Characters
- Mel - The primary human in the series, completely average and unremarkable in every way. He is "suburbia" incarnate, often content to sit and watch TV for long hours at a time and working a middle-class desk job for a nondescript company. He has an unusually large nose, likened at one point to a casaba melon, and rarely ever attracts attention from the opposite sex.
- Fergus - Mel's dog who is arguably the more intelligent of the two, although this also leads to a massive ego. He and the other canines of the strip make frequent observations about the state of affairs in human society and how silly it is. Technology alternates between boring and frightening him.
- Arlo - Another dog and Fergus' best friend, rarely ever seen on his own, so it can be said that he's strictly a follower and "yes-man" for Fergus.
- Cuddles - The voice of reason in a dog's world, Cuddles is a cat who enjoys fine dining and reading Jane Austen novels. He frequently gets fed up with Fergus' lackadaisical attitude to life, and has a well-known hatred of winter ("SAY NO 2 SNO!" is written on a button he tries to give various people). Often uses baby-talk when conversing with his owner, an unnamed little old lady.
- Bruno - A large, strong sheepdog who never speaks and is often depicted as being rather mangy. He harbors a friendship with Cuddles which would be considered highly out-of-place by "regular" people, but is accepted as normal in the comic when other people see him with the unfortunate cat hugged up under his armpit.
- Mario - A fish who Mel often spends time trying to catch in later strips, but who he usually ends up discussing current events with. Almost landed a part in Free Willy, but was denied the role for being a trout.
- Maggie - A dark-haired little girl who Fergus and Arlo follow to and from school, amusing them with her tales of what she has to study in elementary school. She dislikes this attention intensely, especially after Fergus accidentally eats her homework on one occasion.
Read more about this topic: Citizen Dog (comic Strip)
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“Of all the characters I have known, perhaps Walden wears best, and best preserves its purity. Many men have been likened to it, but few deserve that honor. Though the woodchoppers have laid bare first this shore and then that, and the Irish have built their sties by it, and the railroad has infringed on its border, and the ice-men have skimmed it once, it is itself unchanged, the same water which my youthful eyes fell on; all the change is in me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.”
—Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936)
“What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That’s what their substance is.”
—Jonathan Miller (b. 1936)