Canon superpowered housepets

[GingaDensetsuAleu]

A few of the cast members have "superpowers" that they only used once as a gag and it was never mentioned again.

For example, at the beginning of "The Gallifrax Protocol," Grape demonstrated her ability "Summon Max" when she pulled Max from off-panel to have him shout out in surprise, wondering how he got there.

What other examples can you find?

[Amazee Dayzee]

When Rick made that up for the strip I think that he was doing it just as a one-off gag and never gave any thought to it. Though it would be REALLY cool if Grape had used that power more or was able to summon ANYBODY. LOL

[Chieris]

Does Grape's 'Hunk sense' count?

[GingaDensetsuAleu]

I believe it does.

[Amazee Dayzee]

Now I am just waiting for it to be triggered when she is around Fox. He definitely is the definition of a hunk now. :3

[GameCobra]

Would laugh if it turns out it's the equivalent of Brock Samson's car detection sensor.

[GingaDensetsuAleu]

I think hunk sense only works on cats. Grape's never really shown too much interest in dogs.

What about Bailey's turbo punch from when she OBLITERATED Bino's face? Are we counting that as a gag power?

[Amazee Dayzee]

Grape did seem to be quite taken with Satau back when he had went to the future from 5000 BC so I wouldn't say that is QUITE true that she has no interest in dogs if they are hunky. But it might only work on hunky house cats. I'm not sure if it worked when Jata showed up and with the help of Keene tried to force Sabrina to marry him.

[GingaDensetsuAleu]

When Jata showed up was the ONLY time Grape's hunk senses worked.


Edit: my most recent reread reminded me of another time Grape showed interest in hunky dogs. Near the end of the hot springs arc, Max and Grape were teaching Tarot how to be more romantic and mungo walked past and Grape got distracted.

[Amazee Dayzee]

I think that might have been because he reminded her so much of Satau. As I said before, she was very taken towards him.

[GingaDensetsuAleu]

I found an inverse example. Bahamut can make anything happen as lord of heaven but he tricked Max and Grape to make cookies for him instead of just manifesting them.

[Amazee Dayzee]

He probably feels that cookies that are made by somebody with all their effort and labor tastes better than just manifesting the cookies himself. I honestly would agree with him as fresh baked cookies are miles more better than store bought.

[GingaDensetsuAleu]

Homemade cookies are quite nice.

[Amazee Dayzee]

I tend to like homemade cookies because I am a big fan of the soft cookies. Pepperidge Farms also makes really good soft cookies too.

[GingaDensetsuAleu]

This sets up a Housepets! Bake-off arc should Rick choose. We now have at least 4 or 5 housepets that like to bake: Rex, Breel, Max, Grape... we COULD count Lucretia...

Also I can't be the only one that noticed that Joey's doghouse is bigger on the inside.

[NHWestoN]

Now I am just waiting for it to be triggered when she is around Fox. He definitely is the definition of a hunk now. :3

Always thought Fox and Grape could be an interesting pairing, being opposites of a sort. Sabrina, too, seemed to have a little chemistry with Fox, kind of a gentle sort of affection for a lost and searching soul. Or maybe her apprenticeship with Tarot had just gone stale and uninspiring. It's alway kind of fun to imagine "pals-that-mighta-been" in AlternativeRickWorld.

[GingaDensetsuAleu]

We haven't gotten a lot of content of the Housepets Just Hanging Out (tm). Even before the massive Heckraiser arcs that took nearly two full books, we never really saw the Housepets unless something actiony was happening. You don't really think about how it's possible that Grape might hang out with Duchess because she's dating Max and Max lives with Bino, so it would be possible for all four to be in the same house at the same time. We haven't seen King hanging out with Fox since like book 3 and they live together half the time.

[Amazee Dayzee]

Quite honestly I feel like Grape would rather suck her own eyeballs out with a vacuum cleaner than spend any time with Duchess and the same with Max. I think Grape could tolerate Bino is it was just him but with Duchess it would be too much and she would think that Duchess is a thousand times worse than Bino.

[GingaDensetsuAleu]

Well we DO know she goes to Max's sometimes, because she was there at the beginning of the crawdad boil arc. It is also therefore not out of the question that she sometimes hangs out with Fido and/or Joey, as we know the three brothers do sometimes meet up and hang out.

[Amazee Dayzee]

That is true but I doubt she or Max would actively try to hang out with her when she is with Bino. Max might convince Grape to do it when it is just Bino but I can't imagine Max or Grape putting up with Duchess.

[NHWestoN]

There are a lot of intriguing "pairing" possibilities that Rick has never really explored. For example, I've often though the personality contrasts between Sasha and (the recently revealed intelligent) Daisy would have made for a good comic team. King and Fox, on the otherhand, moved in very different directions once King married Bailey and the pups came along to focus his anxieties. Both the reasons and the bondings that held him and Fox together have basically evaporated (okay, cue the chorus for a round of that ancient pop-song, "Those wedding bells are breaking up that ol'gang of mine".) Fox is now kinda stuck in his nerotic self-absorption with the occasional teases about his relationship with Mungo. Now Fox and Grape or Sabrina might be interesting - he did have some tangoes with Grape early in the strip when he, Grape, and Max were facing their fate with Fluffy the Alligator. Bino and Max share a house but there doesn'y seem to be much comraderie there nor prospects for such. Could be interesting to explore, though. Duchess? She's kinda Rick's retribution on Bino for being the jerk that he's always been.

Sorry. I have yard work to do and you're suffering for my procrastination tactics.

[GingaDensetsuAleu]

Rick also opened the strip up for a HOST of new characters with the end of the Heckraisers arcs. Thousands of humans turned animals, it's not out of the question that SOME of them might live in Babylon Gardens and try to make the best of their new living situation. It might also be interesting if some pets suddenly find themselves on equal footing WITH their owners. Maybe Sasha's former owner, for example, has suddenly found himself in a VERY different situation. If he wasn't in the exclusion range at the time they moved the neighborhood up to heaven, it's possible.

[Amazee Dayzee]

I would pay money to see what Mr. Hartford if he got transformed ended up becoming and if he was worse off than Sasha due to his treatment of her. Or maybe in an ironic twist of fate he ended up getting adopted by an owner who is an abusive alcoholic themselves before pets were given equal rights after Marion's (selfish) wish.

[GingaDensetsuAleu]

You keep calling Marion's wish selfish, but I don't think you were really paying attention. Heaven never offered to change EVERYBODY back. That wasn't in the bargain. Heaven offered to change THEM back, because they helped fight off the demon. The deal was they could change THEMSELVES back, OR combine their boons into something bigger. Keene wanted to wish for the ECP to take off, which would have required ALL of the boons.
Instead, what they got was to leave everything as it is for the moment but add a clause in the lining of the world itself to allow anybody at any time to change their form. Marion not wanting to change back right away actually gave MORE people the option. The Aardvark helped fight Demon Steward but not Eoduant, and was not present at the voting, so he got the choice of "Change back or don't change back."

[Amazee Dayzee]

They could have combined their boons that they have gotten to turn EVERYBODY back so even if it wasn't officially offered it could have been done with the boons that they got as that would have been the something bigger they would have when combining it. Marion just didn't THINK of it because he decided he liked being a squirrel and he wanted to stay one so he figured that if he could learn to like being an animal so could a good chunk of the world and the transformations were so Keene could get the ECP to take off. So yes it was still selfish for Marion not to try to lobby for all of them to change everybody back since they were turned against their will and instead made things WORSE by forcing other people to be transformed.

Also there was no clause that said that everybody could turn back to human from being an animal at any time. They specifically said at the end of the arc that it would take a while to find a cure to change people back but in the meantime the people who did get transformed were stuck with it. So now that they are animals they are gonna be stuck as animals before a cure can be found if there is even one.

So you weren't really paying much attention either.

[Chieris]

To be fair, at first it really did look like that a lot of people were transformed against their will, I think it would've been a much better option to insert that Christmas strip before the small time jump instead of posting it months after the arc's ending.
What bothers me more is that the our ex-human trio (Marion, Lois and Todd) got no development, there was little to no indication that they start liking their animal form (and I don't even brought up the gender change which was only mentioned a few times, but it was never actually explored further).
We all understood King's decision to stay a corgi because we saw him developing for years. In the case of Marion and Lois, they were introduced in My Life As A Teenage Squirrel, then never brought up until Heckraiser and even during the latter, they kept saying they want to be humans again... until they did a 180 and were like "being an animal is actually cool".

So conclusion in my opinion: Marion's wish was not selfish, his character was not developed enough to make it a believable decision

[GingaDensetsuAleu]

It develops more than you think. There were 4 arcs between My Life as a Teenage Squirrel and Heckraiser: Be Mine (in which Sasha temporarily stays at Wolf House), The Identity of Spot, Spo's Return, and Imaginate Jurassic Park.
The last page of Teenage Squirrel takes place six months later, just after Christmas, in which Marion admits he kind of enjoyed Christmas as a squirrel despite Devo chasing him up the Christmas tree.
Then, during Heckraiser, there's several moments where individual characters get the chance to exert their new skills and abilities and admit they kind of like their new forms, such as this page, when Rick DEFINITELY forgot the comic was rated PG for a minute.
Even at the end, Marion wasn't sure he wanted to stay a squirrel. He explicitly said he wanted more time to consider his options and explore life as a squirrel a little more.

[Amazee Dayzee]

I see the panel that you are talking about and can see how people might find it a bit crude but it's not like he shows anything explicit. I think Rick put the shot in because he knew he could get away with it because of that and get a chuckle out of it. Also the comic is technically PG-13 so I am pretty sure close-ups of that area that don't have anatomy is something he can get away with.

[GingaDensetsuAleu]

I think he was considering making an R-rated version of certain pages at the time and drew that one with that in mind. He does have naughty versions of some of his sketches on other sites, after all.

[D-Rock]

To be fair, at first it really did look like that a lot of people were transformed against their will, I think it would've been a much better option to insert that Christmas strip before the small time jump instead of posting it months after the arc's ending.
What bothers me more is that the our ex-human trio (Marion, Lois and Todd) got no development, there was little to no indication that they start liking their animal form (and I don't even brought up the gender change which was only mentioned a few times, but it was never actually explored further).
We all understood King's decision to stay a corgi because we saw him developing for years. In the case of Marion and Lois, they were introduced in My Life As A Teenage Squirrel, then never brought up until Heckraiser and even during the latter, they kept saying they want to be humans again... until they did a 180 and were like "being an animal is actually cool".

So conclusion in my opinion: Marion's wish was not selfish, his character was not developed enough to make it a believable decision

That Christmas strip definitely helped mitigate some issues with the arc, but I agree with you, it didn’t fix the fact that Marion, Lois, and Todd were incredibly rushed, Steward’s own development was essentially non-existent, and it made Kitsune come off as lazy, since he apparently always could fix his mistake but thought it would be wrong to fix what the villains were doing, even when he was called out on it by Tarot, which he agreed with! Plus it really comes off wrong when it ends with “villain was right and we’ll keep the damage he did.” Also, wasn’t it made clear to Keene that going through with this plan in Teenage Squirrel a really bad idea?

[GingaDensetsuAleu]

I think part of the contract they signed was that they would sort of expand the curse to most of the world's politicians. There's no way demon Steward got to 80% of world leaders. Once the issue effects world leaders, it fixes itself. Not using magic(k) to force the issue, but just kind of making it the politicians's problem.

[D-Rock]

That definitely seems like using magic to fix the issue. Especially as that was something Lois initially “encouraged” Keene not to do.

Also, “spread the curse,” that just sounds really messed up. “Hey, what the villain is doing, let’s do that!”

That’s all I’m going to say on the matter, talking about Heckraiser always gets me heated.

[NHWestoN]

D-Rock pretty much speaks my mind. Rick seems to have been in a bit of a rush to closure but the whole narrative had a muddled quality that perhaps might be attributed to "To-be-Continued" threads. What - if anything - will be further developed when (if) Housepets! 2.0 remains to be revealed.
Given that the Celestial and Infernal characters may have received their termination papers, those subplots and questions may simply go unfinished (at least from the perspectives of many fans).

[GingaDensetsuAleu]

I think we'll still see a little of Karishad. I'm pretty sure he's taking over Kitsune's role while Kitsune becomes Kits. I am sort of interested to see if King still has a problem with Kits after the whole memory-altering thing once Kits loses the last of his powers and becomes fully mortal. Plus, Kari kinda became good friends with Tarot and Sabrina, so I imagine he'd still want to visit now and then, and Kari's comic relief is ALWAYS welcome. I can't believe we missed a major hint that he was a celestial WAY back at the beginning of Heckraiser. When he wasn't transported to heaven with the rest and he was waiting at the bottom of the elevator back down and we were all collectively like "That is so Karishad" and didn't even question it.

[Amazee Dayzee]

I wouldn't mind seeing him back in the comic and he might make an appearance. But because Rick said he is moving away from the Celestials it probably would just be a short cameo.

[GingaDensetsuAleu]

I bet we get a lot more of King and Bailey's pups. Rick spent a lot of time working up to them and then has hardly used them because they've been babies. They were more or less props until Imaginate Jurassic Park. But now that they're walking and talking and presumably allowed out in the world with supervision (and Bailey physically restraining King from trying to wrap them in bubble wrap), they're primed for going on some of their own adventures and interacting with the classic characters we know and love. We're definitely getting an arc where King loses track of them and then promptly loses his mind, and I bet the K-9s end up bringing them home. In fact, I bet during that arc Bailey knew where they were the whole time and either forgot to tell King or King never got the note.

[D-Rock]

Well, that does sound like it’d be a great comedy of errors!

[Amazee Dayzee]

I know mental health isn't a joke but that does sound funny! King's nervous breakdowns are always laugh riots!

[GingaDensetsuAleu]

King has like 4 seperate nervous disorders from dealing with Pete to the point where Cerberus was "providing enrichment" by letting him panic about scenarios he made up in his head.

[Amazee Dayzee]

It wouldn't surprise me if at one point he has a full on nervous breakdown. Then we end up seeing him spend some time in a mental hospital for a while since humans and pets are now equal. Maybe Tiger can be his roommate!