Thoughts and comments from my first read-through
Posted: Sat Dec 21, 2019 1:33 am
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.
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.