From left to right: Maxwell, Maple Syrup, Snowball.
Maxwell and Friends
is a Webcomic strip originally created in October 2019 as Maxwell, Snowball & Maple Syrup. It's hosted on Comic Fury (formerly Smack Jeeves). The cast includes a black cat named Maxwell, a white cat named Snowball and a dog named Maple Syrup (There's also their human owner Amber.)Maxwell and Friends provides examples of:
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: The green cat in "Free Kitten (Scenario One)."
- Anthropomorphic Zig-Zag: In Maxwell and Friends, the characters commonly do this.
- Art Evolution: The strip started out with inconsistent art, all made in Google Drawings. As it continued, the art began to get more consistent. The art style was completely changed in the revival of the strip, Maxwell and Friends, with a more cartoonish style, made in an actual art software.
- Compare "Maple Syrup" (2019) to "Dagwood" (2020). The artwork in this strip has began to resemble Looney Tunes style artwork.
- The designs for the Maxwell, Snowball and Maple Syrup were originally traced from images on Google.
- The immediate change of the art style for Maxwell and Friends could also be seen as a permanent Art Shift.
- Compare "Maple Syrup
- Art-Shifted Sequel: See the Art Evolution example above.
- Big Eater: Maple is capable of devouring a foot-high sandwich in one gulp.
- Bilingual Dialogue: Maple sometimes inserts German words into her sentences (and can speak entire German sentences), yet Maxwell and Snowball can understand her like she's speaking English. A very odd example as Maple can speak and understand complete English sentences.
- Black Dot Pupils: Averted with Snowball, who has large blue pupils, and Amber, who has brown pupils.
- A Cat in a Gang of Dogs: Inverted: Maple Syrup is the only major dog.
- Cat Up a Tree: Parodied in "Up a Tree (#1)." In this strip, Snowball sits on a very low tree-branch, then asks for a fireman.
- Cut and Paste Comic: Maxwell, Snowball & Maple Syrup was this. The artist commonly reused assets from earlier strips.
- Dagwood Sandwich: In the "Dagwood" strip, Maple reduces one into a flat disc and swallows it.
- Exposed Animal Bellybutton: Maxwell, seen in "Free Kitten (Scenario One)."
- Genius Ditz: Maple, in her debut strip, who calls herself a computer professional.
- Orphaned Series: Maxwell, Snowball & Maple Syrup's schedule gradually got slower, then it was abandoned in early December 2019 when the Smack Jeeves website update prevented them from creating more strips (as the update forced all new comics to be in the mobile-friendly vertical format.) Subverted if one considers the two strips to be the same.
- Revival: On December 5, 2020 (over a year after the last Maxwell strip), Maxwell, Snowball & Maple Syrup was given a revival as Maxwell and Friends.
- Secondary Character Title: As Maple Syrup appears in more strips than Maxwell.
- Sunday Strip: An odd webcomic example. Averted with Maxwell and Friends' first Sunday comic strip; it looked exactly like a weekday strip.
- Talking Animal: The titular pets, who sometimes go into a vague Civilized Animal. They all think their dialogue.
- Thinker Pose: Maple does this in "Ten Sixty-Five."
- Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: Snowball in "Autsch!."
- Wild Take: Maxwell does this in "Third Panel #2" to scare Maple.
