Horndog
Horndog is a Funny Animal Stoner comic created by Isaac M. Baranoff and published by Mystic Studios Productions. The main character, Bob, is a "canine tomcat", a literal personification of the term "horndog". Baranoff has described it as "the most hated comic on the planet".
Most of the storylines focus on his attempts to acquire marijuana, sex or both. Storylines have focused variously on topics ranging from real-life based topics, including relationships, politics and racism, to more surreal subject matter, including Zombies and Alien Abduction. It also portrays a Beast Fable involving interracial romance, a theme that is explored with the same technique in the Spin-Off Here Wolf.
Created in 2003, six issues (and an "Archives" compilation) have been produced to date,[when?] and in 2009, Horndog was the first underground comic to produce a webcomic spinoff. Horndog has been criticized for what some readers perceive as a Refuge in Vulgarity, because of its high level of profanity and (initially) nudity (which has been toned down over the years).
The comic's creator identifies the series as a "Funny Aminal" comic, instead of using the terms Funny Animal or Furry. Its fans are known as "Horndogs".
Web edition can be read here. [dead link]
Not to be confused with All Men Are Perverts and All Women Are Lustful, both of which, naturally, show up as tropes within this particular comic.
Please keep the Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement in mind.
Tropes used in Horndog include:
- Abhorrent Admirer: Andrea Mouse was this with Bob. She's since turned into a Stalker with a Crush.
- A Date with Rosie Palms: A strip in issue 3 shows that Bob has the ability to perform oral sex on himself.
- A Man Is Not a Virgin: Bob has at least tried to have sex with pretty much every female character in the comic, Andrea Mouse being a notable exception. It usually works.
- Alpha Bitch: The appropriately named Alpha.
- Ax Crazy: Andrea, again.
- All Men Are Perverts
- All Women Are Lustful
- Author Appeal: All of Baranoff's female characters have large asses and breasts, which are predominately shown.
- Back from the Dead: Freddy, and later Tommy The Rat.
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: Bob appears this way, since he apparently wears T-shirts and hoodies but no pants.
- Barefoot Cartoon Animals: The entire cast.
- Beast Fable: Black cats are identified as being African-American.
- Black Best Friend: Subverted; in addition to the fact that Bob actually dates a black woman (Charlene), Bob's best friend, Leonard, is portrayed realistically and with fully developed characterization.
- Black Comedy Rape: It happened to Bob.
- Blonde Republican Sex Kitten: Literally [dead link].
- Born Unlucky: Freddy.
- Bigger Is Better in Bed: Implied.
- Bland-Name Product: Charlene uses a Sharkie marker.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Actually, the Fourth Wall broke Bob's nose.
- Caught Up in the Rapture: Discussed.
- Carnivore Confusion: Tommy, a rat, and Leonard, a cat, engage in a conversation about Tommy's fear of being eaten. Also, a recent storyline involves Charlene becoming romantically involved with a Jewish lesbian mouse, which gives new meaning to the phrase "eating pussy".
- Cats Are Snarkers: Charlene and Leonard.
- Character Blog: Bob posts on the comic's Facebook page, and has his own Twitter. Charlene has a Twitter, too.
- Chew Bubblegum:
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Andrea Mouse: I'm here to kill lemmings and chew bubblegum...and I'm all out of gum. |
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- Cluster F-Bomb
- Creator Thumbprint: Bob's love of marijuana, Hip Hop and Punk Rock are directly adapted from the author's own interests. Libertarianism and atheism also applies.
- Crossover: With Here Wolf.
- Cute Little Fangs: Charlene.
- Deadpan Snarker: Usually Bob, Charlene or Leonard.
- Dogged Nice Guy: Leonard shows signs of this with Charlene.
- Dogs Are Dumb: Largely averted, although Bob has proven himself to be quite stupid in situations that calls for it when the creator thinks that it's funny. Otherwise, he's fairly intelligent.
- Double Standard Rape (Female on Male): What happened with Bob.
- Dumbass Has a Point: Freddy is typically as sharp as a box of hammers, but has occasionally shown himself to be intelligent.
- Erudite Stoner: Bob, Leonard and Charlene at various points.
- Esoteric Motifs: The cover of issue 3 depicts a pentacle in conjunction with demonic spirits being summoned.
- Even the Girls Want Her: Charlene.
- Everybody Has Lots of Sex
- Everybody Must Get Stoned: One strip portrays LSD use.
- Everything's Deader with Zombies: Horndog was already a Funny Animal Stoner comic to begin with. Issue 2 added Zombies into the mix.
- Four-Fingered Hands: All characters.
- Granola Girl: Alpha is this coupled with Alpha Bitch.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Pretty much everyone.
- Hollywood Voodoo: Played for laughs; voodoo spells are actually Frank Zappa and ODB lyrics.
- I'm Going to Hell For This: Tommy tells Bob that "You're going to hell for this" after a series of bizarre sexual encounters.
- Intellectual Animal
- Interspecies Romance: Most relationships and sexual encounters portrayed in the comic are of this sort, including Bob and Charlene (which is also a metaphor for an interracial romance).
- Juggalo
- Large Ham: Played for laughs with Bob and Charlene in this comic.
- Locked in a Freezer: Leonard, in a parody of The Shining.
- Killed Off for Real: Freddy
- Male-to-Female Universal Adaptor: All nude depictions of characters from this series indicate that they have human-like genitalia.
- Maligned Mixed Marriage: Applies to Bob and Charlene even though they're not married. Averts Discriminate and Switch because the fact that she's a cat is considered less important than the fact that she's black, so Fantastic Racism is not called upon here.
- The Merch: Horndog has a lot of it.
- Mundane Fantastic: Horndog has both social commentary and character-based material, as well as storylines featuring aliens and zombies.
- N-Word Privileges: Bob's use of nigga goes by without objection.
- Bob almost beat up a clerk because he thought the clerk called Charlene a nigger. The clerk actually said niggler (which has a quite different meaning). Even Charlene noticed it. Bob later noted that the similarity of the two words gave away some Unfortunate Implications.
- The Pornomancer: Bob
- Prepare to Die: Bob, to Leonard, who had drunken sex with Charlene:
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I wanna run your head through a meat grinder. |
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- Lampshaded Two strips earlier by Leonard, who wonders if Bob will "be okay" with this, or if Bob will want to run Leonard's head through a meat grinder.
- Refuge in Audacity
- Refuge in Vulgarity
- Rise from Your Grave: Freddy
- Schedule Slip: Has happened from time to time. The comic's former web host and the creator's personal life were usually a factor in this.
- Seinfeldian Conversation
- Self-Deprecation: Bob (whose personal preference is Hip Hop and Punk Rock) and other characters make fun of Heavy Metal and Metalheads. In real life, creator Isaac M. Baranoff is actually a Metal fan.
- Shangri La: Is Heaven.
- Shout-Out: The author loves these.
- Comics: The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Peter Bagge, Plastic Man, Femmegasm, Omaha the Cat Dancer, Roadkill Valley, Martin Kellerman's Rocky and World of Fizz are all mentioned to some degree.
- Literature:
- Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas quoted here
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand quoted here
- And The Fountainhead here
- Movies: Among them Inglourious Basterds, Night of the Living Dead and They Live!.
- Music: Many, including Bad Brains, Bad Religion, Black Flag, Brotha Lynch Hung, Kottonmouth Kings, Ice Cube, Insane Clown Posse, Opeth, Slipknot, Frank Zappa, Twiztid and Zug Izland.
- Subtle one. The character Tommy is a rat. The band Primus has a song called "Tommy the Cat". Obviously intended as wordplay/tribute.
- Tech N 9 ne is responsible for the acronym "F.U.N."[1]
- "Uh, Dave's not here"
- Sliding Scale of Comedy and Horror: Primarily comedy; Horror elements sometimes played as parody, sometimes straight.
- Species Surname: Andrea Mouse.
- Sphere Eyes: All characters.
- Spin-Off: The main character in Here Wolf made its debut in this comic, then went on to star in his own series, with a different plotline involving an Interspecies Romance with a human female.
- Take That: Quite a few of these.
- Hot Topic is a reocurring one.
- Politics: Alex Jones and Bill O'Reilly have gotten a couple of these. Not to mention, Herman Cain, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin...
- Averted when Baranoff almost put up a comic making fun of Michael Moore, but took it down, not because he felt Moore was undeserving of satire, but because he felt he was coming down on the left too much and decided to switch it up and make fun of a right-wing figure, Sarah Palin.
- Music: Otep, Murder by Death and Tila Tequila are all the subject of mockery.
- Walt Disney: Characters that look like silhouettes of Mickey Mouse and Goofy are portrayed as Neo-Nazis who try to murder Bob. This comic [dead link] takes shots at Disney and Don Bluth.
- This strip is a Take That to the Furry Fandom.
- Alpha looks like Raine Dog. Considering Baranoff's interactions [dead link] with DC Simpson and the fact that Alpha is as a pretentious and hypocritical Alpha Bitch Granola Girl, this probably isn't a Shout-Out.
- They Killed Kenny: Freddy commits suicide, returns as a zombie, is killed by Bob, and is reincarnated as a teenage boy, only to once again be killed by a chupacabra. Then he reappears wihout explanation during the New Year's storyline solely for the purpose of being killed by a Stepford Smiling Ax Crazy Lemming.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Faygo.
- Underground Comics
- Unusual Euphemism: "Neden" (vagina)
- Updated Rerelease: Issues 1 & 2 were reissued as Horndog Archives #1, with additional material not in the original published version.
- Wall of Text
- White Void Room: Bob is sometimes shown talking in front of a white background, in a stylistic Shout-Out to Harvey Pekar.
- Wolverine Publicity: Bob's appearances in Here Wolf qualify as this.
- World of Funny Animals
- You Need to Get Laid: Typical advice given by Bob. Even when the situation doesn't call for it (like being told by a friend that they are in danger of being killed).
- ↑ Fuck U Niggas.