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Sequential Art Before you click...  is a webcomic drawn by Phillip M. Jackson (a.k.a. Jolly Jack) about a group of unlikely housemates. Art is a chronically frustrated graphic designer (and the only human living in the house); Kat, a cat girl, is a fun-loving photographer; Pip, a penguin, is a stereotypical video-game geek who makes a living buying and selling items online, and Scarlet is a naïve and energetic squirrel girl whose erratic behaviour and short attention span mask her true intellect. Over time the household is expanded with Kat's adoption of a non-anthropomorphic platypus named Leonard, a mysterious infestation of Denizens, and the rescue of Scarlet's sisters(?) Amber, Jade and Violet.

Sequential Art veers between cozy Slice of Life moments and Art's role as a Cosmic Plaything. Sometimes life is fairly ordinary — Christmas shopping, computer problems, and things like that. Sometimes life is a little surreal... Art may end up playing the Realm of Lorecraft boardgame against a squirrel hivemind. And surprisingly frequently, life gets extremely surreal, such as the housemates' brief involvement in the secret global struggle between retardium-harvesting aliens and the merman who engineered the terrible secret behind 3D movies. No, really. Also features occasional appearances by the small, wisecracking hamster who apparently draws the strip.


Sequential Art provides examples of:

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    Tropes A to B 
  • 0% Approval Rating: Miss Strinpit is an extremely unpleasant person, capable of antagonizing anyone she meets, not just her students. She's so despised that upon her demise due to heart attack, the students merrily sing "Ding-Dong, the witch is dead". Kat summarizes her faults (which leads to Strinpit's fatal heart attack):
    Kat: You're a short, bad-tempered, condescending, evil, unfair and hateful Bully!
  • A-Cup Angst: Surprisingly, Kat. She's not exactly an A-cup though. If this strip or this drawing of her are anything to go by she's far from it.
  • Adorable Fluffy Tail: While Christmas shopping with Kat Vance, Scarlet the squirrel girl feels something gripping her tail. It's a little girl, utterly charmed by the luxurious fluffiness of Scarlet's tail. Both the girl and Scarlet proclaim simultaneously: "I know what I want for Christmas!"
  • Adventures In Coma Land: One story arc is based on Fallout, and is revealed at the end to be the result of Pip suffering from asphyxiation from locking himself in a fridge because he'd been playing Fallout 4 to excess and thought a power outage was the end of the world.
  • Aerosol Spray Backfire: Pip goes to kill a spider in the bathroom using aerosol deodorant and a cigarette lighter. He succeeds in torching the entire bathroom and singeing himself as well in strip #9. However, Pip only supplied the ignition source; moments before, Scarlet had used an aerosol can to drive that same spider out of the attic and into the bathroom in strip #462.
  • Aesop Amnesia: It would appear that Pip failed to learn his lesson from last time when he Lets Hilary stay at their place and hooks up with her again, only to find out in the next strip that he's only doing that because she's basically blackmailing him into letting her stay with them or else she'll have them arrested for destroying her house, and he is clearly not as clueless about the situation as he was the first time.
  • Aerosol Flamethrower: Pip's attempt to kill the shower spider.
  • The Aesthetics of Technology: Pip makes the mistake of stealing tech from the Denizens based on appearance.
  • Buxom Beauty Standard:
    Kat: [looks at the picture Art is drawing] Are those her boobs, or did a couple of zepplins land on her chest?
    Art: IT'S JUST A COMMISSION!

    Tropes C to D 
  • Call-Back:
    • The very first strip and this strip over five hundred strips later. And then another almost five hundred strips later still...
    • And for a more literal Call-Back, there's Crazy Boris, who may or may not also be Crazy Sven. And possibly the guy on the box of crackers.
    • The spider from all the way back in strip 7 makes a re-appearance during Scarlet's flashback, as well as somewhat justifying how Pip managed to blow up the bathroom with a deodorant flamethrower.
    • Another call back is in strip #765 regarding the Denizens' technology that Pip sold to the two nerds in strip #344. It teleported them to the middle of the Gobi desert in Mongolia, and one apparently had to eat the other.
  • Cassandra Truth:
  • Casual Danger Dialogue: In addition to the usual banter, sometimes somebody just can't work up the energy for panic anymore.
    Pip (face down on the floor in despair): I was going to stop Scarlet and company from inadvertently building another doomsday device[...] Could you go and talk the squirrels down before they wipe us all from existence?
  • Catch-22 Dilemma:
    • When Pip first starts playing Legends of Lorecraft in panel 136, he starts as a Level 1 serf, and needs armor and a sword to go on treasure quests. However, armor and swords cost money, which is earned by obtaining treasures. Pip lampshades his dilemma nicely.
    • And the reason he's even in this mess? When he tried to join a Pick-Up Group upon first spawning, he made the mistake of partying with a Griefer, a thief who stole all the gear that he originally spawned with. Real MMORPGs do not let characters go without weapons or armor, nor allow other players to take their only equipment for precisely this reason.
  • Catfight: Usually involves Kat and Hilary. Latest example here.
  • Catgirl: The appropriately named Kat (short for Kathleen).
  • Cats Are Mean: Generally averted. Sometimes invoked.
  • Cat Smile: Kat gets one occasionally, particularly when feeling smug (or when brainwashed...).
  • Cerebus Syndrome:
    • Downplayed. Several times the artist has taken a few months to do long arc stories involving the plucky characters combating dangerously powerful adversaries like the Denizens or Oz, only to have the conflict resolved and go right back to the "Gag-a-Day" format.
    • Played with in the case of the "retardium" arc: increasingly breathless revelations of a secret power struggle led the cast toward what seemed to be a moment of dramatic choice. Instead, Art realized both sides were idiots. So the gang went home and got back to the gag-a-day format.
  • Cheek Copy: It's implied that Pip did this with Art's scanner.
  • Chekhov's Gun:
  • Chew Bubblegum: Pip quotes the famous line before passing out weapons to rescue Kat.
  • The Chew Toy: Poor Leonard. If anything non-lethal, but unpleasant can happen to him, it will. If it cannot, it happens anyway.
  • Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The 'anti-tech energy' and the fake chip that counters it.
  • Clothing Damage: It takes a little over 350 strips for Scarlet's only shirt to disintegrate after being caught on a doorknob.

    Tropes E to F 

    Tropes G to H 
  • Gadgeteer Genius: Scarlet. Managed to use household tools to build a working Wave-Motion Gun. Also her sisters managed to make a lawnmower escape the earth's atmosphere.
  • Genius Ditz: Scarlet and her sisters. Scarlet can be inventing an actual laser gun in one comic, and be completely hypnotized by a spinning washing machine in another.
  • G.I.R.L.: Invoked and averted here.
  • Girl on Girl Is Hot: Pip certainly seems to think so.
    • Then there's this non-canon fanservice-y accident. There was plenty of times it could've happened during DeCerto storyline. A pity it didn't.
  • Glasgow Grin: A variation. It's stated in Jack's official bio that his "mouth" is actually a crack in his face, meaning he's broken. This pretty much explains why he was the only Denizen who turned out to be evil.
  • Going Commando: Strip 34
  • Gone Horribly Wrong: Art and Pip steal a dressmaker's dummy (one belonging to an objectophile who thought of it as a sentient being), sending photos of postcards as if the dummy were on vacation, culminating in sticking breasts on it. This infuriates the local Straw Feminist to the point of causing riots on campus, and then the dummy's owner recognizes them...
  • Groin Attack: Pip receives one here due to a significant difference in size.
  • Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Kat stays sober all year... until New Year's Eve, when she gets totally smashed. Her "New Year's Resolution" for several years now has been to "stop drinking so much alcohol during the holiday season".
  • Hive Mind:
    • Again, Scarlet and her sisters. The reason they're such ditzes most of the time is that each is one part out of a 4-part superintelligence. As seen when everyone plays the board version of Land of Lorecraft: everyone against Pip, the squirrel sisters manage to pull off a spectacular plan on Pip to allow Kat and Art to beat him unhindered. Which just goes to show, never challenge a bio-supercomputer to a strategy game.
      Scarlet & her sisters: ...we are legion!
    • The Denizens also seem to need a truly evil member of their species — such as Jack — to behave in any way malevolent.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Jack.
    • Uwe'Boll... immensely.
  • Homage: The "Quinten R&D" arc.
  • Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Pip and Fern in this "Victory Pose"
  • Human Resources: It turns out that the aliens are on earth to harvest Retardium, an ambient energy naturally given off by the 'willfully ignorant'.note .
    • James Cameron wants to stop them... because they are hogging all the people dumb enough to pay to see his movies.
  • Hurl It into the Sun: This is how the Eldak wants to kill Art, whom they believe is a Man of Kryptonite for them, after all their other methods fail to crack the Think Tank's safety bubble which is encasing Art at the time.
  • Hypocritical Humor: Art of all people cannot take characters with crazy eyebrows seriously.
    • Also, Kat gets her hands on the Attacknoid's remote here.
    • Scarlet may be one of fiction's quintessential Genki Girls, but she can't stand it when a drugged up Kat starts talking a million words a minute.

    Tropes I to J 

    Tropes K to L 

    Tropes M to N 

    Tropes O to P 

    Tropes Q to S 

    Tropes T to V 

    Tropes W to Z 

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