Thoughts and comments from my first read-through

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CuriousCnidarian
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Thoughts and comments from my first read-through

Post by CuriousCnidarian »

As stated in my welcome post, I'm here mainly to dump various thoughts, comments, and predictions as I read through the comic for the first time. This first post, as least, will encompass the first 65 chapters since that's when I currently left off. Why post here in the first place? I thought it some folks here who've already read through the comic, perhaps multiple times, and have been following for a time, might find it interesting to see what goes through the mind of a first time reader, maybe for the first time since they first started reading. Or maybe judge me over how off I am on some of this stuff or how much I've got wrong, or how accurate some guesses are. It's all in good fun.

Q: Who am I and why should you care?
A: It doesn't matter and you shouldn't, thank you for asking.

Now let's get into it:
1. It's always been funny to me how you know for a comic running this long there's inevitably going to be some stylistic changes as the artist improves and evolves over time, but you rarely seem to notice it unless you go back to an older page and start specifically looking for changes. It tends to be such a gradual process, it can catch you by surprise when there's a sudden, marked change, as I found in two cases so far, the shift from black and white to color, and the page from 10/26/12, where the artist begins to use much thicker outlines on the characters and harsher shading in the backgrounds. The thicker character outlines, in my opinion, made the characters seem more like paper cutouts and was rather jarring change compared to the established style. The artist seems to have thought so, too, as the thicker outlines were dropped after two pages, but the harsher background shading remained. At this point it reminds me of some of the strips I'd see in the funny pages of the Sunday paper. I'm not quite halfway through, however, I wonder how much more change I'll notice? (I'm not an art major or anything, so please don't badger me too hard if what I said aren't fair comparisons, I'm just a layman trying to put into words what I've noticed here).

2. Building off of (1), these sudden changes weren't necessarily bad. I found the transition to color to be very helpful in distinguishing the characters from each other, as even with the tags, I found it difficult in some pages to tell which character was which, especially earlier on when there seemed to be a new character or two introduced every few pages. Or maybe I was too tired or reading too fast and my brain just didn't want to put in too much effort, idk.

3. Upon informing myself of what the comic was about before reading, I wondered how the dynamic between pets and owners would be if pets were basically small, furry children. It's done a good job of answering that curiosity.

4. Even though I'm only 4 and a half years into the runtime of this comic, I'm a little over halfway through it in terms of chapters. The chapter I just finished (65. The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Dog) was the first that seemed like it would be the start of a chapter in a published book, what with the title of the comic and chapter name in the first panel, and I saw that the next chapter starts the same, so I'm hoping and expecting this trend to continue. I think this will also mean longer chapters, which would go a ways to reconciling the chapter/time disparity.

5. A purple cat? Short, bipedal animals that speak perfect English with their mouth anatomy, esp. the cats' cleft lips? Suspension of disbelief, I suppose.

6. The chapter about the cast as puppies/kittens was cuter than I expected and much enjoyed. Especially the first panel of the January 9, 2012 page.

7. The Olfactory Assessment one-off reminded me a lot of my own childhood beagle. I miss her every day ;~;

8. My favorite character thus far is probably Joel/King. There's nothing wrong with a good slice-of-life comic (otherwise I wouldn't be reading this), but he's seemingly the only character with an overarching storyline that lasts more than a single chapter or two, and this, the most interesting to me. As of where I am in the comic, he appears to have started making the most of his life as a dog, having made several friends and turned his relationship with Bailey into something a little more permanent, and is trying to make himself as comfortable as possible with his new life. It's been what, 2? 3? years since he was turned into a dog, and at that point, with seemingly little to no hope of ever getting changed back anytime soon, I can't blame him; I probably would too. Despite still having to remind himself that he's really a human, not a dog, his life's been good the last couple years. A little too good, in fact. I suspect that whole "Embracing whether [he's] a dog, or [he's] a human" thing is going to come to a head soon. I predict Pete's going to interfere soon, King finally having made himself comfortable, and offer to turn him back into a human, perhaps forcibly, with King ultimately deciding to remain a dog. Has anyone taken that watch soul back to Heaven yet, by the way?

8a. Yes, I noticed the contrast between 2009's Christmas page ending with King in despair about how he's staying as a dog, and 2012's Christmas page which ends with King overjoyed because his dog girlfriend accepted his proposal.

9. Somewhat related, I've heard comments (and could probably guess from the name of recent chapters) that there's other physical character transformation in the comic, some permanent, some temporary. I suspect those will start popping up once King has this identity crisis resolved.

Huge wall of text, I know, but I think that about covers it. This is only so long since it covers nearly half the comic. Anything else I come up with to write down about later chapters will be as a comment on this post, if this post isn't locked by mods for whatever reason, and will hopefully be much shorter. Anything I forgot about this first half of the comic will be as a dated edit on the bottom of the post. As stated in the top of the post, feel free to comment over my comments, but please, no spoilerinos :)
Now, I've got some reading to do.
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Amazee Dayzee
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Re: Thoughts and comments from my first read-through

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

It is nice to see what other people think about what they read in the comic so far! You also do have a lot of excellent insight on everything!
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Re: Thoughts and comments from my first read-through

Post by CuriousCnidarian »

Amazee Dayzee wrote:It is nice to see what other people think about what they read in the comic so far! You also do have a lot of excellent insight on everything!
Thanks for the kind words.

I've made it up through Ch. 70 (I'd have gone through more tonight, but a late start, on top of spending nearly an hour fleshing out the OP, ate a large chunk of my time). Only real thoughts I have from those 5 chapters worth mentioning are that yes, the new chapter scheme is indeed continuing, and wow, I didn't have to wait long at all for that prediction with King/Pete to come to fruition, did I? Even though it wasn't quite exactly all at once. It'll probably be the end of year 6 it comes to a true conclusion.
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Re: Thoughts and comments from my first read-through

Post by CunningFox »

Glad you're enjoying it.
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Re: Thoughts and comments from my first read-through

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

We hope that you will continue to post your observations here and tell us what you think about the comic again!
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Re: Thoughts and comments from my first read-through

Post by CuriousCnidarian »

Well, I tried something different with this post, having it open and jot down things as I read through, but I forgot this style of forum logs you out after a while and I lost what I wrote down since I forgot to copy it. A slightly edited version, then, containing what I remember:

1. Max got a dream arc now, and if I'm not mistake, that's the third one, each lead by a different celestial being with a different character (Pete/Grape, the Kitsune/King [though this is debatable as all 3 celestials played a major part], Spirit Dragon/Max). I was wondering which character would be the next recipient of such a dream, and from whom.

2. Now that the cat's out of the bag (heh) with Fido and Sabrina's relationship, I'm guessing it's setting a precedent for King's human secret getting out, as foreshadowed in the last panel of the Certainty Certainly page in the "Jungle Fever" chapter.

3. What's different about writing thoughts in this flow pattern is that there's the chance of thoughts/questions from earlier in the chunk of chapters I read gets answered by the end, such as the conflict in (2) coming to fruition. If I have it straight, Joel would only remain as King for as long as he decided to be Pete's avatar, until he decided not to be. With Bailey taking his place as Pete's avatar, King gets turned back into the human Joel. It makes perfect sense Bailey would play into this whole saga, but the thought just hadn't crossed my mind, so I was a bit surprised by her volunteering herself.

4. Basically this whole arc's gonna be Joel/King navigating this celestial game to get Joel turned back into King permanently, without having to be attached to Pete. I'm sure Joel's firmly decided to remain a dog at this point.

5. There was something here about how the stopwatch that is Joel/King's fate/soul having a "Low Battery" indicator, which wasn't there previously, but I didn't want to delve into the certainly-present symbolism in it. And wondering how Bailey would react seeing King as the human Joel.

That's pretty much it, I think. Got through Chapter 78 tonight. Let's hope this doesn't get deleted again, lol.
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Re: Thoughts and comments from my first read-through

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

Really great points that you made once again! I enjoy reading other people's thoughts on the comic!
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Re: Thoughts and comments from my first read-through

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Alright, got through Heaven't Not Enough pt. 2 through Housepets 5000 BC pt. 1. My thoughts:

1. Finally finished that Cosmic Game arc, and I present to you, the literal first thing I thought of when I finished it: King_irl. Yes, I know the colors are off, so sue me. On a more serious note, I see I was pretty much right on the money with my initial prediction. I would've liked to see maybe a bit more tension in that final decision, since it didn't really seem like he'd choose anything else besides staying as a dog at that point. Maybe it's because of the speed I'm going through these chapters, or having the whole story readily available and not having to wait. I'd have to imagine it was a bit more suspenseful when it was initially released, any readers from that time care to chime in? Finally get's some stability and piece of mind with that weight off his back, in any case.

1a. When you think about it, the offer to stay a human was kinda a raw deal. Yeah, pretty much doesn't have to worry about anything, but all these friends he spent that last 5 years getting to know will completely forget him, not to mention his beloved wife. I noticed that there wasn't a mutual forgetting on King's part, which would kinda suck to still remember hanging out with these guys for the last 5 years, but they don't even know he exists anymore. And love wasn't anything guaranteed either. Pretty much the only choice was to stay a dog.

2. Wasn't expecting Pete and Spirit Dragon to be siblings, but can't say I'm against this revelation. Of course, we can't just show that and send them off to mortality, never toughing on it again; they're 100% showing up at some point in the future.

3. They haven't shown up in a while, but I've imagined the dolphins communicate a little something like this.

4. TIL I've been pronouncing Bino's name wrong this whole time.

5. Oh, I'm sorry, did I say "piece of mind"? Lol, have fun with the kids, King. Also starting to like Zach's character a bit more.

6. Starting to wonder when Res will show up again. Seems like he was made a bit too major of a character to just be dropped after a chapter or two. Doesn't Grape still have his number?

Think that's about it over what I read tonight. Feel free to ask questions if you wan't my thoughts over something in these chapters that I didn't bother putting down. Might do well to get some variety.
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Re: Thoughts and comments from my first read-through

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

I certainly don't have any questions about anything and I feel like you did actually sum up everything eloquently in this post!
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Re: Thoughts and comments from my first read-through

Post by CuriousCnidarian »

1. I'll admit, I was curious as to how different the past was in the comic compared to our own, since it ends up in pretty much the same place as ours is, just with the addition of most animals being sapient and bipedal. It was nice to see a glimpse of that in the 5000 BC chapters, and one of Dragon's earlier avatars, even though I'd still like to learn a bit more.

2. I don't know what it is, but there's just something about Karishad I don't like.

3. 2nd chapter featuring puppies, makes sense it'd be King's. Also shows that even though he's a dog now, he still lacks those natural canine instincts.

4. Another major plotline's ramping up again, I'd been missing having one to follow.

5. I noticed the switch from the horizontal newspaper-style layout to a more vertical one. Gotta say I liked the horizontal better, since I didn't have to scroll to see the whole page.

6. Of course it's the steward.

7. Glad to finally see Res again, RIP Rufus. I knew Thomas would make a return as well. This is just an arc full of returns, ain't it?

8. There's a Christmas special?

9. Those fox cubs are Pete and Dragon, aren't they?

10. With everything going on, it's kinda easy to forget that, for the most part, there are all, well, house pets. It focuses so much on their own adventures, sometimes taking them away for months at a time, you'd think they don't have anyone above them, who apparently don't care of they're gone for so long anyway. I don't know about you, but I'd be hella concerned if I had a pet disappear for that long.

Finished Call O' Th' Wild, I think I'll stop there for the night. Definitely finishing this tomorrow. Already managed to make it through one major story arc in one night, don't want to go too fast.
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Re: Thoughts and comments from my first read-through

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

Trust me there is no fear of that happening. If anything, if you wait too long, it could pile up on you.
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Re: Thoughts and comments from my first read-through

Post by CuriousCnidarian »

Alright, I've caught up to the most recent page, and with this, I can graduate from "First-Time Reader" to the much more mundane "Reader". Progress! Some thoughts on this last bit I read:

1. I knew those fox kits were Pete and Dragon.
1a. I bet King's pups are gonna befriend them and make things awkward for King, seeing how far he goes to avoid Kitsune.

2. Not just changing species, but gender too? Mega F in the chat for Marion (and Lois, but she doesn't seem as bothered by it).
2a. I guess that curse on that gold is pretty much a "Randomize my Character" button that randomizes everything but memory and personality.

3. Wonder how that curse is getting around, if, as far as I know, Steward (does he even have an actual name?) is the only one with cursed gold. Seems to me that he's been in the treehouse the last few weeks, so couldn't have gotten to Marion, much less Lois.

Much shorter than my usual thoughts comment, but this was by far the shortest section I've read. And now I'm all caught up. Kinda disappointing that I can't just binge through an entire story arc like I'd been doing, but I knew I'd be getting to that point eventually. Now I gotta wait for updates and boring things like that like the rest of the readerbase. Ugh.
There's what, 3 updates per week? I haven't been paying much attention to that, since, you know, I had literally the entire story laid out for me to read. I'm curious to see how this plays out, so I may actually stick with it. For a couple months before I inevitably drift away and forget about it for ~2 years. But it's been an enjoyable read, definitely not something I regret filling my evenings with for the last week or so. I'm sad I don't have a lot more of this to read now that I've caught up, but at least now I can look around the forum/extra art without worrying about spoilers. If you've been following my progress and thoughts here, thanks for reading. Probably won't update this thread again since it's served its purpose. ttfn.
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Re: Thoughts and comments from my first read-through

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

I know that it was my pleasure to read all of your thoughts all the way through because they really did have some good observations! Hope you don't vanish from the forum just yet!
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Re: Thoughts and comments from my first read-through

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Very fun to read through someone else's thoughts on the comic, and even though many of these things are the same as I thought back in August when I started on this thing, that makes the differences more interesting.
Btw, the steward's name is Steward. IIRC that was the reason he got hired by the Miltons to begin with... which might neatly explain how they wound up with such an unsavory character.

And I know everyone here appreciates the extra effort put in in order to be nice about it, even when there's a criticism or two involved... that's something all too rare in this wild land of internet.
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Re: Thoughts and comments from my first read-through

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CuriousCnidarian wrote:3. Wonder how that curse is getting around, if, as far as I know, Steward (does he even have an actual name?) is the only one with cursed gold.
He does have a name, Herman Steward.
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Re: Thoughts and comments from my first read-through

Post by CuriousCnidarian »

Vertigo Fox wrote:Btw, the steward's name is Steward. IIRC that was the reason he got hired by the Miltons to begin with... which might neatly explain how they wound up with such an unsavory character.
Champion Wallace wrote:He does have a name, Herman Steward.
Yeah, I went back and checked after posting, but I never bothered to update that line. Thanks for pointing it out, nonetheless!

A couple things that occurred to me:
1. Exactly how tall are these characters? From what I can tell, the normal dogs/cats are roughly doorknob to elbow high, depending on species/breed, so like, 3-4ish ft on average? (excepting things like mice and squirrels, of course). Is there a height cart floating around somewhere?
2. Where even is Babylon Gardens supposed to be? Like, I know it's the US, but what state? It's not Kansas or Florida, I can confirm that in the comic. It's gotta be somewhere that gets snow, so I can rule out the coasts and the south. Colorado maybe?
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Re: Thoughts and comments from my first read-through

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The state in which Babylon Gardens can be found has yet to be revealed. However, the neighborhood is based on places like Missouri; North Carolina; and Alabama. There's an entire thread devoted to rampant fan speculation regarding the neighborhood's location. Best of luck figuring it out~
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Re: Thoughts and comments from my first read-through

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The most I think was narrowed down was that Babylon Gardens is roughly 9 hours from somewhere in Kansas and that it's somewhere were it commonly snows in winter and is within the range of the Virginia Opossum. So a rather large area.
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Re: Thoughts and comments from my first read-through

Post by CuriousCnidarian »

Dissension wrote:The state in which Babylon Gardens can be found has yet to be revealed. However, the neighborhood is based on places like Missouri; North Carolina; and Alabama. There's an entire thread devoted to rampant fan speculation regarding the neighborhood's location. Best of luck figuring it out~
The way you phase this leads me to believe you know something we don't. Reveal thy secrets!
Sir Chestnut wrote:The most I think was narrowed down was that Babylon Gardens is roughly 9 hours from somewhere in Kansas and that it's somewhere were it commonly snows in winter and is within the range of the Virginia Opossum. So a rather large area.
Can either of y'all link me to that thread? I wasn't able to find it. Is it in Mass Wild Guessing?
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Re: Thoughts and comments from my first read-through

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CuriousCnidarian wrote:1. Exactly how tall are these characters? From what I can tell, the normal dogs/cats are roughly doorknob to elbow high, depending on species/breed, so like, 3-4ish ft on average? (excepting things like mice and squirrels, of course). Is there a height cart floating around somewhere?
There are concept art of characters standing in a row, but there aren't any hight lines. It may be outdated, but
rickgriffin wrote:I haven't set that in stone, really. All I know is that they're tall enough to come about to waist height of a 6' human.
CuriousCnidarian wrote:
Dissension wrote:The state in which Babylon Gardens can be found has yet to be revealed. However, the neighborhood is based on places like Missouri; North Carolina; and Alabama. There's an entire thread devoted to rampant fan speculation regarding the neighborhood's location. Best of luck figuring it out~
The way you phase this leads me to believe you know something we don't. Reveal thy secrets!
I'm not completely sure, but I think Rick Griffin has said he based Babylon Gardens on where he grew up, and those are places he's lived.
CuriousCnidarian wrote:
Sir Chestnut wrote:The most I think was narrowed down was that Babylon Gardens is roughly 9 hours from somewhere in Kansas and that it's somewhere were it commonly snows in winter and is within the range of the Virginia Opossum. So a rather large area.
Can either of y'all link me to that thread? I wasn't able to find it. Is it in Mass Wild Guessing?
There's The Quest for Babylon Gardens!, though such discussion often happens in the comic discussion where new information is revealed like 2014/11/07 - A Little Birdie Told Me or 2019/09/30 - Circle Of Life. It's not in Wild Mass Guessing, though I'm not sure if that's better or worse for you.
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Re: Thoughts and comments from my first read-through

Post by CuriousCnidarian »

Champion Wallace wrote:
CuriousCnidarian wrote:1. Exactly how tall are these characters? From what I can tell, the normal dogs/cats are roughly doorknob to elbow high, depending on species/breed, so like, 3-4ish ft on average? (excepting things like mice and squirrels, of course). Is there a height cart floating around somewhere?
There are concept art of characters standing in a row, but there aren't any hight lines. It may be outdated, but
rickgriffin wrote:I haven't set that in stone, really. All I know is that they're tall enough to come about to waist height of a 6' human.
Seeing as how that was written before the introduction of most shorter characters such as King (excepting the ferrets), I can assume this is referring to the normal cast of cats and dogs. I can also assume from this that the big cats are roughly human-sized, except for Lana, who, along with some of the wolves, are probably around chest-high.

And thanks for linking to those other discussion threads as well, I appreciate it.

Couple more things that crossed my mind:
1. The initial premise, "how would people deal with pets that were sapient", is something I'll admit to pondering before (and ever going to far as to trying to outline a story that never got out of the planning stage), so this was something I had been looking forward to seeing. As much as I enjoyed the overarching story with Pete and Dragon, I feel like this quickly took precedence over that initial idea once it got popular. I'd like to see more comics such as those earlier ones that deal with this question.
2. I didn't know there was a prose/official short story for the comic. I read part 1 (Probably not going to gets Parts 2/3 since I'm not planning on buying the books), and I think I actually liked it a bit better than the comics. I am more of a novel guy than a comic guy, but I'd like to see more of that in any case.
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