is a surreal webcomic by Stephen Notley, updated every Monday.The titular Bob is a 5-foot-tall anthropomorphic flower (a "daisy-dandelion-sunflower crossbreed, the kind that walks and talks", according to Notley) who frequently dabbles in mad science, actual science, robots, genocide, traveling through time and space, with a tendency to rant at anyone about anything, or just pull whatever crazy compulsive scheme he can think of. Accompanying Bob is Straight Man Stumpy, a walking, talking stump who often serves as the voice of reason against Bob's insane antics, though is often ignored or even roped into Bob's schemes. Also with them is Freddie the Flying Fetus, a talking, floating fetus whose child-like innocence often gets him into trouble, usually by Bob.
The comics themselves are mostly black-and-white one-shot comics, very few of which have overlapping plots. The humor is very random and chaotic with loads of non-sequiturs, with the punchline often being that there is no punchline.
This webcomic provides examples of:
- Anticlimax: Many comics involve setting up an extremely over-the-top solution to a problem, only for it to be resolved through mundane means at the last moment.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking and Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Both are shown here, where Bob nonchalantly announces he's leaving to buy milk and visit Alpha Centauri, with the narration adding:Such a journey should take about 24,600 years, plus however long it takes to get the milk.
- Art Evolution: Bob's stress levels reduced as the artist became more comfortable drawing non-angry expressions.
- Beware the Nice Ones: When Freddie gets angry, he's... efficient. He's the world's youngest ex-Green Beret, at negative two months.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Defied here: a wealthy man in a corporate suit looks into Bob's Mirror of Truth, sees himself as a pig, and complains that he is being judged on his wealth alone, with no regards for his friends and family. Bob admits his mirror just shows everybody as a pig, but now that the guy knows his secret, he has to die.
- Couch Gag: The title is drawn differently every time. Extreme examples can be like this◊.
- Crapsack Only by Comparison: In one comic, Bob dies and goes to heaven; he realizes that everything up there is so awesome that people still living on earth are in agony, relatively speaking. He then jumps down to earth, saying "I've gotta kill everyone!"
- Dating Catwoman: Bob's entire motivation for capturing the Beautiful International Diamond Thief. It proves less glamorous than it sounds.
- Foul Flower: Bob, an anthropomorphic sunflower, is a Mad Scientist and a Heroic Comedic Sociopath.
- Green Thumb: Plantae, a villain with the power to control plants.
- Hero of Another Story: Stumpy and Freddie have their own adventures without Bob, though usually we don't get to see them.
- The Hero's Journey: Because crossing the threshold seems risky, Bob sends a robot, who returns to report it has made this journey.
- It's Been Done: Bob has an amazing knack for creating weapons that are ages ahead of the time... And then there's the time he invented bronze.
- Kill the Poor: This strip has Bob suggesting this to an incongruously waifish queen, who immediately has it implemented.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Hamsterfall, an in-universe example of a supervillain whose villainy consists entirely of picking up hamsters and then dropping them on the floor.Hamsterfall: As I will it, Hamsters Fall!
- Negative Continuity: Bob has repeatedly raised vast evil armies and reduced the earth to ashes, or fed every living thing into the mouths of Lovecraftian horrors, complaining all the while how people just don't have his vision. It never sticks.
- No Name Given: Subverted by The Nameless Ones, who openly admit that their name is The Nameless Ones.
- No Party Like a Donner Party: Bob can live on sunlight, which means he can be a massive Jerkass to the starving survivors of a plane crash◊.
- Ray Gun:
- Bob has all sorts, from a peace ray that Time-Grabbed Jesus tries to steal, to a seahorse ray and even an unexplained Donut Ray that appears to be meant to show all his enemies in one go that he could have killed them but chose to give them donuts instead.
- Freddie appears to have a ray gun capable of destroying Plot, when the storyline insists his attempt to save the day will fail.
- Shaped Like Itself: Bob gives a presentation explaining the key subatomic particles involved in the large hadron collider experiment.Quarks: which are quarks. Examples: Quarks.
- Shout-Out: Many, mostly to Science Fiction series or books.
- One to Neon Genesis Evangelion, of all things.
- Many, many strips involve Daleks, such as this one.
- This strip has the same premise as Isaac Asimov's The Martian Way, although a vastly different outcome.
- Here Bob fights against Pak ramscoops.
- Here to They Live!.
- One to Neon Genesis Evangelion, of all things
- Space Is Noisy: Averted. When Lovebot is in space, even the narrator has trouble understanding exactly what's up except that somehow love saves the day.
- Take That!: As an online discussion of Objectivism continues, the odds of this Bob the Angry Flower Strip◊ being linked approaches 1:1.note
- Unusual Euphemism: Bob encourages people to say "advanced" when they want to say "retarded".
- Weaksauce Weakness:
- Bob escapes from Dr. Renticulus using a skeleton's fear of raisins◊.
- One strip has Bob running a hot roasted peanut stand◊, and figuring out that his customers are actually supervillains who plan on using them to attack Allergy Man in his Anaphylactic Fortress.
- Insectoid warrior-drones LOVE singing kitties!◊
- Invoked in Achilles' Heel◊ - but subverted in that, whatever Ultraman's weakness is, Bob's got it embarrassingly wrong.
- Bob escapes from Dr. Renticulus using a skeleton's fear of raisins
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Reference Hamsterfall. There is also Plantae, the villain with plant-controlling superpowers, who ends up broke and jobless because plants can't actually do anything much.
