Webcomic / Rae the Doe

Rae's on the right, Mimi's on the left.

Rae the Doe is a gag-a-day comic by Olive Brinker, first appearing on the web in 2018. The comic centers on a deer named Rae, her girlfriend Mimi, and assortments of funny animal characters. In 2020, King Features Syndicate picked up the strip to run in newspapers and their Comics Kingdom website.

You can read the webcomic run here, and the newspaper version here.

Tropes:

• All There in the Manual: The conspiracy dog is called Ray the Dog, he's Rae the Dog's brother and both of them are children of Raymond the Dog (The scientist in one of the halloween storylines)
• Animal Gender-Bender: Subverted with Rae's antlers. She's transgender.
• Animated Adaptation: Olive Brinker, who majored in computer animation, made two Christmas specials based on her strip in 2018 and 2019.
• Art Shift: During a week-long series of strips mimicking other cartoon styles (including Garfield, Penny Arcade, Junji Ito, and others)
• Artistic License – Biology: invoked As it turns out, due to a misreading of his list, Death reaped Rae because she apparently died eating chocolate... despite that not being lethal to deer. Now, dogs on the other hand...
• Bait-and-Switch: #332 kicks off a story arc seemingly about Mimi realizing she's in a comic. The next strip reveals she was actually locked in a zoo.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • One strip has a doctor tell Rae to read a webcomic called Rae the Doe to be in better spirits (referencing the classic "Pagliacci the Clown" joke, which was a popular meme at the time, ensuring that the reader would get the Bait-and-Switch at the end).
  • Upon getting syndicated, the main cast are briefly granted self-awareness in order to introduce themselves to new readers, as well as throw in some self-deprecating humor.
• Cheated Angle: Rae is only shown from the side. For a good reason.
• Christmas Episode: The Rae the Doe Christmas Special, which has Rae and Mimi traveling to the North Pole.
  • "A Rae the Doe Christmas Carol." No points for guessing what it is.
• The Cameo: The Christmas Episode ends with Rae getting into Super Smash Bros. and meeting animal versions of fighters...including a literal Snake, voiced by David Hayter.
• Creator Cameo: The ending of "Puns" shows Olive Brinker represented...by a literal olive.
  • "A Rae the Doe Christmas Carol" ends with Olive taking the "don't overwork yourself" message to heart and abandoning the animation, leaving the characters frozen in a rapidly decaying scene.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: When her parents ask if she wants to have her antlers removed after coming out to them, she explains why she doesn't using several reasons some transgender women choose not to have bottom surgery.
• Don't Explain the Joke: In the strip where crime became legal, the first thing we see Rae doing is pumping her own gas (despite not having a car). A caption explains that Rae lives in New Jersey, where pumping your own gas is illegal.
• Feghoot: A common trope in several gag strips.
  • "Puns" makes this a plot point; Ray the Dog becomes convinced that Rae is capable of warping reality via her puns. Naturally, the strip itself becomes one when the dog's plan allows Rae asks who's behind the "con's spear OC." And the ending implies that Ray's theory was correct.
• Felony Misdemeanor: In a strip where all crime became legal for a day. Everybody expected The Purge to happen, but there were zero murders, as everyone just pirated music, jaywalked, and ripped off mattress tags.
• Funny Animal: The entire cast is made up of this.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: Pops up a few times in the strip. They're not very helpful, though.
• The Grim Reaper: Comes for Rae in The Death of Rae the Doe. Only it turns out he misread the list; he needed to reap Rae the Dog.
• Hurricane of Puns: A lot of strips can be like this.
• Insane Troll Logic: According to Rae, since working out is about insulting your body, you need to confuse your muscles to get results.
  Rae: (to her arm; mad) You're a leg! (arm immediately swells with muscles)
• Interspecies Romance: Every prominent couple in the comic. Rae the Doe/Mimi the Skunk, Cybil the Moth/Lottie the Possom, and Pascal the Bat/Sawyer the Squirrel.
  • Interspecies Adoption: In the future, Rae and Mimi adopt a turkey, while Cybil and Lottie's daughter is a raccoon.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: "Copyright" sees Rae talking with a distinctly hedgehog-shaped figure. They return in "A Rae the Doe Christmas Carol," voiced by Penny Parker.
• Literary Mash-Ups: The newspaper run's Christmas 2020 adaptation of the first chapter of Little Women begins normally... and then the Stand battle starts.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Elon Mollusk, while looking like Elon Musk, is actually a completely original fictitious character, who isn't based on any tech billionaires.
• No Mouth: Rae and Mimi are never shown with their mouths. Subverted once when Rae shows her "pearly whites".
• One-Steve Limit: Averted; in one comic, Rae the Doe meets a Rae the Dog. Said Dog becomes a Chekhov's Gunman for the arcs featuring the Grim Reaper.
  • Rae the Dog also has a brother called Ray the Dog and their father is called Raymond the Dog.
• Pair the Spares: Cybil and Lottie started dating each other after each going out with Rae once.
• Portmanteau: Rae and Mimi's future kid is named "Remy."
• Public Domain Character: "Public Domain" has Rae meet Felix the Cat.
• Queer Colors: Used as a Visual Pun in the first syndicated strip, which has Rae introduce herself. In the last panel she points out that does don't normally have antlers while winking; the background changes to the transgender pride flag colours.
• Santa Claus: An unusual case with regards to Santa in the Christmas Episode. Santa was an ordinary guy who died a long time ago...but his reindeer were all magical and immortal.
• Scary Teeth: Rae's aforementioned "pearly whites".
• Smelly Skunk: On her and Mimi the skunk's first date◊ Rae poured tomato soup on herself as a precautionary measure.
• Skewed Priorities: Upon learning some troubling news in the Christmas Episode:
  Rae: (upset) Santa's dead?!
  Mimi: (shocked) Santa's real?
• Stealth Pun / Visual Pun: One strip has Rae running into a misogynistic gamer complaining about a game having playable female characters. He's depicted as a talking alligator. A gamer gator.
  • Another strip had Mimi saying there shouldn't be borders (referring to borders between countries), in a panel that has no borders around it.
• Time Skip: The two-year anniversary, "The Time-Skip." We flash forward to several different points in Rae and Mimi's lives, with particular focus given to their kid, Remy.
• Wallet Moths: In the Christmas special Cybil finds a moth in her wallet, being a moth herself she recognizes it as a relative.