Guttersnipe is a webcomic about a homeless, starving street urchin and her pet sewer rat. Taking place during the Great Depression, the strip lampoons popular misconceptions of the era, including bootleggers, boll weevils and hobos.
Characters include:
- Lil' Ragamuffin, a spitfire orphan girl.
- Sir Percy Throckmorton Scruffs, esq, her educated, erudite pet rat.
- Red Menace, Mugsy Fisticuffs and Mary Mangdana, rival urchin gang.
- Herbert Hoover, the President of the United States.
- Boxcar Calpurnia, the Mad Hobo Queen
Guttersnipe has the following tropes:
- Crapsack World: The strip is drawn in washed out sepia tones, adding to the depressed, old-timey atmosphere where everyone is poor.
- Gang of Hats: Various urchin gangs, including the Junior Repunchicans (a gang of young conservatives), the Skunk Tops (who all sport black and white mohawks)and the Vajazzlers (apparently an all-female roller derby based gang).
- Historical Downgrade: Stanford-educated Herbert Hoover is depicted as a bumbling manchild, who even keeps baby toys in the Oval Office.
- Hobos: Hobos have become so numerous that they've seceded to form their own country, under the rule of Boxcar Calpurnia the Mad Hobo Queen. True to form, all hobos wear top hats with the top cut out and fingerless black wool gloves.
- Immortality: In "Urchin Revolution" Ragamuffin survives being shot in the head and tossed in an incinerator, claiming that urchins don't need brains or bodies 'cause they're all heart, then shrugs off a shot in the chest because she keeps her heart in a bowl in a shack on top of an unclimbable trash heap. That and her rival from bare-knuckled baby fighting is an old man while she seems to be ten, so she probably stopped aging at some point too.
- The Mafia: Bootleggers hire Lil' Ragamuffin to carry liquor across state lines in one arc.
- Minstrel Shows: Bootlegger Skunkface Sally appears to be in black face, but she claims it's actually an unfortunate skin condition.
- Overly Long Name: Sir Percival Throckmorton Scruffs Esq, Eigth Viscount of Lower Hemmingwedge-on-the-Fritz.
- Parental Abandonment: Parodied with Lil' Ragamuffin.
- Snarky Non-Human Sidekick: Percy.
- Stock Parodies: Lil' Ragamuffin attends a peace summit between different rival urchin gangs in a parody of the film The Warriors.
- The Themepark Version: In Guttersnipe's version of the Great Depression, literally everyone is destitute, even the President.