Companion Cube/Newspaper Comics

Examples of Companion Cubes in Newspaper Comics include:

Mafalda often makes sarcastic comments to her terrestrial globe - once even tucking it in bed and acting as if it's sick! It's a tad deeper than most examples seeing as she talks to it as a stand in for the world. It can get quite Anvilicious sometimes, such as in the "sick" example.
- The poor thing has frequent sharp pains in its democracy.
Hobbes of Calvin and Hobbes, depending on your interpretation. Aside from Calvin, the characters treat Hobbes as inanimate (though Susie has occasionally interacted with Hobbes similar to how Calvin does). When Calvin's mom laundered Hobbes, he stumbled around a bit after coming out of the drier.
- On occasion, Susie treats Mr. Bun, who is always depicted as a stuffed rabbit, as real.
  - And Hobbes is at one point disturbed by the fact that Mr. Bun appears to be in a coma.
  - Susie plays with toys like a normal child. Calvin brings the nature of reality in the comic into question. (Not an exaggeration. Word of God states there will never be an official explanation regarding Hobbes's nature.)
- Calvin's evil bicycle ambushed and assaulted him several times.
- The television in Calvin's house has occasionally had thought bubbles of its own, which no one else seems to notice.
- There was a storyline where Calvin took a series of pictures of Hobbes making faces. He laughs at the developed pictures and shows them to his dad. Calvin's dad sees only the same shot of the motionless Hobbes, over and over again.
- But in one comic on transmogrification, Hobbes claims himself to be Calvin, or so we thought.
Quincy from FoxTrot, despite being a live iguana, fits this trope perfectly. When Jason uses Quincy (and some old clothes) as part of a "Lone Iguana" persona, the effect is that of a guest character.
In Peanuts, Linus has his security blanket.
- Which really is more of a Number One Dime, as Linus never actually goes as far as to talk to it. However, in one week-long sequence, Lucy became convinced The Blanket had sentience and was out to get her, refusing to be in the house alone with it. One strip even shows The Blanket leaping from Linus' hands to pounce on Lucy. No one else witnessed anything of the sort; as Charlie Brown commented during the riff, "I never thought she would be the first of us to crack." (Interestingly, this was the only sequence of Schulz's strips ever to be rejected by his syndicate. They have turned up in collections, but never had a newspaper "first run.")
- Don't forget the Kite-Eating Tree!
- Sally used to have conversations with the school building (or at least one wall of it). Eventually, the wall began to produce thought balloons expressing opinions and making observations on life and its philosophical approach to wall-ness. (When the building collapsed, Sally interpreted this as the school "committing suicide.") Occasionally Charlie Brown's pitcher's mound would have thoughts and opinions as well.
Funky Winkerbean, in the days before Cerebus Syndrome took over, would often have various inanimate objects in and around the school (desks, computers, a pair of leaves on a tree, even the school rock) making comments via thought balloons.
Garfield's teddy bear, Pooky.
- In Garfield's Pet Force, Pooky's alternate universe incarnation was extremely intelligent...although still perhaps not quite "alive", as he became "Compooky".
- Garfield himself is either holding a conversation with John, thinking quietly, or else behaving like a normal cat and John is just imagining the whole thing, depending on your interpretation. (Word of God is notoriously inconsistent about this point.)
  - Even more disturbing is a set of three strips that have lead many to believe that the entire series are the fevered hallucinations of a housecat as it starves to death in an abandoned house. YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW ALONE YOU ARE.
The brick in Krazy Kat was, at times, presented as a character with a mind of its own; this was not unexpected in such a surreal series.
Get Fuzzy‍'‍s Satchel has taken time to name just about everything in the apartment, though usually Mr. Hands (his wristwatch) and Mr. Bones (chewtoy) appear most often.
Beetle Bailey has an odd example: Sarge's stomach. When it's growling, Sarge often treats this as a verbal demand for food, sometimes talking to it as if it were his best buddy and sometimes arguing with it.
In one Dilbert strip, a woman had a baby that looked like a loaf of bread, which turned out to be an actual loaf of bread.

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