Crossed Claws is a Fantasy Webcomic by geckoZen, about a group of animals (mainly rabbits) living in a community known as the Hollow.
Rabbit siblings Ria and Dewey are coming home from the market when Jered, the a local Doomsayer, starts screaming about seeing cats out in the field. Writing it off as just the ravings of a madman, Dewey brushes it off, but Ria isn't entirely convinced. So that night, she sneaks out into the field to see if cats really have returned.
It turns out there's some truth to Jered's raving, except Sandy, the cat in the fields, is the sweetest and kindest creature Ria has ever met. They spend the night playing out in the fields, but during a game of hide and seek, Ria sees some unsettling things that cause her to question her new friend.
And what are these "Tall Things" she speaks of?
Crossed Claws can be found on geckoZen's deviantArt
page and on FurAffinity.
Tropes:
- Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Clothes aren't particularly common, but some characters can be seen wearing accessories. Ria and Sandy being the most notable, each donning a green and red ribbon respectively during their second meeting.
- Ambiguously Evil: The "Tall Things". Everything they do seems to be merely out of survival and a twisted form of paternity to Sandy.
- Art Evolution: Quite a bit over the comic's run, starting with clear lines and flat colors and evolving into a more painterly and stylized look as it progresses.
- Barefoot Cartoon Animal: Jered and Claudia, the only two characters to wear an otherwise full set of clothes...not counting a cameo by Valie from tinyraygun.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: The "Tall Things" turn out to be insectile monsters that can mimic mammalian species and possess some sort of control over plants.
- The Cameo: Valie from tinyraygun appears on page 7 of Chapter 4, giving a sales pitch to an unimpressed-looking rabbit.
- Cats Are Mean: Believed by all the animals of the Hollow. Averted by Sandy herself, who despite being a full-grown cat borders on Cute Kitten territory.
- Doomsayer: Jered, an old rabbit who's constantly raving about how cats from the fields are going to kill them all. He's half-right. There is a cat lurking out there, but she's completely harmless. Her caretakers, on the other hand...
- Mouse World: Dialogue seems to imply the Hollow is in a human-scaled world, complete with the existence of people. It's actually a full-fledged fantasy world.
- The Speechless: Claudia, the librarian mouse.
- Torches and Pitchforks: After Jered's death, the Hollow organizes into a mob set on burning down the field to drive out the cats.
- Town with a Dark Secret: Back before moving to the surface, the Hollow's government performed a lot on shady things to keep the people in line, including cruel experiments on prisoners. Only a handful of records remain, and to this day there are people still trying to destroy those, too.
