Mother Goose and Grimm

Mother Goose and Grimm is a comic strip begun in 1984 by Mike Peters. The strip centralizes on its title characters: an anthropomorphic goose named Mother Goose, and her dog, Grimm. Except when it chooses to be a one-shot, gag-a-day strip in the vein of The Far Side. Other characters include Atilla the cat and various others. The strip also had an animated series in 1991, which tanked.

Like most newspaper cartoons running in the 21st century, Mother Goose and Grimm has a web presence. Unlike most other strips, it's on its own website.


 * Anthropomorphic Shift: Grimmy and Atilla started out noticeably less humanoid than they are now. One of the most notable changes is that they now speak normally instead of via thought bubbles á la Garfield.
 * Art Evolution: Grimm was much more lumpy and scratchy in the first years. Sometime around 1988, his design was streamlined, and the art has stayed the same since.
 * Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Ham the pig, who was portrayed as Goose's roommate, has been long gone from the strip. Sumo the Cat seemed to have disappeared as well until a December 2011 story arc.
 * Atilla seems to be on his way to this as well, with the introduction of Ralph.
 * Fat and Skinny: Sumo and Atilla, respectively.
 * Follow the Leader: The animated series came not long after Garfield and Friends, another (far more successful) Animated Adaptation of a comic strip. Not only that, it was on the same network, made by the same studio, and even had Mark Evanier as the head writer.
 * Furry Confusion: Grimm and Atilla look like a normal dog and cat, while Mother Goose is far more humanoid. However, Grimm and Atilla act no less human than Goose.
 * Incredibly Lame Pun: Whether verbal or visual, one of the strip's specialties.
 * Murder by Cremation: A strip had Grimm's Too Dumb to Live friend, Ralph the Boston Terrier, giving a testimony of the death of a possum who had apparently died, so they cremated him and placed his ashes in an urn.
 * Name and Name
 * Never Trust a Hair Tonic: The cartoon has a hair tonic which could grow hair on billiard balls, as advertised...but it can't grow hair on anything else.
 * Non-Mammal Mammaries: Averted with Mz. Goose. Also played with in one strip where Ham asks Goose why she has a bikini top. She actually straps it over her eyes at night to keep the light out.
 * Parody Failure: More than once.
 * One had a man watching TV with a woman behind him looking shocked, and the caption, "Scully discovers the XXX Files." Which wasn't actually funny if you had any knowledge of The X-Files, since it was well-established that Mulder really did stash porn all over the office, and that Scully was perfectly aware of it and didn't care.
 * Another strip had Edward Scissorhands constantly losing at Rock-Paper-Scissors...which is, in fact, already used as a Running Gag in the movie.
 * Print Long Runners: 25 years in 2009.
 * Species Surname: Mother Goose is referred to as "Mz. Goose" by others.
 * Sphere Eyes: The main characters.
 * Talking Animal: Entire cast at some point. Grimm and Atilla used to speak via thought bubbles á la Garfield, but now are full-on talking animals.
 * Theme Naming: The title characters are named for popular fairy tale writers.
 * Unexpected Genre Change: Every now and then, Peters will set up a one-panel gag involving none of the cast whatsoever, or just Grimmy staring blankly off to the side.