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An early and very obscure entry among Web Comics, created by Dale Taylor.
After several years of failing to get his work syndicated, Taylor began posting strips about a wiener dog named Oscar and a squirrel named Oliver online and in his college's newspaper. Renamed Not in My Backyard! by 1998, the strip moved to its own domain of nimby.net, later notinmybackyard.com. The strip garnered a couple mentions in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and was even listed in Building a Website for Dummies.
Not in My Backyard! centralized on the wiener dog and squirrel characters, as well as Oscar's human owner, Elsa, and several other background characters: Terrance the armadillo, Grumpa the old fox terrier, Auden and E.J. the cats, Bip and Bap the yorkies, Jessie the mouse (or rat) and Matilda the poodle. After several months of Schedule Slip, it stopped entirely, but didn't vanish into the ether until 2011.
You can read about the history here.
Tropes present[]
- Acid Reflux Nightmare: This strip.
- All There in the Manual: The characters' names; Grumpa and E.J. were only named once in the strip, and Auden and Hormel were never referred to by name. You can find all the names here.
- Character Overlap: Taylor first used the Oliver character in a local comic.
- Everythings Nuttier With Squirrels: Averted with Oliver.
- Incredibly Lame Pun: Several. One of the worst:
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Jessie: Look, your house is slated for demolition. |
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- Loophole Abuse: In one strip, Elsa honestly denies that she's feeding her pizza crusts to Oscar… in reality, she's been feeding him the rest of the pizza.
- Meaningful Name: Oliver is named after Oliver Twist. Bip and Bap are named for their distinctive barks.
- No Ending: Justified in that the strip was gag-a-day and rarely had any real plot arcs.
- One-Scene Wonder: Several characters, such as a younger dachshund named Hormel, only appeared in one week.
- Orphaned Series
- Retcon: Oscar's name inexplicably changed to Wyman in February 2001.
- Seldom-Seen Species: Not too many armadillos out there.
- Title Drop: "Slugs!! My food! My house! Not in my backyard!!!"