"I'm the last known human in the world... about to face my first year at public High School. I'm scared out of my goddamn mind. please wish me luck."
— Kale Williams, Furthia High
Furthia High is a Furry comic following Kale, the only human in a world very similar to our own as he enters High school. It begins as a Gag-of-the-week type affair, though more recently the comic has taken a more serious turn. Kale's friends include Bruce, an eccentric fox; Campy a seemingly narcoleptic rabbit poet, and Ashley, a strong-willed cat and the muscle of the group.
Was reset in 2007, the old canon can be found here.
This webcomic provides examples of:
- Adorable Fluffy Tail: Commented on twice with Hugo's tail.
- All There in the Manual: Background characters are randomly generated (though they do occasionally get promoted to main characters), and the first time they appear, a few details are printed at the bottom of the comic. Sometimes these are hilarious.Tom (Dog, Male, Straight, Junior) one day hopes to become an astronaut and become the first furry to leave the solar system. Not because he wants to be famous or remembered or accomplish something great, mind you, it's just that he despises the Sun.
- Art Evolution: Compare today's pages to the first page of the old canon, or even just the first page of the current canon.
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: Kale's battle with himself in his sub-conscience.
- Berserk Button: A LOT of characters seem to have these. To name a few:
- Bruce: Don't try to get between him and his friends. Connor learned this the hard way... Also, don't touch his special area...
- Ashley: Don't act stupid, annoying, and furthermore like BRUCE. Don't be Gus, either, unless you feel like getting maimed or muzzled.
- Eve: Don't be insensitive or a jerk to your peers *cough* Lupin *cough*.
- Big Damn Heroes: Lucy showing up in the nick of time to save Fale from Hugo
- Boyish Short Hair: Ashley has short, chin-length hair and she's very tomboyish.
- Camp Gay: Max, Bruce's father. And if he was telling the truth about their past... experiences... Hugo might also be this.
- Cerebus Syndrome: Starts here.
- Characterization Marches On: Campy's initial shtick in the beginning of the comic seemed to be that he drooled a lot, slept all the time, and almost never spoke. By the time it reaches the school dance story line, he becomes much more developed.
- Lupin has also become more three-dimensional, especially when you consider that his role at the beginning amounted to being a jerk and beating the crap out of Kale for no conceivable reason. Nowadays he's still a jerk, though.
- And then there's Gus, who initially was nothing more than one of Lupin's lackeys who had a crush on Ashley. Come the Autumn Ball, he got slightly more development, but nothing one wouldn't expect. And then, later on, he suddenly had what was essentially an entire arc devoted to his latest attempts at getting Ashley to like him.
- Cheerful Child: Kale's little brother, Tyler.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Eve.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Bruce is waaaaaay out there...when Kale does a Journey to the Center of the Mind (long story), we learn that the size of aspects of a character's personality is determined by the amount of influence they have on him. Bruce's Id is the size of a building.
- Comical Overreacting: Bruce again.
- Continuity Reboot
- Convenient Coma
- Curse Cut Short: "We interrupt this curse word loud enough to frighten the elder gods to bring you kittens! Your regularly-scheduled comic will return shortly."
- Deadpan Snarker: Fox Kale.
- Death by Childbirth: What happened to Bruce's mom.
- Dogged Nice Guy: Gus has been trying to gain Ashley's affection for a looooong time now. After seeing some of his more outlandish attempts, it's kind of understandable why she's so annoyed...
- He's finally managed to have a genuine heart-to-heart moment with her (as opposed to the usual fist-to-jaw), but they're still not together.
- Dramatic Thunder: Bruce planning to sabotage the Autumn Ball.
- Dramatic Unmask: Kale's Fox Self. With a muzzle that long, how did he manage to wear that thing anyway?..
- Empathic Environment: Kale's fight with Lupin
- Enemy Within: Kale's Kit persona tried to kill him before he managed a ceasefire agreement.
- Even Nerds Have Standards: Played for Hypocritical Humor here.
- Fangirl: Lucy
- Fantastically Indifferent:
- Fiery Redhead: Ashley has red hair and a fiery temper to match.
- Freudian Trio: Kale and his other personalities, Fox Kale (Id) even refers to him as "Ego".
- Funetik Aksent: Campy's southern accent.
- Furry Confusion and Carnivore Confusion: Parodied and averted in This strip
- Hammerspace: Bruce sometimes seems able to pull large objects like his LARP sword out of nowhere. Kale and "Mask" do the same in their fights but it's somewhat justified given that they're fighting in Kale's mind.
- Interspecies Romance: Kale/Eve (human and lemur) and Campy/Connor (rabbit and jackal). Also Kale's adoptive parents (cougar and tiger), and Connor's (horse and squirrel).
- Jerk Jock: Lupin. However, he's shown to also be a fairly good cook.
- Kudzu Plot: The storyline involving Mask seems to be turning into this. Likely why there's so many breaks from that subplot to focus on more simple and lighthearted things.
- Large Ham: Bruce. Pretty much goes with the territory.
- Last of His Kind: The central premise of the comic is that Kale is the last human among a population of anthropomorphic animals, or at the very least the last human he's aware of. Technically not the case since Kale is actually an animal turned into a human, but effectively he still fits this trope since he doesn't seem to interested in undoing the change.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: "Wow, good timing. As if some guy wrote it in a comic."
- Locked Out of the Loop: Kale. Cyrus, Max, and Hugo all seem to know something about his past and transformation into a human.
- Recently Lucy got added to this list of people who know. Fortunately she seems to be willing to tell Kale about what she knows.
- The Lost Lenore: Bruce's mom is this to his dad, Max. Her death hurt him so profoundly that he swore off of pursuing women forever after it happened, and so he became the Camp Gay father he is now.
- Love at First Sight: Happens when Bruce sees Lucy at the museum.
- Meaningful Name: Lupin again; he's a wolf.
- In the original canon, Bruce's last name was Renard. A renard is basically a male fox, so... yeah.
- Mistaken for Gay:
- Kale by Campy's mother.
- Happens to Bruce when his father catches him giving Conner a make-up kiss (a forced one by Campy's demand). It was probably one of the happiest moments of Max's life, though.
- Kale by Campy's mother
- Non-Indicative Name: Campy is indeed gay but not really campy at all.
- Note to Self: Kale's coma sequence is just a prolonged version of this.
- Oddly Visible Eyebrows: Played straight with just about everyone except Kale. Despite being virtually the only character whose eyebrows we should actually be able to see, he subverted this for a time by having simple lines for eyebrows. He plays it straight in more recent comics, though.
- Out of Focus: Kale, definitely. In a nutshell, he goes from "our humble hero, the last human on the planet" to "that human kid who shows up every few panels and can't seem to stop getting injured". Thankfully, it looks like the story will be switching focus back to him soon.
- Progressively Prettier: Inverted? with Gus, who at the start of the comic is very thin, but over time seems to be growing more and more pudgy because of his training as a food critic.
- Real Men Wear Pink: Lupin is revealed to be an aspiring chef despite being the meanest bully at school. Given that he apparently cooks his family's Thanksgiving dinner each year, and he was able to win second place in a pasta cooking contest. With hamburgers.
- Ret-Gone: The author's official position is that Felicia simply never existed in the new canon.
- Serious Business: Speed plushie-making tournaments, apparently.Ashley: You'd be suprised how brutal it gets. People have died.
- Shadow Archetype: Kale's repressed memory of him being a fox and being subjected to experimentation to cause him to be human.
- Shout-Out: Numerous. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is an obvious influence on the author, as the DJ at the Fall Ball
rips offborrowspays homage to a quote or two from Kamina, and has his shades. Kale's Shadow Archetype also (apparently, we're only told in retrospect) uses Hollow Ichigo's speech about horses and kings. More recently, the "For Amy" flowers from the Vincent van Gogh Doctor Who episode.- Fox Kale's mask has a striking resemblance to Tobi's.
- Smelly Skunk: Subverted with Hugo — he doesn't smell because he's a skunk but because he's a constant smoker.
- Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Wait, Campy isn't the main character?
- Straight Gay: Campy. The revelation that his date to the Autumn Ball was Connor shocked Kale quite a bit (but not
Ashley) and he has no overtly gay tendencies that have been observed. - Suspiciously Specific Denial: Christmas 2009.
- Technical Pacifist: Kale.
- The Glomp: Bruce is a fan of these.
- Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Ashley is hotheaded, bossy, and physically violent, mostly hangs out with guys, and enjoys martial arts, weight training, and punk rock. However, she also enjoys making plushies and even owns a few dresses and skirts. She attributes her girly side to her dad, who raised her as his little girl and is very feminine and cute himself. This trope is especially evident by how her bedroom looks. Her bedroom has punk rock posters, a punching bag, weights, and... a bunch of stuffed animals. There's also a significant amount of pink.Eve: Everything in this room kind of... conflicts with each other.
Ashley: Yeah, I get that a lot. You'll get used to it. - Tsundere: Ashley is a type A.
- 20 Minutes into the Future: It's never stated how far into the future the comic takes place (at least a couple generations) but most of the time you wouldn't know that it isn't yet another "present day" furry comic.
- Though recently a floating "retro" robot was shown.
- This is even lampshaded by the author, who admittedly sometimes forgets that the comic takes place in the future.
- Though recently a floating "retro" robot was shown
- Violence Really Is the Answer: Kale's internal conflict.
- Webcomic Time: Mocked by the author of course. From 294 to 313 it's been five months on the regular schedule, but in-universe it's only been maybe a few minutes. May or may not be justified as taking place during a dream.Alt text: Oh, hi Eve, time to wake up from your five-month-long night's rest.
- What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: Eve's plan to get Gus together with Ashley. In the end, it fails just about as miserably as every other plan, although Gus does manage to learn from it and finally get a concession out of Ashley.Eve: Don't worry, there is absolutely no way for this to go wrong in any conceivable way.
- Wham Line: I...know you were turned into a human from a fox, Kale. And I...may or may not know who did it.
- Wing Ding Eyes: Bruce on seeing Lucy for the first time in #233.
- Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Being a hammy LARPer, Bruce lapses into this sometimes. This is taken up to eleven when asking out Lucy for the first time.
