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Webcomic / Dandy and Company

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Left to right: Maryweather, Mistake, Dandy and Bernard.

Dandy and Company was a comedy, adventure, furry webcomic started in 2001 by cartoonist Dee Fish (formerly named Derrick Fish), and a twist on the standard Boy And His Dog story. The titular character is a sarcastic and fiercely independent talking dog who lives with his owners, the Brooks family, in the suburban area of Loudonville, Ohio.

Dandy's pranks, jabs, and outrageous antics affect the family and basically anyone else who crosses his path, particularly their 13-year-old son Bernard, who spends most of his time at home with his dog. Dandy can be SO biting that when Fish produced a tribute strip to announce the winner of Best Comic in the annual Web Comic Awards, Dandy actually cursed and slapped his butt toward the "camera" in response to his own strip not even being nominated (though, this is an extreme case). Rounding out the cast are Bernard's clueless, jaded parents Mae and George, Dandy's sometimes-girlfriend Maryweather (also a talking dog), and Dandy's younger brother, Mistake. The strip originally started as a Slice of Life comedy with Dandy's actions being the focus, and with the start of the Beanie-Quest saga, quickly introduced a bigger universe of characters, and the more epic, action-adventure side that is inspired by Superhero and science-fiction comic books.

Dandy and Company was written and drawn in the standard Newspaper Comics format, and has been printed into five volumes twice, with the current print done under Lulu Press. Many elements are inspired by Calvin and Hobbes, with the art style reminiscent of the Looney Tunes. Humor is comprised mostly of character quirks, Breaking the Fourth Wall and frequent references to geek culture.

In August 2010, the final story arc of the webcomic was supposed to begin. For the next few years, there were occasional updates to the comic on Dee's various websites, until the comic resurfaced in 2015 and was concluded in 2018.


Tropes:

  • Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Most of the furry cast, except for Maryweather, who's a Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal.
  • Ascended Extra: Lutie the crocodile, who started as a nameless, voiceless extra who happened to live in the swamp behind Bernard's house.
  • Author Guest Spot: Dee makes so many appearances, while still remaining outside the storylines, that she's become somewhat of a supporting character.
  • Bold Inflation (though less so nowadays)
  • Breakout Character: Snuffles first appeared in one arc as a nameless extra in a scene where Dandy tries to escape from a pound. He has since gotten bigger and bigger parts until he became probably the most compelling character in the strip!
  • Bumbling Dad: George.
  • Character Development: Many characters undergo changes in this strip.
  • Cut and Paste Comic: Any time a character's pose doesn't change from panel to panel, Derrick uses this to cut down on drawing time. Fortunately, the strip is never intentionally set up with this in mind.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Everyone.
  • Do-Anything Robot: Mr. Fuzzy, and Mr. Fuzzy 2.0
  • Dying Moment of Awesome: Snuffles
  • Filler Strip: The annual Total Chaos Week, and Sunday's commission samples.
  • Flowery Elizabethan English: The demon Skeezicks talks in bad pseudo-Elizabethan English. The cartoonist specifically made reference to The Mighty Thor in describing his speech patterns.
  • Four-Fingered Hands: The entire cast.
  • Genius Ditz: Mistake.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Snuffles.
  • Homemade Inventions: Mistake has made, among other things, a supercollider in his basement.
  • I Am Your Father: Snuffles is eventually revealed to be Dandy's brother.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Dandy in later strips.
  • Locked into Strangeness: Mistake gets a white streak through his hair and down his face from one of his inventions going awry.
  • Loveable Rogue: Dandy.
  • Our Werewolves Are Different: For starters, they have no human form at all.
  • Put on a Bus: The Muñez family.
  • Retcon: The entire story of Beanie-Quest I, II and III. One story even included a device that was named after the word.
  • Ridiculously Cute Critter: Mistake. Dandy can't stand him for this reason, so it only makes sense that Mistake's name was his doing.
  • Stable Time Loop: In the end of the second BeanieQuest story, Bernard carves a picture of the beanie myth onto a rock on the moon so aliens would find them and makes sure the beginning of the first BeanieQuest story would still happen.
  • Strip Buffer
  • Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Maryweather is the only dog in the strip in the CURRENT timeline who wears a shirt, and who has human-looking hair on her head, and eyelashes. Subverted with Pumpkin, who intentionally walks around nude to protest human empowerment over animals (but also wears glasses).
  • Timey-Wimey Ball: ... maybe. This troper mostly just got too confused trying to figure out which form of time travel the strip uses.
  • Trash the Set: How Dee struck the Muñez family from the strip.
  • Web First: As said, the online strips were compiled into 5 paperback volumes twice.
  • Webcomic Time: The comic has been going since 2001, but the time spent in the universe of the strip figures around 3 years, due to the 1-year Time Skip in the middle. Gets even more confusing when you figure in the time-traveling retcons, references to 7 years of feature films that Bernard wants to see, and Fish's numerous hiatuses.

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