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, ranting at anyone about anything, or just 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:
- Adolf Hitlarious: Good Hitler.
- Alien Abduction: Subverted◊. They're not aliens, just French people.
- An Aesop: Subverted, in that there might be a moral to the story if Bob was actually any good at learning from experience◊.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: Several, not least the empty set.
- Art Evolution: Bob's stress levels reduced as the artist became more comfortable drawing non-angry expressions.
- Artistic License – Biology: "Let me explain how DNA works, Bob."
- Aside Glance: Stumpy in the early strips, usually to throw in a sarcastic comment about Bob.
- The Atoner: Good Hitler.
- Bears Are Bad News: Especially if their natural enemies, robots, are around.
- Beware the Nice Ones: When Freddie gets angry, he's... efficient. He's the world's youngest ex-Green Beret, at negative two months.
- Bigger Is Better: The Best Ever Chopsticks Ever.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Or obliterating it with a ray gun.
- Brick Joke: Why is Bob launching turtle pies into space? For a punchline a few comics later.
- Butt-Monkey: (Former) U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
- Comedic Sociopathy: Bob's usual mode of interaction with the rest of the world.
- Comically Missing the Point: Grammar Nazism for comedy, as the author considers what it would be like to battle Los Angeles:I was surprised to learn from the opening credits that the name of the movie was Battle Los Angeles. Not Battle: L.A. or even Battle: Los Angeles, but just Battle Los Angeles. In a way, just typing it out now, it's brilliant. Because the movie is all about battling Los Angeles.
Not in a good or entertaining way, mind you, just as battling Los Angeles would not be a fun or enjoyable experience. No, Battling Los Angeles would be a lot of running around, taking cover, wondering what the fuck was going on and then eventually getting to shoot at some clunky terminators with blobs for heads. But, after all, isn't that what we should expect from a battle with Los Angeles? - Cool Car: The Car From H.O.R.S.E.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: The Evil Business Guy Made of Butter◊.
- 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!"
- Cuteness Proximity: Bob is susceptible to this, to his dismay.
- Cymbal-Banging Monkey: In ''Clap Trap''◊, which is one big Shout-Out to a short story by Stephen King.
- Dating Catwoman: Bob's entire motivation for capturing the Beautiful International Diamond Thief. It proves less glamorous than it sounds.
- Deadpan Snarker: Stumpy.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Clothes which reflect your thoughts can get you into trouble.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Slapping The Shit Out Of George W Bush◊.
- Eye Scream: But don't worry, the procedure is seventy-eight per cent painless!
- Fantastic Racism: Bears and Robots.
- For Science!: Bob's catch-all excuse when he wants to do anything absurd.Freddy: You built a robot programmed to love and then kicked him out? WHY?Bob: Data, mostly.
- Foul Flower: Bob, an anthropomorphic sunflower, is a Mad Scientist and a Heroic Comedic Sociopath.
- Good Angel, Bad Angel: Bob's "good" conscience is the one that's merely antisocial. Probably◊.
- Grammar Nazi:
- Green Thumb: Plantae, a villain with the power to control plants.
- Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Bob at his best/worst.
- The Hero's Journey: Because crossing the threshold seems risky, Bob sends a robot, who returns to report it has made this journey.
- Interspecies Romance: Bob is demonstrably fond of human women.
- Jumping the Shark: In-Universe example. Done literally in this strip. Also lampshaded in Phonin' It In.
- Kill Sat: One wonders just how dangerous Bob's cakes◊ have been in the past.
- Logical Fallacies:
- Just count the fallacies. Sadly as ridiculous as it is, the strip is a political allegory for a very real situation. While it clearly was timed to reference Iraq, the arguments presented apply to a great deal of political debates on numerous subjects.
- There is only one conclusion we can draw about this murder.
- Averted by the mathematical logic gag here.
- Just count the fallacies
- Longing for Fictionland: Bob resorts to extreme science to become a Powerpuff Girl.
- Mad Eye: Bob, when crazed. Meaning often.
- Mad Scientist: Bob, more than most.Bob: So once I hit on the idea of working from the base monster template it was a simple process to generate an organism fully capable of fixing my printer.
- Mood Whiplash: Jolly Starfish.
- 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◊.
- Not Hyperbole: For example when Bob promises to hand someone his ass.
- The Power of Love: Lovebot runs on this trope.
- 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.
- Serious Business: Beware the Font Police!
- 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: To Neon Genesis Evangelion, of all things.
- Shown Their Work: Several of the more science-intensive strips, such as "Kaons".
- Sophisticated as Hell: Bob in Foment:Bob: Good your majesty, I wish not to be a dick about this but no fucking way.
- 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.
- Supervillain: Bob, in his more megalomaniacal moods◊.
- Take That!: As an online discussion of Objectivism continues, the odds of this Bob the Angry Flower Strip◊ being linked approaches 1:1.note
- Third-Person Person: Mondobot
- Unsound Effect: Apparently being transformed into a circle creates the sound FZ-IRKL.
- Unusual Euphemism: Bob encourages people to say "advanced" when they want to say "retarded".
- Visual Pun: His name's Typeface. Well, of course it is◊.
- 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.
