A furry webcomic created and drawn by Kuurion and written by Captain Video (no, not that one), Our World follows the misadventures of quiet professional Jill Whitecross, her slacker brother Pete, their mutual friend Art Canfield, and Pete's best friend from grade school who just moved in to live with them. Jill - who has spent her whole life ignoring the fact that she has no memories of her childhood, or where she came from - grapples with unfamiliar aspects of herself as the stress mounts.
Originally published independently from 2010 to 2013, it joined The Katbox in 2014 and updates on Tuesdays. On 29 December 2015, the author announced that all of the original pages had finally been posted to The Katbox. From here on, all new pages will be new pages.
Formerly available here
, starting here. In 2018 the comic went on hiatus, ending Chapter 4 with a cliffhanger. Then the writer and the artist got busy with their lives, and then their host shut down. There are no plans to continue, and Kuurion has stated that while he has backups of the comic available, "reposting over a hundred pages isn't worth the effort".
Our World provides examples of:
- Alternative Calendar: The given year is 763, even though the story is set hundreds of years in the future, after The End of the World as We Know It.
- Ascended Extra: Lloyd, the Hand Puppet Alex makes out of her bandaged-up hand, was intended as a temporary gag who became a fan favorite and started showing up in commissioned art of Alex.
- Adventurer Archaeologist: Chad Ivington, as seen on the Show Within a Show "Mysteries of the Unexplained."
- Affectionate Parody: "Mysteries of the Unexplained" to Unsolved Mysteries.
- Amnesiac Hero: Jill, who was found on a beach as a young teenager at the beginning of the comic.
- April Fools' Day: Since joining The Katbox, Our World has participated in the site's yearly pranks.
- Arc Symbol: The logo on the jumpsuit Jill is found wearing. Becomes Sigil Spam (see below) when we see the place it - and she - came from.
- Art Evolution: Because the earliest pages were rewritten and redrawn, the art style actually regresses a bit before moving forward again.
- Barcode Tattoo: The strange symbol on the back of Jill's neck is eventually shown to be this.
- Big Brother Attraction: Lina's feelings for Art.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: The more we see of the Canfields, the further from normal they seem.
- Bigger on the Inside: Art Canfield Sr. describes his compact car as this. It is not. It does fit four, at least.
- The Bus Came Back: After it's mentioned that Art's sister ran away sometime in the past, she returns.
- Chiaroscuro: Many pages have black background with panels fading to black rather than having distinct borders. The more noticeable cases include:
- The early scenes set at the secret high-tech base hide characters' faces in shadows.
- Art's date with a mysterious lady is set in a dimly lit room with her hiding her face in shadows.
- Cliffhanger: Chapter 1 ends with some faceless observers (bearing the Arc Symbol) attracted by the events around Jill. Chapter 2 ends with them preparing to strike. Chapter 4 (the last published) ends with the four main characters together with Trilby, Milo and Lina escaping the secret base on an aircraft and then their aircraft explodes near the Antarctic shore. Then the creators took a break, which never ended.
- The Conspiracy: The people Jill escaped from at the beginning of the series are shown to have vast powers and troubling ideologies.
- Cow Tools: Art Sr. has a waiting room filled with decorations hand-selected to be incomprehensible.
- D-Cup Distress: Jill wears clothing that minimizes her ample figure, part of her general modesty.
- Eccentric Mentor: Art Sr., though it's not clear how much he's about being a mentor and how much he just likes being weird in public.
- The Faceless: Trilby, initially, and the other humans. Art's date, initially.
- Fiery Redhead: Alex.
- Flat "What": A sleep-deprived Art, when Jill asks him if he wants to move in with her and Pete and Alex.
- Forbidden Zone: Exploring the oddly modern ruins seems to be a one-way ticket to a mysertious disappearance.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: The main cast:
- Sanguine: Alex (with color-coordinated red hair)
- Choleric: Art (with color-coordinated yellow hair)
- Melancholic: Jill (with color-coordinated black hair)
- Phlegmatic: Pete (with... orange hair. Dammit.)
- Fourth-Wall Mail Slot: Like many of the other Katbox comics, Our World has a section on the site's forums where the characters can answer fan questions.
- Fun with Acronyms: EMMA — EMulated Management Assistant and her predecessor EMMOT — EMulated Management Assistant and Trainer (if Trilby remembers correctly).
- Furry Confusion: Pete wears bunny slippers.
- Gaia's Vengeance: The official mythology says: "Our ancestors rose from the soil and the sea to strike down the humans, who had abused the earth too long." It's close enough to the truth.
-
Genius Bonus (often by way of Meaningful Name):- Art goes to the "Cafe Westermarck" only to end up on a Blind Date with his sister. He is not pleased.
- The last name "Canfield" was selected by Captain Video for the sake of an obscure throwaway joke: Art Sr.'s real estate business is named Canfield Ocean Estates. This ended up with Real Life Unintended Consequences by causing the comic page with that name to start showing up on search engine returns for "Canfield ocean," bringing in traffic from a probably very confused Periphery Demographic.
- One of Art Canfield Sr.'s strange office decorations is a Klein bottle.
- Art goes to the "Cafe Westermarck"
- Genki Girl: Alex, to the mixed reaction of those around her.
- Girls with Moustaches: Alex, during a poorly thought-out Impersonation Gambit intended to get her into a museum at senior citizen rates.
- Grumpy Old Man: Cornelius and Ezra, the two old guys who seem to live at the park.
- Half-Human Hybrid: The humanoid animals populating Earth are said to be the descendants of humans and the more animalistic "first generation hybrids" with superpowers, who destroyed the high-tech civilization.
- Halloween Cosplay: Done in 2011, where the four main characters dressed up as characters from other webcomics:
- Jill as Mandy Cheng from Anthronauts.
- Alex as Kick Girl from Mystery Babylon.
- Pete as Viktor Vasko from Lackadaisy.
- Art as Dakota from Wrongside.
- The Hermit: Trilby Dobler.
- Hime Cut: Trilby and Jill. Doesn't seem to bear any hidden meaning, though.
- Incompetence, Inc.: Jill's coworkers Clyde and Lisa are shown to be capable professionals... occasionally.
- Love Letter Lunacy: A Stalker with a Crush left a letter in Art's locker, mentioned watching him sleep, invited him to a date, asked to leave the answer in the same locker. To top it, she was his runaway sister.
- Made a Slave: Milo is still pretty new to this predicament when he's first introduced.
- Married to the Job: Jill shows signs of this. Trilby rarely leaves her workshop as she's got nothing left.
- Must Have Nicotine: Lina apparently picked up a serious addiction to cigarettes while she was away. Which aren't available in the humans' base.
- Nonconformist Dyed Hair: Although he's rarely drawn in color, Clyde Kensington has green hair.
- Noodle Incident: Pete alludes to one when saying Alex is unlikely to play with matches.
- Port Town: Selicia is on the sea.
- The Quiet One: Art's department store coworker, Hank.
- Room Full of Crazy: Seen briefly while Jill is house hunting and visits the former home of "the mad poet Carthwait Carrothers."
- Restraining Bolt: Milo's shackles.
- The Reveal:
- Trilby is a human.
- Art's big date is his sister, although he doesn't know that going into it.
- The mysterious observers are pureblood humans, whose ancestors lost the Century War. They are hiding on an Antarctic island, maintain a network of spy satellites and monitor Earth population, and are studying the superpowers that decided the outcome of the war.
- Ruins of the Modern Age: The artifacts Pete and Alex see in the museum include a stealth bomber.
- Sickly Green Glow: Pre-retcon, Jill generates an aura in that color when her powers first activate.
- Sigil Spam: The triskelion used by the humans.
- Shout-Out: Numerous:
- When Alex and Pete are discussing old teachers at the school they used to attend, the names include Mr. Hodge and Mr. Coogan. Al Hodge and Richard Coogan both used to play the title character in Captain Video - which the comic's writer takes his pen name from.
- Trilby Dobler is named after two characters in Lords of the Deep.
- When Pete and Alex are cleaning his room, they come across Rocky Rickaby's tie from Lackadaisy and Jenny's teddy bear hat from The Zombie Hunters.
- Alex's bedcovers have the cracked record logo on them associated with Dave Strider in Homestuck.
- Stock Super Powers: The list goes at least to 77. Jill is "type-15 electrokinetic", which includes throwing objects with lightning effects, but also allows her to reshape electro-malleable alloy ubiquitous at the human island. Pete is "type-77 berserk", making him resistant to drugs. Both manifest their powers in an unusually mild way, less destructive to the wielder.
- Tomato Surprise: The protagonists are surprised to see mythical humans. But once they get over the surprise, their ideas of humans prove mostly correct, since their mythology is based on facts. Readers, on the other hand, were not told those myths, although there was enough foreshadowing to be able to guess.
- Tragic Keepsake: Trilby's locket, which she talks about enough to establish that she doesn't want to talk about it.
- Unmoving Plaid: As seen on Art's shirt in a car trip (albeit with stripes).
- Wall of Blather: Art's speech on pointing out the feedback survey at the bottom of each customer's receipt.
- This is actually an example of
Write What You Know on the part of Captain Video, who used to give a slightly shorter version of this same speech, which he wrote, when he was an employee at Sears. Kuurion had him pad it out a little in order to get the full wall of text.
- This is actually an example of
- Winged Humanoid: One of the background prisoners.
- Wrench Wench: Trilby Dobler, who is shown to basically live in her shop.
