutated by radiation in the dragons' war that wiped out the dinosaurs.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Not so much averted as obliterated. Then again, she's an amphibian.
• Stock Ness Monster: She is the actual Loch Ness Monster.
• Time Abyss: She's 65 million years old.

Ninjas: Lari, Moe, Kurlijoh, and Shempu

A family of ninja siblings who entered a hibernation state to escape pursuing samurai, and accidentally got sealed in a stone sarcophagus for centuries. Unmasked, their faces are all drawn in Manga style, and they get used to play with a lot of Manga and Anime tropes.

• Catchphrase: Moé has "Oro?" (basically Japanese for "Huh?"), a reference to Rurouni Kenshin.
• Everything's Better with Sparkles: As a bishounen, Lari is usually surrounded by a cloud of sparkles (at least, when his ninja mask is off).
• Go Nagai Sideburns: Molly describes Shempu as "an old school Shonen-type with wild hair and big fuzzy sideburns!"
• Gonk: Kurlijoh's face is identified in-story as looking like one of Leiji Matsumoto's "potato head" Gonk characters.
• Moe: And she is indeed.
• Ninja
• Punny Name: Their names are, of course, a Shout-Out to The Three Stooges.
• Nonstandard Character Design: The comic's only characters drawn in Manga style.
• Sealed Good in a Can
• Shout-Out: Besides from their names being one to The Three Stooges, the four of them wield the same weapons as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
• Translation Convention: It is a Running Gag that their native language, Tokugawa-era Japanese, is always translated as a random mishmash of modern day slang. The Grammar Squirrel absolutely despises this.

North American Grammar Squirrel

Galatea: "I've been... suffering from... visions! Nonsensical hallucinations!... It's always the same! A... squirrel! Taunting me for my bad grammar!"

Squirrel: ''Mwa-ha-ha-ha!"

A squirrel who criticizes the grammar of others. May or may not actually exist.

• Fourth-Wall Observer: Scarcely ever directly actually interacts with anyone except the Lemony Narrator.
• Given Name Reveal: At a fan's suggestion, his name was finally revealed to be Kelsey (as in Kelsey Grammer.)
• Grammar Nazi: He exists to correct the grammar of others.
• Send in the Clones: After a bit of dubious Toon Physics, we have recently seen an appearance by the North African Physics Ferret to complain about it. The Narrator was displeased at this.

Treasure Monster

An artificial alien Hive Mind made of metal and crystals, that crashed to Earth in Japan centuries ago. Got woken up recently. Not deliberately malevolent, but very powerful and really, really dumb.

"G-Graowlrrr'rr!"

"Sir or Madam, would you care for a space martini?"

"Orders! Give me orders!"

• Blob Monster: Creates a body for itself made of black goo.
• Came from the Sky: Landed as a meteorite.
• Happiness in Slavery: Built as servants, they tend to violently freak out if they don't have anybody to tell them what to do. Given orders, they're quite happy and tranquil, but still generally too stupid to perform those orders without destroying anything.
• Hive Mind: The crystals making up its "face" can act independently or together as a giant creature.
• Kaiju: Once rampaged through old Japan in high kaiju style.
• Lawful Stupid: They only want someone, anyone, to tell them what to do, and they'll eagerly obey those instructions to the letter... to the best of their meagre intellectual ability, anyway.
• Mask of Power: Could be considered a living mask, since the crystals and metal all take the form of a giant, Oni-like faceplate. It then forms a four-limbed monstrous body out of eldritch black goop.
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: Between probably destroying its own homeworld, and directing Galatea to a Nemesite superweapon, it has a very bad track record of doing this.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Sealed inside a Japanese statue for centuries, then released by accident. Not that they're evil, as such, just dangerous.
• Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: For all their enormous power, they've now got a menial job serving drinks and hors d'oeuvres in the Nemesite legislature building.
• Unnecessarily Creepy Robot: In fairness, they just looked like individual crystals on their home planet, but they seem to be sticking to the monstrous gestalt form they adopted in old Japan.

Coney the Island

"______"

A mysterious conical spaceship that abducts Bob, Jean, and Voluptua, leaving them stranded in the bizarre landscape of its interior.

• Alien Abduction: Kidnaps our heroes.
• Alien Geometries: The bizarre physics of the ship's interior.
• Eldritch Abomination: Its nature and motives seem incomprehensible for most of its story arc.
  Galatea: "This is a proper spaceship! Satisfyingly enigmatic!"
• Eldritch Location: The Cone Ship's interior.
• Genius Loci: It takes most of the story before our heroes learn the ship they've been trapped in is, itself, alive.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: He made the mistake of voyaging between galaxies all by himself.
• Living Polyhedron: The cone ship is its pilot.
• Living Ship: Again, the cone ship is its pilot.
• People Zoo: Bob suspects that he, Jean, and Voluptua have been taken as pets.
• Punny Name: For Coney Island in New York. Bob had already named it "Coney," but after a comment about "No man is an island," Jean blurted out "Coney the Island!"
• Sinister Geometry: A giant, floating, blank white cone.
• Space Master: Has absolute control over the spacial geometry inside the vessel's interior.
• Sufficiently Advanced Aliens: Even Voltuptua seems flummoxed by some of its abilities.
• Transhumanism: It turns out that Coney was an alien who submitted himself to a procedure to become this vastly powerful, godlike being, but over the ages it's mostly served to make him lonely and unable to relate to anyone else.
• The Voiceless: Never says a word that's directly translatable, but Gosh is able to understand.

Gosh, the Butterfly of Iron

An artificial cosmic being meant to be used only as a weapon of last resort by the Nemesites. Galatea recklessly activates him, and Hilarity Ensues.

"Ah yes, I'm to grant you fulfillment! Happiness on a platter! Predigested enlightenment and meaning and candy for you the opportunist button-masher and those who first contrived me! Fools! I am mortal as you are! Yet my mind roars as a maelstrom! Where is my meaning? Why am I here? Somebody tell me, please..."

"I'm going to destroy the solar system now... Ennui mostly. The explosion should be pretty for a while. And everyone here is annoying."

"Sorry for all the fuss."

• A God I Am Not: He's mad at Golly for assuming he would be this, when he has the same existential questions about life, the universe, and everything that anyone has.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Zippobic says the main danger in making one of these beings is that it's almost impossible to keep them from going mad.
• Always a Bigger Fish: Whoever the Harrumphene Hegemony are, they're scary enough to warrant the Nemesites using these creatures as "deterrent weapons" against them.
• Angst: Seemingly overwhelmed by it.
• Big Red Button: How Golly made him.
• Chrome Champion: Looks like a giant Nemesite made all of mirror-like material.
• Deus est Machina: Galatea's intention for him. The first two things on her wishlist were immortality and flying ponies.
• Eldritch Abomination: Despite being artificial, he fits the description pretty accurately.
• Godzilla Threshold: Only meant to be activated if a situation has reached this point.
• Large Ham: He manages to outdo his mother in this regard, which should be impossible. Appropriate for a Kirbyesque cosmic being.
• The Meaning of Life: He's obsessed with the question.
• Meaningful Name: He's the first to tell anyone that he is not a god.
• Mechanical Abomination: An emotionally unstable Space Master machine threatening the entire solar system.
• Motherly Scientist: Despite her involvement in his creation amounting to little more than pressing a Big Red Button, Galatea considers herself his mother, and he doesn't dispute the point.
• Nuclear Option: Creating a "butterfly of iron" is considered insanely dangerous, and a course of absolute last resort. Galatea does it without a second thought.
• Punny Name: Galatea: "Yes! You are Gosh, son of Golly!... and I've committed a pun."
• Shout-Out: The Nemesite term for Butterflies of Iron is I'naga Dha Davveeda.
• The Singularity: What Golly hopes to jump start by activating him.
• Sizeshifter: He can grow and shrink at will. When a spacefleet sufficiently annoys him, he briefly becomes big enough that he could swat any of the ships away easily.
• Space Master: Described as a "living space warp," the ability to manipulate space curvature is described as his primary attribute.
• Super-Intelligence: Apparently he's very, very smart, but also intensely neurotic.
• Sufficiently Advanced Aliens: Living proof that the Nemesites are this, even if they prefer to downplay it most of the time.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Literally. He threatens to detonate the sun if he can't find someone to tell him the meaning of life.
• Younger Than They Look: Popped out of his generator fully grown.