is a weekly Web Comic by Scotty Arsenault featuring the misadventures of a cast of Funny Animals IN SPACE!Commander Kitty is an aspiring spacer, always on the lookout for ways to make a name for himself in the annals of space history, but with his resources consisting of a ship that barely holds together, a barely competent helmsman, an engineer that speaks in fluent gibberish, a little girl who's on his ship for no discernable reason, a cut-rate teleporter he doesn't have a license for, and the most user-unfriendly AI imaginable in charge of everything, it doesn't look like he's going to get there any time soon.
Meanwhile, after a job gone bad separates her from her crew and gets her arrested by the Triple-I, rogue spacer Nin Wah is summarily Thrown Out the Airlock and saved only by a chance teleporter accident that puts her on board CK's ship. She's not happy with being shanghaied into his crew of fools, but once she learns he's going to team up with Ace and his Velvet Knight crew for a job, she plays along...if only for a chance at joining up with the greatest spacer crew in the galaxy.
Little do any of them realize that the villain who lured Nin Wah's crew into a trap is still at large, and the key to her plans of galactic conquest is a certain legendary spacer's brain!
Was on hiatus for a year, as the creator focused on his new job in the animation industry but returned in 2016. However in December 2017 the comic went on indefinite hiatus due to the financial problems of the creator and the comic failing to become commercially viable. At the end of 2019 the comic came back from the dead yet again, only to promptly return to being on hiatus in early 2020, where it has remained since.
Tropes:
- Aborted Arc: The comic ended half way through a story, lay fallow for a year or more, and rebooted when it returned.
- Accidental Aiming Skills: Aiming for a skyfly, CK manages to put a torpedo into the exhaust port of a Triple-I space station.
- The Ace: Ace starts this way, in relation to Kitty, but it gets deconstructed when Mittens proves to be an even better commander than Ace, and he winds up in a Heroic BSoD.
- All Just a Dream: The very first scene.
- All There in the Manual: Thus far, the name of CK's ship, has only been revealed in a lone response on the Facebook Page. It's called the CC Pomatus, by the way.
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: The Tagged have blue fur.
- Arm Cannon: Turns out those Gazelle dorks really did have good reason to be scared of Nin Wah's prosthetic after all!
- Art Evolution: Quite a bit between the original run and the reboot.
- Artificial Limbs: Nin Wah's right arm. For a time, it looked like she'd had a flesh-and-blood arm grafted back on, but it turned out that particular Nin Wah was really an android duplicate.
- Art Shift: Mittens and Fluffy hatch a plan!
- Badass Adorable: Nin Wah certainly has her moments
- Barefoot Cartoon Animal: Pretty much everyone who wasn't a Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal before the reboot. Averted for the most part with the main cast, though the majority of the background characters and the Big Bad still go barefoot.
- Beleaguered Assistant: Mittens, and Nin Wah to some extent act as such to the Commander.
- Berserk Button: Calling Nin Wah "Lefty".
- Best Her to Bed Her: A variant as Freeda seems to think it's sexy that Mittens stood up to her.
- Big Dumb Object: Zenith Central is absolutely gigantic, complete with Unnecessarily Large Interior.
- Body Horror: Zenith's Tagged goons, which are stitched up abominations made out of captured spacers.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Mr. Socks may be a big goof of a ferret, but he's one of the best engineers in the galaxy.
- Cats Are Mean:
- CK doesn't do much to disprove this...
- Mittens, on the other hand, is a lovably meek doormat, while Fluffy is...too oddball to be that any demeanor really.
- Cat Smile: Freeda demonstrates quite a good one, on the fourth panel.
- Character Blog: Commander Kitty and Nin Wah on Twitter!
- Chekhov's Gun: Everything shunted into space...
- Cloning Blues: Explains a lot.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Fluffy, and Socks, and even Kitty himself at points. Being one of those stories, nearly every character gets a bout of this.
- Conveniently-Empty Building: Taken to the extreme when CK accidentally blows up an entire Triple-I space station...only for the very next comic to reveal everyone had evacuated to the sister station on the other side of the planet.
- Chekhov's Gag: "Oh, suck it up, Yeoman. You ride Mr. Socks' transporter enough, and it's bound to happen for real."
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Ace, after the Innocent Innuendo.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Who knew Mittens had it in him to be a Hyper-Competent Sidekick with just a little positive reinforcement?
- The Ditz: *cough* Fluffy *cough*
- Distracted by the Sexy: CK is frequently susceptible to this. Considering how both Zenith and the Alpha Droids turn out to be androids, perhaps he's a closeted Robosexual?
- Double Take: "'GAH!! SPACE ZOMBIES!!!"
- Immediately followed by: "Why did you put a leash on an eggplant?"
- Dead Pan Snarker: Why exactly would anyone want an AI with an attitude that bad?
- Dream Sequence: Too bad for CK, huh?
- Embarrassing Real Name: CK's in the pre-reboot comic. Never said on-page.
- Everyone Has Standards: Ace very quickly puts Mittens in his place after he (supposedly) gets too close to Freeda, though even he seems to feel visible pity for Kitty's treatment of him afterwards.
- Everything Sounds Sexier in French: Including "Slaughterhouse."
- Evil Twin: The characters who Kitty and Co. would appear to be fighting every time the server returned from downtime were apparently evil versions from a Mirror Universe. How did we know that they were the evil ones? Because Mirror Kitty had a goatee.
- Failed a Spot Check: Ace, at first, is oblivious to Zenith's planetwide brainwashing. But he eventually comes around.
- Foot Popping: Zenith does this in two strips.
- Four-Fingered Hands: The entire cast.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Lampshaded so very hard.
- Handicapped Badass: While Nin Wah's cyborg arm normally picks up the slack, even without it she's a force to be reckoned with.
- Heroic BSoD: Ace seems to be stuck in one at the moment.
- And now he seems to be trying to Murder the Hypotenuse (said hypotenuse being Mittens.)
- Hypercompetent Sidekick: Nin Wah has shades of this to the Commander, albeit with the odd "Not So Different" Remark (especially following Kitty's Character Development).
- Inexplicably Awesome: Fortiscue, surprisingly. He's a sheep kid who's only backstory is a list of the amazing things he's invented (that all turned against him).
- Innocent Innuendo: What triggers Ace's jealous rage.
- Insistent Terminology: "It's not a pageant, it's a contest!"
- Intelligible Unintelligible: There are a few characters who can actually understand what Socks is saying.
- Is This Thing Still On?: What happens when "Speaker" is the default setting.
- I Was Quite a Fashion Victim: One filler part shows the Velvet Knight crew isn't too happy to see how they were dressed on the cover of an old magazine.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: The Commander is a cowardly egotistical Jerkass for the large part, but he shows some genuine camaraderie to his team when it's due. Nin Wah is a light example, she's rough around the edges but otherwise makes friends with the team surprisingly quick.
- Just a Machine:
- The general opinion the galaxy seems to have of robots, given how characters react to Mecha Nin Wah and Zenith's current states.
- Mouse gets oh so little respect, about on par with a used Coke can,
- Kangaroo Court: Nin Wah was instantly found guilty for smuggling, kidnapping and terrorism, was given a trial by media at the same time, and sentenced to 15 minutes of community service (cleaning up the station outside.) Due to budget cutbacks, they wouldn't provide a space suit, making it really a death penalty. Naturally, they didn't have much of a budget to attempt a recovery operation, constraining it to just two warning shots.
- LEGO Body Parts: Happens to CK after a Teleporter Accident. His head, arms, legs, and torso are scattered around the room, but his tail is swapped with Fluffy's.
- Limb-Sensation Fascination: Nin Wah seems quite pleased with having her arm back. Too bad for her she's just an android duplicate.
- A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...: The series set in a World of Funny Animals galaxy with no humans in sight.
- Lovable Coward: Mittens. Kitty in a better light.
- Meaningful Name: Well, Kitty speaks for itself.
- The Tagged Leader, obsessed with creating perfection, is named Zenith.
- Nin Wah apparently means Red Panda.
- The Ace is named... Ace!
- Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: Nin Wah of all people ends up setting back the party for several pages with one thoughtless act of sabotage against an undeserving CK which ends up killing the friendly "Safe Mode" Zenith, leaving the space station they're on crippled, and giving Zenith's original villainous personality an opportunity to regain control.
- Mistaken for Cheating: Freeda loves nectarines. Missing the last word changes the implication.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Zenith and her constructed boyfriend.
- Mother of a Thousand Young: Zenith's initial ambition is to become this trope and rule the galaxy through her army of children. Alas, given that she is inorganic, it is not to be.
- My Friends... and Zoidberg: "An intelligent life form... and Fluffy"
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Things would have worked out just fine for all the heroes, Zenith, Fortiscue, and 45% of the galaxy if the cast had just left well enough alone after accomplishing their major goal...except they wanted all the credit for themselves.
- Non Sequitur, *Thud*: Fluffy would kind of reset for a few minutes if asked a non-sequitur question, with a physical thud. Sadly, there's no examples online since the reboot.
- The Nudifier: Ace's adjustments to the teleporter cause this to happen only to Mittens.
- Only Sane Man: Surprisingly, Kitty himself gains this role during the Zenith arc, being the only one to think to just yank out the hard drive with the galaxy's population on it and wanting to plan their escape while everyone insisted he get a new outfit.
- Pardon My Klingon: The all-purpose swear word "numph."
- Police Are Useless: The Triple-I kinda zigzag on this, being competent to pose a threat to the heroes, but useless against the real threat. Justified by the majority wearing iKnows.
- The Pollyanna: Ace, surprisingly. Despite looking for all the world like Han Solo if he were a cartoon cat, he often has an almost childlike optimism about everything, from the prospect of meeting a Jerkass like CK to being completely oblivious to creepy crowds calling his arrival.
- Punched Across the Room: With a belly, in fact!
- Ridiculously Human Robot: Zenith, so much that she doesn't even realize she's a robot. She's even implied to eat and cries at one point.
- "Second Law" My Ass!: MOUSE. // I HATE THE LIVING...
- Sexy Man, Instant Harem: This happens to CK early in the story. Or seems to—it's part of the All Just a Dream sequence.
- Shout-Out: Has its own page!
- Similar Squad: The Velvet Knight, run by Ace. Ace is charming, liked, and respected by his crew, and has a reputation as a spacer who can get the job done. In short, he's everything Kitty wishes to be but just isn't. Needless to say, Kitty doesn't like him one bit.
- Slapstick: Nin Wah quite possibly takes more abuse than the Commander himself.
- Take That!: A few tweets are Kitty asking Daisy Owl and Homestar Runner if he can have their audiences,
if they're done with them. - Teleporter Accident: —although I'm sure Nin Wah isn't completely complaining.
- I don't think she's quite as happy about the army of alternate reality Fluffys that it materialised though!
- Thrown Out the Airlock: Until deemed fit to re-enter society.
- The Unintelligible: Dook dook. (Mr. Socks)
- Turned Against Their Masters: Zenith may be Fortisque's creation, but she is very much in charge.
- Two-Way Tapping: The mouse is able to eavesdrop on Zenith while on the ship, allowing the team to make a plan. Fling!
- Unsound Effect: FERRET!
- Utopia Justifies the Means: Kind of. Yes, rather than just directly conquering the galaxy, Zenith eventually decides to lock everyone in a digital Lotus-Eater Machine instead, because bodies are imperfect...which means more or less killing them, of course.
- Unwilling Roboticisation: The Tagged (or rather, clones thereof. Yes, instead of directly creating androids from scratch, the Zenith project makes clones with are later roboticized on the fly)
- Villainous Breakdown: Zenith has one after finding out that robots and stitched up abominations can't have children together.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: "Mr Socks is Kitty’s best friend. You can tell by the way they are fighting all the time."
- Arguably also Kitty and Nin Wah.
- Weasel Mascot: Socks, though he doesn't really live up to the stereotype.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: CK seems to think he's the hero. Ace is the more likely candidate, but that's turned on its head when Mittens outclasses them both.
