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Sheldon is a Webcomic following the day-to-day life of Sheldon, a billionaire Child Prodigy and Young Entrepreneur who started his own immensely successful software company. He's raised by his Grandpa, who isn't always sure how to deal with Sheldon's riches or nerdiness. They own various pets: Arthur the Wonder Duck, a Civilized Animal; Flaco, a Intellectual Animal lizard; and Oso, an unintelligent but enthusiastic dog. Sheldon's friend Dante is another recurring character.
Dave Kellett, the author, has started a scifi webcomic called Drive.
Tropes used in Sheldon include:
- The Ace: Flaco is an Olympic pentathlete, an admiral in the Bulgarian navy[1], a former cosmonaut... played for laughs, of course.
- Alternate History: The history of the Roman Empire - or rather, Arthur's 'alternate take' on it - pops up sporadically.
- Big Eater: Arthur is a complete glutton who frequently stuffs himself to the point that he can't move or see his legs.
- Gramp is also a Big Eater when he's trying to diet and failing.
- Bilingual Bonus: Arthur at one point could speak dozens of languages due to the translation software that was stuck in his head. Every now and then he shows off that he can still speak more than English in the oddest ways.
- Blatant Lies: Arthur is a horrendous liar.
- Calvin Ball: Starting from musical chairs.
- Character Name and the Noun Phrase: Parodied a few times in background gag with fake Harry Potter book titles:
- Child Prodigy: Sheldon owns a multi billion dollar corporation. Of course this one's here.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Arthur owns this trope.
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- Compulsory School Age: In several older strips, Sheldon and Gramp have conversations about whether or not Sheldon needs to go to school, with Gramp wanting him to and Sheldon against it. This seems to have been abandoned recently.
- Cute but Cacophonic: Oso, the family's pet pug.
- Dead TV Remote Gag: Arthur can't change the channel on his own.
- The Ditz: Oso, who embodies all the sheer dumbness of a pug dog. (Example: Failing at fetch.)
- Everybody Hates Mathematics: Averted by Sheldon. He is quite fond of math, and on one occasion is even late to school one day because he wants to finish a formula.
- Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: Arthur and Flaco pretend to be dinosaurs for quite a while. And when Sheldon accidentally creates a time machine, a triceratops shows up.
- Forced Meme: Frr!
- Fridge Logic: Exploited in a time travel arc to get Arthur back home.
- Funetik Aksent: Frequently for French people. Example: Suzette.
- Furry Confusion: Lampshaded and parodied here in a strip involving Arthur, Flaco, and Oso.
- Several strips milk for humor Arthur's willingness to eat chicken & turkey or awkwardness over other people eating duck.
- See also Owl Be Damned below, which happens when Arthur & Flaco treat a normal owl like a cartoon animal.
- Genius Ditz: Sheldon uploaded an entire encyclopedia into Arthur's brain in the experiment that gave him the ability to speak, but he chooses to ignore the uploaded knowledge unless he absolutely has to use it.
- Getting Crap Past the Radar: Arthur passing off punned profanity here.
- Foreign Cuss Word: Arthur slipping one by in German here.
- Inherently Funny Words: Fünf
- Lightning Bruiser: Flaco. Seriously.
- Mad Scientist: Sheldon created a talking duck while still in the 4th grade.
- Mall Santa: Gramp gets a job as one in Christmas 2008, while keeping it a secret from the rest of the family. Hilarity Ensues when Arthur & Flaco go to see Santa.
- Memetic Mutation: In universe, Sheldon manages to turn the word "Frrr" into a catchphrase, thanks to a generous bribe to Snoop Dog to include it in his next single. {{Extends to Serial Escalation truly ridiculous lengths.}}
- A few internet memes crop up here and there, such as the Chuck Norris craze.
- Millennium Bug: Gramp once bought 72 packs of disposable razors due to Y2K panic.[2]
- Must Have Caffeine: Gramp is a complete and utter coffee addict.
- Nearly-Normal Animal: While Oso is mostly focused on pugly pursuits, he occasionally worries about things like the balance of power in North Korea... and is highly critical of Brechtian theater.
- The former was mostly a gag about how dogs react to emotion & body language and not words, though.
- Noodle Incident: In the time travel arc it turns out that somehow Flaco becomes a Admiral in the Bulgarian Navy. It does get it explained but since Flaco only talks in squeaks we never hear the story.
- Overly Long Gag: A few of the gag arcs cross this line, including the multiple-week diversions on moments that ruin It's a Wonderful Life, or Arthur's debates with a mime.
- Lampshaded at the end of a week of strips making fun of coffee cup lids.
- Owl Be Damned: A two-week story arc of Flaco getting taken by a predatory owl starts with a subverted reference to a classic Tootsie Pop commercial.
- Painting the Fourth Wall: Arthur uses a speech bubble as an umbrella.
- Parental Abandonment: The Christmas 2005 story arc strongly hints that Sheldon's parents are dead.
- Running Gag: Arthur hates eggnog. This comes up just about every year.
- So does a crack at Peeps most Easters, and he takes a shot at plot holes in It's a Wonderful Life some Christmases.
- There's also the recurring series, "Punctuation Marks that Never Caught On."
- How amazingly dumb and unnatural pugs are.
- The various pets sitting on Gramp's head.
- Self-Deprecation: While most artists are their own worst critics, Dante raises it to a new art form.
- Starving Artist: Played with in that Dante is only ten but the fact he is a artist is a source of jokes.
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Dante: I want to say something that no other artist has done before. |
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- Static Character: As one webcomic critic pointed out, this is not a bad thing, as they're well-rounded, interesting, and funny, which is pretty much all a simple gag-a-day strip of this sort needs.
- Take That: Against targets such as eggnog.
- The Unintelligible: Flaco speaks in a constant stream of squeaking noises. His adopted poppa, Arthur, still understands him just fine, but no one else can. Except when it's funny.
- Flaco used to be The Speechless in his first appearances before developing into this.
- Timmy in a Well: Subverted.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Arthur will do just about anything for fishy goodness... or pancakes.
- X Meets Y: The author could be said to be an American Terry Pratchett who decided to make a newspapercomic like Webcomic.
- ↑ in the future
- ↑ (He finished using them up in 2005).