NOTE: This webcomic has nothing to do with the British comedy movies of the same name.
A long-running, furry, Slice of Life webcomic written and drawn by Kathy Garrison-Kellogg, wife of the author/artist of 21st Century Fox. It began in July 2004 as basically a Fan Fic of the latter comic but soon came into its own, with a few signs of a futuristic setting. Read it here
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This site also hosts the author's other, completed webcomic projects, including The Legend of Anne Bunny (a fictionalized retelling of the story of famous pirate Anne Bonney), Of Mouse and Moon (Johann Maus travels to the moon for a job), and Pirates of Penumbra (Johann Maus has an adventure with pirates while traveling through space, but it's All Just a Dream).
Tropes found in each of Kathy's comic series:
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Carry On
- Abnormal Ammo: The rabbits are attacking with blowguns. Those aren't pebbles!
- All Animals Are Dogs: The hyenas, unlike Real Life ones, wag their tails when happy.
- All Just a Dream:
- Amazonian Beauty: A reader reaction to Mama Fisi. (Mama Penthesilea may be too much of a Hot-Blooded Cyborg for that.)
- Animal Stereotypes: Several examples of various species/breeds doing exactly what you'd expect them to be doing.
- Helen: A raccoon with OCD tendencies.
- The Deacon and the Preacher: A Great Pyrenees and a border collie who lead the flock (of sheep) of the Church of the Golden Fleece.
- Mr. Howe: A hammerhead shark lawyer.
- Animals Not to Scale: Invoked when a bunch of confused makeup monkeys make Kathy look like a famous rabbit, while remaining the size of a hyena. But averted when she meets the real thing.
- Arranged Marriage: Kathy has been promised to Lt. Frederik Kruger (not that one). Neither one is happy about it at first, but it's shaping up to be something of a Perfectly Arranged Marriage.
- Artistic License – Biology: Not as common in this comic as you'd think. It was probably more pronounced early on, when the cartoonist had done less research on hyenas.
- Baby Talk: Sandy, in adulthood, says, "I wuv you, gweat-gwamma!" Duchess Songween replies, "You little apple-polisher!"
- Barefoot Cartoon Animal: The entire cast.
- Behind the Black: General Rumer, on this page.
- Big Ball of Violence: Kathy and Sandy fighting over a bottle of meds.
- Big Eater: Both Kathy and her sister can be seen pigging out to the point of becoming pear-shaped and complaining about being over-stuffed. Followed by asking what's for dinner in the last panel.
- Blind Without 'Em: Freddy as seen here.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Seems to be the case for hyena tradition.
- The Cameo: Numerous examples. Most notable during the wedding arc in the comic's early years.
- Cerebus Syndrome: A mild example. For all the times that Kathy's been embarrassed or hurt, she didn't become
The Woobie until she stressed out over having little choice but to marry a man she hardly knew. He too has had his (often Stoic) Woobie moments since — probably more so, as he's had very little say in his whole life course, and any alternative to marrying Kathy is liable to lead to his untimely death. The comic retains much of its sense of humor, but many episodes forgo a punchline for drama or adventure as their party makes their way through hostile territory. - Conveniently Timed Distraction: While being chased towards a high cliff, a zebra porter throws a rock and manages to hit one of the warthog warriors bearing down on Kathy and Co. Which leads into Disproportionate Retribution, below.
- Disney Death: Trader Horn falls into croc-infested waters that fill with blood. Much later, he surprises his party by reappearing in good health.
- Disproportionate Retribution: After being hit on he head by a rock, one of the warthog warriors thinks his neighbor did it. Which leads to a Big Damn Heroes moment in the following strip.
- Distracted by the Sexy: When Kathy is made up to look like buxom bunny newscaster Michelle Bambi, she causes multiple men to have injurious accidents, in a Shout-Out to Eric Schwartz's "A Walk in the Park."
- Double Subversion: Triple, really. The masked attackers look scary until they take their masks off; then they get scary again with their weapons until the weapons turn out to be mere nuisances....
- Dumb Muscle: Murphy was genetically engineered for brawn, not brains. Oddly enough, she's become an Ensemble Dark Horse.
- Vyschuss is typically thought to be this, partly because of her speech impediment, but she knows enough to avoid Jinjur's mistakes.
- Dung Fu: The bunnies don't shoot darts or pebbles with their blowguns....
- Foreshadowing: As seen here, Sandy is painfully aware of this trope. Mother Nature seems to be aware of this trope as well.
- Funny Background Event: As Koz and Madam Jade enjoy tea together, Fred chases Kathy with a sword. It Makes Sense in Context.
- Gargle Blaster: In one bar in Rackenroon the typical tropical fruity, slushy cocktail "Lava Flow" is made differently. If you back up a page, you get to see it being poured.
- Gender Bender: The airport security agent is having trouble correctly identifying Corporal Taffy's gender. Then again, since she's a spotted hyena, it's understandable and possibly expected.
- A Handful for an Eye: Kathy has been losing a duel to determine who will be the next duchess of Rackenroon and has been knocked down by Jinjur Maiham. She applies this trope, turns a sword fight into a surprise fist fight, and mops the floor with Jinjur's face.
- Head-Tiltingly Kinky: The artwork Kathy and Sandy are looking at here.
- Heinous Hyena: Zigzagged. The main hyenas are usually far from heinous, but the land of Rackenroon features a good deal of barbarism.
- Heroic Sacrifice: When a zipline proves unable to support both their weights, Trader Horn deliberately falls to his apparent doom to save Sandy.
- Ignoring by Singing: Kathy hints at having a thing for steam engines. Sandy doesn't want to know about it.
- I Hate Past Me: Fred's present and future selves have different ideas of what has to be done. Future!Fred privately declares that he'd kill his slightly younger self if not for the obvious drawback.
- I Have to Wash My Hair: After Kathy proposes having Freddy sleep in the only bed with her and Sandy, he needs to go check on dinner.
- Ikea Erotica: Kathy is concerned about Freddy falling victim to this trope because "he needs a ruddy guidebook."
- Incredibly Lame Pun: Quite common among names of characters and especially locations.
- Instant Leech: Just Fall in Water!: In keeping with the arc's The African Queen reference, one page features Sandy hopping out of the swamp / river, covered in the little bloodsuckers.
- Interspecies Romance: Two prominent ones. It's stated in-universe that these are sterile.
- Scooter Killdall (tiger) and a horse.
- Kathy's sister Sandy and her river otter husband. Boyfriend, actually.
- Bo the boa once proposed to Kathy and talked her into a couple dates (yes, in that order), but the attraction wasn't mutual.
- A milder example: Arfur Jr. and a striped hyena.
- One of Scooter's sisters married a housecat, and a genetic engineer made them a litter of plaid kittens.
- In the Original Klingon: Freddy does this with Shakespeare and the original Crocutan.
- Japanese Ranguage: Kuchiku suffers from this despite being of Chinese descent. A language coach is unable to help her. It appears to be a psychological sticking point.
- Killer Rabbit: Kathy, Sandy, and Fred get surrounded by scarily masked forces who turn out to be mere bunnies — but with blowguns. (Then the blowguns shoot mere rabbit pellets.)
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Sandy has been sent ashore to gather firewood. How to get it back while keeping it dry?
- Lie Back and Think of England: Fred has expected an Arranged Marriage to a woman he doesn't love. His mother advised him to lie back and think of Rackenroon. That advice backfires.
- Mad Scientist: Dr. Bowman, possibly even more than the original version. A geneticist who created Murphy (a hyena Super Soldier the size of a rhino), experimented with wolf/chimp hybrids (they already have hyenas), injected Kathy with regenerative nanobots, and attempted to produce an heir for Songween by IVF, didn't work.
- Meaningful Name: Kathy's new honor guard, the SBD (Songween's Bodyguard Detail) all have these.
- Keela, "...because she's good at killing things." Bonita, "...because she likes gnawing on bones." Dixie "She's from the South."
- The Medic: Sandy is an EMT. Possibly a Deadly Doctor. She is a hyena, after all.
- Neat Freak: Helen, as befits a creature who washes her food.
- Never Mess with Granny: Mama Fisi and Mama Penthesilea, Kathy's warlike grandmothers.
- Noble Demon: Quite a few of the traditional hyenas come across this way. Not least Songween, who borders on The Caligula but promotes Kathy as an heiress and is quite grandmotherly to orphaned hyenas.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: This page as well as 3 of the 4 following pages.
- No More for Me: When an elder who's known Fred for years sees him acting out of character by giggling and running in a state of undress from Kathy, she deliberately drops her flask.
- Overreacting Airport Security: Corporal Taffy has a hard time at the metal detector.
- Proud Warrior Race Guy: Both grandmas. Probably most hyenas in Rackenroon, for that matter.
- Puppy-Dog Eyes: Sandy, surprisingly enough, uses them on her great-grandma before parting for the night. Kathy uses them as well, when trying convince Scooter to go to a restaurant he thinks is too expensive.
- Put on a Bus: Scooter Kildall left for Colliefornia to develop his comic Pepe the Fire Ant for a movie.
Word of God says that the cartoonist's husband, on whom Scooter was based, had always found the character dynamic off-putting and wanted him out. May qualify as Ship Sinking, since many readers had expected the friendship between Kathy and Scooter to blossom into romance. - Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Bo isn't a rotten guy, but he sure leaves something to be desired as a date.
- Retcon: Fred's diary diverges from the story in the comic in several little ways. The cartoonist tries to keep it to a minimum.
- Also, while Kathy's hair was once revealed to be a wig, with the implication that all the women were like that, the cartoonist has indicated that that's no longer the case.
- The Reveal: The walking trunk made it to Kiyanti — with help from a still-alive Trader Horn. To avoid spoiling this, the Lying Creator had said he was Killed Off for Real.
- Right Behind Me: One poorly timed comment gets a tiger into trouble.
- Road Trip Plot: Kathy, Freddy and Sandy were on an epic Type 1 / Type 2 hybrid trip for a while.
- Running Gag: The chocolate ganache, which is, apparently, "...to die for." Takes its first step here. Still jogging along here.
- Complete with a Lampshade Hanging in the comments section on the author's Fur Affinity post for the July 2nd page.
- Complete with a Lampshade Hanging in the comments section on the author's Fur Affinity post for the July 2nd page
- Shout-Out:
- This page looks like it's lifted straight from the opening minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- One Christmas, the Grrsns get a leg lamp reminiscent of A Christmas Story, only more predatory.
- Fred's high-tech walking luggage resembles the one from Discworld. Someone even mentions sapient pearwood at one point.
- Kathy's great uncle Leonard resembles Doc Brown but has a TARDIS.
- The second panel of this page is pretty much Lucy's reaction to being licked by Snoopy.
- The bunnies speak of "secret bunny business," a phrase lifted from Doc Rat.
- They also use "hraka," a term from Watership Down.
- This page begins with a shout out to The African Queen.
- A briefly appearing gorilla calls himself Tarzan and certainly acts the part.
- The first panel of this page is swiped directly from Newhart, just with the genders flipped.
- This page
- Shown Their Work: Kathy, as a hyena, suffers from the spotted hyena's slightly bizarre reproductive biology, bits and pieces of which have been shown and/or discussed. (The cartoonist has said that she learned a lot more about hyenas after starting the comic, and she would've done some things differently earlier on had she known.)
- Spit Take: An appropriate thing to do when you find out you almost had an arrest warrant or hear something like this: [1].
- Sure, Let's Go with That: In this page, Songween's Captain, Azkikkia is introducing her subordinates.Azkikkia: "and this [Hyena with dreadlocks] is Dixie."
Kathy: "—She's from the south?"
Azkikkia: "Yyyeah. We'll go with that." - Tap on the Head: Trader Horn finds it necessary to KO a hormone-crazed Fred in order to stop him from taking advantage of Kathy in her sleep.
- There Is Only One Bed: The first thing the three hyenas find amiss about the large luxury tent on their journey. It soon becomes evident that somebody meant to evoke a honeymoon suite.
- Time Travel: Care of Leonard, from time to time.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Sandy becomes harder to like as the trek to Rackenroon goes on. She has reasons for losing patience, but they don't excuse her behavior toward Kathy or especially Fred.
- Unicorn: Trader Horn is one, somewhat surprisingly, given the previous absence of mythical creatures (other than anthropomorphic animals) in the comic.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: When Kathy drinks Dead Man's Chest beer, she fails to follow Sandy's advice to make sure it misses her tongue completely....
The Legend of Anne Bunny
- Head-Tiltingly Kinky: Anne looks for her shipmate in a brothel. The first time she peeks into a wrong room, she slams the door and thinks, "I didn't know you could do that outside of space!"
- Incredibly Lame Pun: Boatloads of them. The most notable examples:
- The Brutish (British) Empire.
- The Spaniels (Spanish/Spaniards).
- Recycled IN SPACE!: The original Anne Bonney lived in the 16th Century. This takes place in interplanetary/interstellar space.
- Royal "We": Queen Elizabeef of the Brutish Empire.
- Space Pirates: Anne falls in with a crew of these. She becomes the captain of the same crew.
- Sweet Polly Oliver: Anne's initial tactic once she finds herself on a ship, with the alias "Andy Bunnymore."
Of Mouse and Moon
- Interspecies Romance: Johann (mouse) and Veronica (bat) These are stated in-universe to be sterile without some kind of medical intervention.
- Meaningful Name: Captain Bob Keeshan, the kangaroo commander of the lunar base.
Pirates of Penumbra
- All Just a Dream: Johann's, to be exact.
- Space Pirates: Looks like the same crew that Anne Bunny fell in with in another comic series.
