Sequential Art is a webcomic drawn by Phillip M. Jackson about a group of unlikely anthropomorphic housemates.Art is a chronically frustrated graphic designer (and the only human living in the house); Kat, a cat girl, is a fun loving photographer; Pip, a penguin, is a stereotypical geek who is obsessed with comics adnd computers, and Scarlet is a naïve and energetic squirrel girl whose spastic behavior and short attention span masks her true intellect.After the arc covering Scarlet's Backstory, the other members of a Think Tank also live with the foursome.
Bare Your Midriff: Kat's wardrobe consists of a sleeveless belly shirt and short shorts. At least she wears sweaters and such during the winter months.
Referenced in-universe in a strip were Art draws such material for a commission.
Averted in Real Life, since the artist is still drawing the naughty stuff- it's even advertised on his main site. The reason he's against his portfolios being shared is because they're the majority of his income, as he's ranted about several times.
Bottle Fairy: Kat stays sober all year...until New Year's Eve, when she gets totally smashed. Her "New Year's Resolution" for several years now has been to "stop drinking so much alcohol during the holiday season".
Break the Haughty: Hilary, Kat's arch-nemesis from grade school, downgraded from high-powered advertising executive to sitting in the unemployment office. Next to Pip, who wants to talk about her previous "career".
The spider from all the way back in strip 7 makes a re-appearance during Scarlet's flashback, as well as somewhat justifying how Pip managed to blow up the bathroom with a deoderant flamethrower.
Another recent call back is in strip #765 regarding the Denizen's technology that pip sold to the two nerds in strip #344 that teleported them to the middle of the Gobi desert in Mongolia.
Cerebus Syndrome: Twice the artist has taken a few months to do long arc stories involving the plucky characters combating dangerously powerful adversaries like the Denizens or Oz, only to have the conflict resolved and go right back to the "Gag-A-Day" Format.
Cool, but Inefficient: Pip grabs a rather large gun because it looked dangerous. It actually is powerful as it was shown to blast off a door, but it's actually just a popcorn popper, and as such has a range measured in only a few centimeters.
Cooldown Hug: Art gets one from Kat, when's he's understandably upset with Scarlet after she THREW HIM IN FRONT OF A DEATH RAY!
Cosmic Plaything: Art's skill of collecting troubles and dangerous adventures is only outmatched by the Universe's eagerness to provide them.
Droste Image: Pip meets the Author Avatar hamster in the strip itself. He gives Pip a copy of his latest strip (which at the time was that very strip.) Pip looks at the strip, which is about Pip looking at the strip, looking at the strip, looking at the strip and so on.
Dynamic Entry: Kat slams Hilary with a flying kick to the face for the above-mentioned lies she spread about Kat.
Eldritch Abomination: Four live in the town's requisite Haunted House. Also: the Denizens, creatures that evolved from the shadow of a condemned criminal.
Although the Denizens actually become rather cute after their leader was incapacitated, leaving them to mill around the house aimlessly, watching soap operas and assist with random chores.
Expy: Many, usually Bland Name Product-type expys, but special mention should go to the Eldaks, who are fairly obviously inspired by Doctor Who's Daleks. They even use the same Catch Phrase: EXTERMINATE!
Fridge Logic: Art is often unable to convince the authorities to help him with various situations, with the idea being that the situations are too weird for anyone to believe. Regular enough for humor value, but one of the weird things that no one believes (or he thinks no one will believe) is that his housemates are anthropomorphic animals. Yet no one bats an eye when Pip, Kat, or Scarlet go out in public. Kat and Hilary both apparently attended a public school, Kat has a job with a human boss and Hilary is a client for Art's company at one point and the head of a lingerie company. So if anthropomorphic animals are so accepted, why would the police not, say, believe a call that a squirrel girl broke into the house?
He claims quite vehemently that he's not a furry, and that he only uses anthropomorphic characters in his comic because they make for easily-identified character archetypes. Yeah. Sure they do.
He's also drawn smut with furry characters. He puts it on his sketchbook page. He puts it on his blog. He puts it on his blog next to the posts about how it's not furryism. He's either a master at doublethink, or he's trolling for all he's worth.
There's actually a very good reasoning behind him doing Furry and Transformation Comic portfolios — the market is there. There is no market for risque non furry art, outside of fanart of established series, and that market is extremely small in comparison.
A possible explanation could be that it's not that he doesn't like furries; he just thinks the word "furry" sounds stupid. Its really a rose by any other name. Plus, most furries distinguish the term "anthro" as the word for the characters themselves, and "furry" for the fans of said characters.
Fans which he draws like this. The man knows the Internets.
Of course, the whole argument centers around the rather Fridge Logic idea that someone has to be a furry to draw anthropomorphic characters as opposed to any number of other valid reasons.
It should be noted that he doesn't like to do naughty work with the strip's main characters. Fact he created a naughty skunkette character so he wouldn't have to. And she doesn't appear in the comic. As of now, only two characters in the series have had full nude pinups, and they are both very minor characters (Helga is not a part of the cast), and neither of them are furry.
Gadgeteer Genius: Scarlet. Managed to use household tools to build a working Wave Motion Gun. Also her sisters managed to make a lawnmower escape the earth's atmosphere.
Glasgow Grin: A variation. It's stated in Jack's official bio that his "mouth" is actually a crack in his face, meaning he's broken. This pretty much explains why he was the only Denizen who turned out to be evil.
Hive Mind: Again, Scarlet and her sisters. The reason they're such ditzes most of the time is that each is one part out of a 4-part superintelligence. As seen when everyone plays the board version of Land of Lorecraft: everyone against Pip, the squirrel sisters manage to pull off a spectacular plan on Pip to allow Kat and Art to beat him unhindered.
Which just goes to show, never challenge a bio-supercomputer to a strategy game
The Denizens also seem to need a truly evil member of their species - such as Jack - to behave in any way malevolent.
Karma Houdini: Scarlet directly causes the death of an unknown, but presumably very large, number of people through her inattentive actions when she activates the above mentioned Kill Sat. Beyond Pip calmly stating "I'll kill her", this is never brought up again. You might think that letting the villain destroy a skyscraper and turn people on the ground into dust, solely because of her stupidity, might cause some sort of repercussions. Presumably the reason she's never called on this is because she's cute.
It could be, but this troper would bet it on the fact that she's essentially socially and developmentally retarded, and it's not like the protagonists are going to turn on her for something she didn't mean to do.
A number of the more dangerous situations that the protagonists find themselves in can be traced back to Scarlet in one way or another, really. She created the ray gun that provided the technological basis for the Kill Sat, her connection to Quinten indirectly leads to a potential link between Oz and the aforementioned Kill Sat through Kat's kidnapping, and her (and her sisters') latest lawnmower design causes Art to be considered a threat worth of EXTERMINATION by a group of robotic aliens.
Kids Are Cruel: To Art at least. Timmy talks to Kat nicely and normally while, at the same time, barraging the poor sod with snowballs.
Limited Wardrobe: Pip is by far the guiltiest, wearing his trademark sweater on the hottest day of the summer.
At first, Scarlet is naked. When she finally gets a (singular) shirt, she never changes it. Lampshaded in one comic when Art suggests she wash it, so she does — without taking it off.
Art: Have you been using my laptop again? Kat: I like the way that folder is marked "reference material".
Powered Armor: Scarlett and her sisters make a suit in this strip to fight a giant bug. Or rather were intending to make a Humongous Mecha, made a scaling error, then liked it and made more "Soopa Soots".
Sadist Teacher: Ms. Strinpit - possibly only towards Kat and the kids in her last school, judging by how she gave Hilary the easiest questions and assigned Kat with ones that couldn't be answered without research (research she would never allow). More like Evil Teacher, really.
Scenery Censor: Scarlet originally ran around the house naked. Kat eventually got her a jumper. Her sisters wear shirts from their old science lab. They're still 1 awkward pose away from falling out of them.
Scooby Stack: The squirrel girls express their fear of open spaces by hugging a doorway in a Stack.
The Martian Invasion story arc has one toDoctor Who. The Eldak are basically expies of the Daleks, their very name is an anagram of the infamous pepper-pots and they use the Dalek's Catch Phrase, "Exterminate!". Then another to Star Wars when Pip finds some TIE Interceptors to play with.
Pip the penguin apparently has an Uncle Feathers who was a career criminal. Sure enough, his last name turns out to be McGraw.
Nightlight gets one as well, when Pip is disgusted with how the movie got Scarlet and her sisters to think that all vampires are hot, sparkly, and nonthreatening. He promptly treats them to Oldman's version of Dracula.
There Are No Girls on the Internet: Art convinced Pip the girl he meets on "Realm of Lorecraft" is really a guy. Turns out she is — and for extra fun, is every bit as bimbo-tastic as her character's design.
In case you were wondering exactly why PMJ's Author Avatar is a hamster...
Villainous Breakdown: When the Eldak's best attack simply reverts Art back to his normal, slim self, they instantly believe that he's invincible and panic.
This became the focal point for on entire story arc... complete with a Dalekexpy race out to kill him because of it.
Weaksauce Weakness: Scarlet's sisters were brainwashed into having a crippling phobia of the outdoors to prevent them from ever running away like Scarlet did.
Of course, this being Think Tank, the limitation was eventually circumvented by tinkering up opaque visors that show everything without depth perception.