Seth and Peter, resting under a tree
"What if to a child, what appeared to be an imaginary friend, was in fact his guardian angel?"
—The comic's description on the website's story tab
Peter and Company is a furry webcomic by artist Jonathan Ponikvar. The series launched on January 1, 2005 and can be read in its entirety for free online at here.
The comic is listed as semi-autobiographical, as it is loosely based on stories from the author's childhood. The plot revolves around Peter, a 12-year-old cat who is having a difficult time surviving through childhood. One day he makes a new friend in the form of Seth, a white-suited duck. Peter quickly realizes that Seth is only visible to him, providing the backdrop for the rest of the story. Seth follows Peter around in order to offer him advice without directly interfering and guidance through the various plotlines. There are other children who have special friends in the world as well, and each of them can see the others' companions and even talk to them. Seth and the rest are referred to only as "Guardians," leaving the theological undertones up to the interpretation of the viewer.
The first 75 strips of the current comic are presented in a four-panel newspaper format. After that point it changes to a full-page comic with varying panel layouts. A few comics are also in color, which are presented as bonuses for donations made by the readers (a process which ended in the mid-2010's — most pages are now posted in color by default). Those who bought the first book were given a bonus story called "How Peter met Seth", a mini comic that detailed the days before Seth's reassignment to Peter, but on February 12, 2024, the story was fully released to the public and became the starting pages for the comic itself.
A sequel called Peter and Whitney was released on May 2, 2016, which skips ahead to the characters in their college days after the guardians have left them.
Peter and Company has the following tropes:
- Aborted Arc: Enforced with a page of Chelsea handing a box of her findings regarding Peter and Seth to Dr. Victor Munchkinn; See the trivia page for more info.
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Whitney, an anthropomorphic cat, has purple fur. Eddy, a dog who switches between being a standard dog and an anthropomorphic one, has blue fur.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Dr. Victor Munchkinn and Dr. Fritz have been hunting for ghosts in Peter's home because of Seth's antics since the infancy of the comic...and eventually, Eddy gives them more than what they bargained for by bringing them to a hellish landscape to deal with them when they were going after Peter's home yet again.
- Becoming the Mask: Justified; Persephoni believes she would be able to help Chelsea better as a normal being rather than being an Elite Guardian where she would just merely be a pet to comfort her.
- Blackmail Backfire: Tracy coerces Peter into doing all the research for their class assignment, and in retaliation, Peter ends up making an entirely fraudulent report that is purely based on fiction which nets her a 44%; an F, to be precise.
- Blessed with Suck: Being an Elite Guardian is shown to be even more challenging than a standard one, since it means you are severely limited in your ability to directly communicate (and thus guide/protect) your child, since you are assigned to them without their knowledge as a form of physical comfort as a pet, rather than as a friend. This also makes it harder on the child, since while a normal assignment would forget they ever had a Guardian after they are no longer needed, they will always remember loving (and losing) a pet.
- The Cameo: Sammy MacLean from Las Lindas makes a cameo appearance in the comic on strip #202 as Peter's substitute teacher during his class project with Tracy. Countless other cameos appear throughout the backgrounds of the series, as Jonathan has a long-running tradition of offering free cameo slots for the original character designs of his readers in order to fill out scenes with larger crowd shots. Each page that features cameos also includes a line of credits in the commentary listing the owners of each character that has been featured.
- Driven to Suicide: Implied; Steven Wright, one of Seth's former children who he later found out was decedent, was shown with a bottle of pills in hand on the last panel he appeared on due to scars and hardships from his broken past.
- Flanderization: In the beginning, Chelsea is simply a girl who contradicts and insults Peter for seemingly talking to himself. As the comic goes on after Whitney's introduction, Chelsea's negative traits start to become emphasized to the point she slowly turns into a major bully who turns all the kids on Peter and frequently hassles him.
- Furry Confusion: The comic features anthropomorphic cats, among other species. Yet Korgar has several non-sentient housecats ("minions") that he keeps in his desk and brings to restaurants. Peter, being a cat, freaked out upon discovering them in the desk. But apparently, it's an accepted thing in-universe, as the wolf waitress who served Korgar at the pizza place had no problem with him owning cats or bringing them there. And then there's the fact that Chelsea has a pet bunny (who's really Persephoni, her Guardian). It's also revealed that the other workers at Jeff's post office and see Eddy walking around in his standard dog form, and seem to have no qualms at all about the fact that he is able to talk.
- Given Name Reveal: Skin's real name is Theodore.
- Gone Horribly Right:
- Peter attempts to crash Chelsea's slumber party with the help of the worms. Despite Persephoni stopping Peter from doing the deed, the worms complete it, and Peter ends up taking the flak from Chelsea.
- Chelsea sets up a prank for Peter to give Whitney a special perfume to sabotage him. Whitney is allergic to said substance, and while Chelsea does succeed in messing up Peter's gift, it affects Whitney far worse than expected and she ends up going to the hospital.
- Tracy gets Peter to fall in line and do all the work and research for their project to preserve her grade while claiming he did nothing to contribute…he does it all as she expected, but she didn’t realize that he knew next to nothing about what their assignment was about and so she ended up destroying her own GPA for it.
- Herr Doktor: Exaggerated; Dr. Victor Munchkinn and Dr. Fritz fit the mold to a T, from the stereotypical german accents to their weird and whacky obsession with hunting for guardians (or as they consider them, ghosts).
- Hidden Depths: Chelsea seems to be intrigued by Peter's clay flowers and takes an interest in them, showing that she does have some respect for arts and crafts.
- Incessant Music Madness: Whitney in music class tends to play the french horn rather loudly, causing her teacher to ask them to play less for the sake of the other students.
- Kick the Dog:
- Chelsea has done a few things to Peter during her Jerkass phase, from chucking an iceball at Peter to sabotaging his gift at Whitney's Birthday party and blaming him for causing a severe allergic reaction.
- Peter goes out of his way with the worms to sabotage and ruin Chelsea's sleepover party for no other reason than boredom. Needless to say, it doesn't end well for him.
- Laser-Guided Karma: While doing a group project, Tracy tried to screw Peter out of the grade by claiming that he didn't do anything in the group (in actuality, he did all the research). She succeeded, but Tracy got an "F" because Peter made up all the research he did for it.
- Love at First Sight: When Peter sees Whitney for the first time, he immediately starts begging Seth on how to talk to girls. It is actually Persephoni who helps him overcome his fear and convinces him to try talking to her (which, of course, fails at first).
- Mailman vs. Dog: Inverted; Eddy practically lives with Jeff until the latter ends up ranting with his potential Love Interest about Eddy messing around with their mail.
- The Matchmaker: Downplayed, Eddy inadvertently brings Jeff together with June, a raccoon who works in the same company he's in, but only by annoying the two into sharing their mutual disdain for him.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Chelsea is shown to have deep remorse over Whitney being sent to the hospital, much to the surprise of Persephoni. Sadly, it doesn't do her much good when she expresses this to Whitney, given her reaction the revelation afterward.
- My Greatest Failure: Seth regards Steven as this after he learns later on that he died of suicide despite everything he did to try to help him heal and function and cites this as the reason as why he intends to take Peter more seriously.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Eddy is very good with this as he has Jeff under the idea he's an annoying talking dog when in fact, he's actually a Guardian entity hiding in plain sight.
- Put on a Bus: After their unfortunate encounter with Eddy, Dr. Victor Munchkinn and Dr. Fritz aren't seen for the rest of the comic after fleeing Peter's house besides a few cameos later in the comic. According to the author, these characters have since been abandoned and their arc is considered finished as-is.
- The Scapegoat: Peter ends up taking the flak from Chelsea over the worms splattering her and Ezzy with paintballs.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Lampshaded by Seth in his conversation with Peter after the latter sees the skid marks Dr. Victor and Fritz left on his driveway.Seth: Looks to me like they had somewhere important to be, since they left in such a hurry.
- Shout-Out:
- Dr. Victor Munchkinn and Dr. Fritz are essentially one big shoutout to Ghostbusters.
- This strip and the next recreate a scene from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, right down to some of the dialogue.
- Stalker with a Crush: Chelsea, who watched and kept notes of Peter's habits on several occasions and showed signs of jealousy when he showed interest in another girl.
- Took a Level in Kindness: After the perfume incident, Chelsea becomes noticeably nicer, and by the time she loses Pearl, she quickly goes through a rapid character transformation away from being a bully to Peter, and by the time the sequel series comes around, the two are shown to be good friends.
- Tuckerization: Downplayed; Whitney and Tracy are so far the only confirmed characters who use the names of their real-life counterparts.
