mutts patrick
mcdonnell

Mutts is a simple, happy comic. Created in 1994 by Patrick McDonnell. A comic strip about animals, McDonnell, let the characters remain more petlike than human. The premise is simplicity itself: a dog, a cat, their owners and a cast of many different animals that they meet with. The strip's stark, clean lines, along with a humorous and sometimes, philosophical writing already have made it somewhat of a cult classic.

McDonnell gives fans two worlds through Mutts, the world of the owners, and the secret world of the pets and the other surrounding animals. Characters in Mutts can be seen from any angle, conveying any emotion, in any setting, doing any activity. Mutts doesn't seem to be limited to any particular environment or perspective. Never forgetting that comic strips are a visual media, McDonnell lets sight gags tell the joke just as often as not. McDonnell is good at this strip because he loves the animals he illustrates, but with that love comes sympathy. With a few well-placed jokes, he opens his readers' eyes to a problem they've probably never thought about before.

Through his work in Mutts, Patrick McDonnell has promoted animal rights and safety. Besides depicting the animal kingdom in his strips, every year, beginning in 1998, the Mutts strip has devoted a week of "Shelter Stories" to mark The HSUS's National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week. McDonnell has also helped The HSUS celebrate National Farm Animals Awareness week and the Safe Cats campaign through his cartoons. Characters Earl and Mooch lend friendly faces to the sign welcoming clients to The HSUS' Spay/Neuter and Wellness Clinic in Dallas. McDonnell has also designed a license plate for New Jersey to help raise funds for the state's Animal Population Control Fund.

Who would guess that an uncomplicated comic strip about a dog and a cat might help improve the lives of real dogs and cats? The stars of the Mutts comic strip, Earl and Mooch don't walk on their hind feet or talk to their humans. They play outside, chase other animals and are taunted endlessly by nut-tossing squirrels. Their strong base for humor is that they act just like we expect dogs and cats to behave.

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updates

May 2006- I wanted the site working with some PHP; yeah, that's not working with Lunarpages. I may be doing something wrong- or the FreeBSD system does not support these PHP scripts or- whatever. XHTML works valid in everything, except the links that connect to amazon.com so I don't know what I'll do about that yet. :(

2006 is here!
And so is a new layout; a little CSS and a bit of the old html and voila!

I also added a few new articles and interviews.