Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, but always full of heart and soul
Now, even more collections of Doc Rat strips are available for your reading enjoyment, on your phone, tablet, other smart device with a Kindle app, or on a Kindle reader. (Even a black-and-white one – they are black-and-white strips.) Go on-line to Amazon and search for Doc Rat eBooks.
Thank you for continuing to be loyal readers of the ongoing saga of Doc Rat.
Soon, I’ll give you an update of the eBooks. Currently, there should be 18 in the series, on Amazon, but a couple of them are experiencing technical difficulties, which I’m working on fixing. I intend to keep putting out more and more eBooks through the course of 2023.
To see what you can get now, go to Amazon.
Cheers, Jenner.
Doc Rat is having a quick rest and a catch-up for two weeks. The comic strips will start again on Monday January 9 2023.
Now, even more collections of Doc Rat strips are available for your reading enjoyment, on your phone, tablet, other smart device with a Kindle app, or on a Kindle reader. (Even a black-and-white one – they are black-and-white strips.) Go on-line to Amazon and search for Doc Rat eBooks.
Try it out now. Start your collection and allow yourself the freedom of reading the Doc Rat saga when and wherever you want!
Doc Rat theme (The Coffee Song) by Trevor Hilton.
Now, Volumes 1 to 12 are available on Kindle. And more are on the way.
Try it out now. Start your collection and enjoy reading the Doc Rat saga on your own device.
While you continue to read the hilarious exploits of your favourite doctor, Jenner will work as hard as he can to bring further eBooks into existence.
… on Kindle and Kobo.
And now, normal Doc Rat service will be resumed.
Yes, you can now buy the first four Doc Rat collections to read on your electronic device. Follow the links to your preferred site, purchase, download and enjoy.
The Coffee Song (Doc Rat theme) by Trevor Hilton
Over the past year, I’ve talked to you about my major, ongoing endeavour to bring out the Doc Rat books as eBooks. But sadly, my progress on this has been far too slow. And there’s been a simple reason for that – lack of time. In fact, I’ve discovered it’s simply impossible to me to work both on bringing the eBooks into reality and to keep supplying you with new daily strips.
So, how about a win-win solution? I’ve got one, and I think you’ll like it. I am going to take a spell from writing and drawing the daily comic strips for maybe just over a month.
And you will be treated to a replay of some of my earlier strips… but they’ll be in COLOUR!
Yes, that’s right – you’re about to get Doc Rat in something more exciting than the traditional black-and-white. You see, for a long time I’ve been colouring the occasional comic strip here and there, for various markets. Maybe for a professional magazine, or for a convention program book, or a promotion, for sale as prints, or even just for the heck of it.
Well, now you’re all going to have a chance to see what Doc Rat could look like in full colour. Yeah!
But enjoy it while it lasts, because there is no way I could colour every single new strip as I go. Not that and be a full-time doctor, too,
So, I’ll see you all on the other side. And maybe I’ll have some neat surprises for you, you fun-loving rat fans! Bye!
Doc Rat made its first webcomic appearance on 26th June 2006, and in 2021 it will celebrate its fifteenth birthday. In that time, the good doctor has had to deal with swine flu, computerisation, Medicare, violence, tragedy, parenthood, bushfire and now COVID-19. And all he’s asked to do is to cure the sick and bring about world peace. Fifteen years and thirty-seven hundred strips. A big thanks to my readers and supporters over this epic journey.
They are still on the way. This is all a technical learning curve for me, and it’s quite a challenge. Keep the faith, people, they will happen.
For those of you in Australia, I had a table at FurDU, on the Gold Coast, Queensland, from 7th to 9th May 2021.
I was reminded, by seeing it on sale at a neighbouring table, that it’s still possible to buy the short story collection What Happens Next, edited by the late Fred Patten and published by Furplanet. It contains my short story Pickup at Hanging Drop, in which Doc Rat, Phil Krubnuckle and the young Simon Jaegermond (later to be given his adult name Quarrydog Schlag) go fishing. There’s life/death drama and jazz music in equal measures. It’s an important hidden chapter in the Doc Rat saga. Click the link to find out how to buy a copy.
Doc Rat made its first webcomic appearance on 26th June 2006, and in 2021 it will celebrate its fifteenth birthday. In that time, the good doctor has had to deal with swine flu, computerisation, Medicare, violence, tragedy, parenthood, bushfire and now COVID-19. And all he’s asked to do is to cure the sick and bring about world peace. Fifteen years and thirty-seven hundred strips. A big thanks to my readers and supporters over this epic journey.
They are still on the way. This is all a technical learning curve for me, and it’s quite a challenge. Keep the faith, people, they will happen.
For those of you in Australia, I’ll be at FurDU, on the Gold Coast, Queensland, from 7th to 9th May 2021.
And a shout out to the comic Gaia, written by the German author Oliver Knörzer (Novil) and drawn by the Indonesian artist Puri Andini (Powree). They also created the comic about a girl and a raccoon, Sandra and Wu. (Do I love that comic? Well, Daniella’s GP is Doctor S. Wu. I rest my case.) Check out their Gaia printed anthology Kickstarter campaign.
Hi. Jenner speaking. At long last I’m allowed let out a very exciting secret: Doc Rat is about to become available as eBooks!
It will start as Volumes 1, 2 and 3. More will follow after that, until you’ll have the chance to build up an entire library – 24 volumes and counting. To begin with, they’ll be out on Amazon and Kobo, which you can read on a Kobo reader, Kindle, iPad, phone or computer. iBook versions will follow soon after that.
Stay tuned for more details. See the cover illustrations below. When these links become active, they’ll take you to the Doc Rat shop, where you’ll find portals to the major sites of your choice.
There will still be print versions of the books. Currently, those are not available on mail-order until I can fix a glitch in the mailing cost function. But anyway, here is a taste of what’s to come:
Volume 1. Strips DR-0001 to DR-0132
This is where it all begins. We’re introduced to the family doctor Ben Rat and his practice staff: the gentle, caring nurse Mary Scamper and the emotionally labile receptionist Gizelle Thomson. Jarrad the scared little numbat boy has to have his injections. Phil Krubnuckle the local pharmacist helps Ben when he falls sick with a cold. Wilbur Fuzz plays the role of perpetual joker. Rufus, the Animapharm rep presents his wares with the new wonder drug Zappo. And as a finale, there are the increasingly bizarre Twelve Days of Christmas.
Volume 2, Strips DR-0133 to DR-0260.
The second book in the series, with a further miscellany of the strange things that can happen in a family doctor’s practice. Receptionist Gizelle experiments with New Age music in the waiting room. A pig has hair removal treatment from a giant spider. There’s a song and dance number. And we meet the Jasmine and Flopsy, the unlikely married couple, in a short story that culminates in a mad dash to hospital.
Volume 3. Strips DR-0261 to DR-0392.
More antics from the crew working hard to run a family medical practice. Ben treats coughs and colds in the rainy season. A clever use of fleas to cure an alcoholic dog. Jasmine the rabbit keeps her baby bunnies safe. The latest Harry Potter book release craze. The doc starts a daily exercise routine but fails to steer clear of video game addiction. And there are helpful examples of how to decipher Australian language.
Being a doctor, a nurse or a receptionist in a medical practice has changed a whole lot since March 2020. We’ve fallen into a completely different world, and it’s going to be difficult or impossible ever to go back completely to the way we were. The coronavirus pandemic – COVID-19 – has been the biggest global medical shock for generations.
Why hasn’t Doc Rat been battling the pandemic from its beginning? Well, first I had to finish the tail end of the story about the bushfires, set in January. With that done, and looking just a little bit late into the events, I’ve taken the chance to step back and condense a month or two of recent history into a short recap then set it going from April. So now we’ll get back to finding out how the virus is affecting Doctor Ben Rat, Nurse Mary Scamper and Gizelle Thomson, as well as Daniella Hood-Rat, Phil Krubnuckle, Jarrad Dryandra, Quarrydog Schlag, Flopsy and Jasmine Jaegermond and all the rest of the gang of friends.
Some of you currently have a lot of enforced spare time. Whether you are bored, anxious, grieving or going stir crazy, I hope you’ll take a few of my recommendations of lockdown reading.
Endtown, a webcomic by Aaron Neathery. If Pogo-Meets-Tank Girl were co-written by Arthur C Clarke, Neil Gaiman and Spike Milligan and directed by David Lynch, you may get some idea of where it’s going. In a post-war desert, biosuited humans try to hunt down the last remaining cartoon animals to cleanse their apocalyptic world of contagion, little knowing that the mutagenic virus is really a breach in the fabric of reality itself. It’s masterful writing and masterful art. Five stars. Endtown will enthrall you. Read it free on-line. Physical books can be bought.
Kevin and Kell, a daily comic strip by Bill Holbrook. It’s been around literally since the beginning of webcomics as we know them. A world of anthropomorphic cartoon animals in a semi-civilised world, where the predator-prey relationship is a matter of survival, until some of them prefer to buck the system and fall in love. It looks like an innocuous comic, but the creator has been doing it for a quarter of a century, crafting an internally consistent world that’s quietly subversive in its message of tolerance and goodwill. Kevin and Kell will cheer you up. Read it free on-line. Physical books can be bought.
Any of the books of Paul Kidd. They are fantasy in a variety of genres – Victorian steampunk supernatural sleuths, Japanese samurai ghost hunters, space-faring sword-duelling fortune seekers, magical mice and centaurs in the time of the English Civil War… they’re cracking good stories and gleeful fun. Paul Kidd novels will take you to happy worlds. Buy the ebooks through Kindle, Lulu and IBooks. Physical books can be bought.
Try them out.
A new year opens, for both the West and the East. On behalf of Doc Rat, I wish you health and success. I hope you attain your goals and surmount your problems. I hope you open your eyes, ears and minds to people with opinions that differ from yours. I hope you cut a little slack, compromise and learn how much common ground there actually is for all of you to stand on.
My country, Australia, and the world in general, faces many grave problems. The prospect of what could come to pass in this year of 2020 fills me with dread. But I remind myself the future is human. We can use our minds poorly, or we can use them well. At our best, we can find solutions to problems and then cooperate to apply them. We have brains and access to expertise that can get us to the answers – perhaps not the ones we want to see, nor the ones that conform to our deeply-held opinions, but the answers that are most likely to be correct, and therefore the ones most likely to work. This is not a game we’re playing, this world of ours. This is real. We’ve got to get it right to save it.
When Doc Rat has to make a decision between appendicitis or a stomach virus, he has to get the right answer. As he says: Diagnosis is king.
In 2020, may we all strive to get the right answer. And it’s a paradox, but to do this, all of us…ALL OF US… have to be prepared to meet a little more in the middle so the majority of us can move this thing together. And that may mean taking journeys outside of our comfort zones. Just the opening of your mind is an act of heroism, and upon my oath 2020 needs heroes.
What does 2020 hold for the Doc Rat comic strip itself? More of the usual light laughs and soulful philosophy: Doc will keep taking broken things and mending them. But there will also be some very exciting news, but more of that later.
On the 9th of December last year, I lost one of my closest friends, who was also one of the most remarkable human beings it has ever been my privilege to know. In a remote part of California, at the age of 65, David Keith Howington passed out of this life, from the final of many complications of a severe, disabling illness.
Keith was a dedicated fan of Doc Rat. He loved what I wrote and drew with such a passion that when in 2010 he sent me an email through the contact form about what he thought of it and why, I knew our minds worked on identical wavelengths. He would send some comments from time to time. Then, on a day in March 2011, while I was working in my studio on the latest strip, Keith sent an email with a pun. I punned back, and…well, it led to a reply in verse, to which I gave a riposte in verse, and for the next hour we duelled in everything from limerick to iambic pentameter to Doctor Seuss. Yes, from that day onward, we were firm friends.
Keith was a genius – a polymath, computer expert, systems organiser, writer, and a thoroughly decent person. He was good-natured, accommodating and generous. He had a sparkling wit and an incisive intellect. No stumbling block in the world seemed to be beyond his capacity to forebear with an even temper. A legal colleague once told him he had never seen someone as level-headed as he. So, when it came to choosing an on-line alias to participate in a web comic forum (and for very important practical reasons, a strict alias was necessary), “Level Head” was it. Level Head threw himself into the role of Doc Rat’s greatest advocate until he was, in effect the comic’s United States agent. Our dream was for him to be the mail-order distributor of Doc Rat books for that part of the world. But events changed this.
Keith was a self-made man. He devised software and took commissions in writing grant applications. He made fortunes, and fortunes were taken away from him. From partying in the Playboy mansion to facing down the Mafia, Keith’s level-headedness kept stability. But of all the fortunes he lost, the greatest of those was his wife, his beloved, to whom he always referred as “the lady Anne”. They had had, as far as I can tell, a beautiful relationship throughout the course of many adversities. But it was in 2014 that both Keith and Anne, after a celebratory dinner, came down with severe campylobacter food poisoning. After three days ill in bed, the lady Anne went into cardiac arrest, and all Keith’s efforts to resuscitate her failed. The date was April 4th. To say Keith’s life was devastated would be an understatement. And yet I never heard him feel sorry for himself; rather, he counted himself blessed for the time he and Anne had together. However bad was the down side, he could always find an up side to lift him.
Subsequent months saw Keith developing very severe metabolic abnormalities. I helped with advice from a distance, as I could. Keith’s comments were that this helped him a lot.
I had met Keith in person in July 2012 at Anthrocon in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. Along with cartoonist Aaron Neathery (Endtown), the three of us had a wonderful union, some may say historic. I had wanted to meet up again with Keith as I passed through Los Angeles on the way to Anthrocon in June 2014, but he was in the middle of moving house, so he was on the road. I was able to phone him from the airport, and I was surprised by what I heard. Not only did my friend tell me his arms and legs were becoming weak and numb, but also his speech sounded unmistakably slurred. This turned out to be the start of a rare, severe neurological illness, a progressive, insidious auto-immune condition. His body was reacting to the campylobacter infection earlier that year. He sought medical care on the occasions his health insurance covered it (the insurance industry was going through great changes, and there were moments his coverage fell through the cracks, to the cost of his life savings), and this took him to a neurologist. When the neurologist diagnosed Guillan-Barré syndrome and reassured him there was no treatment but to expect it with time to clear up completely, Keith in his inimitable fashion did his own research and insisted it was chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy (CIDP), which will never clear up without immediate and expensive blood-modifying therapy. He was right. He got the therapy. And as far as it went, it worked.
Keith lost the use of his legs, most of the use of his arms but none of the use
of his brain. He could still type, only very slowly. Amazingly, then, he was still able to work, albeit to a limited extent. He continued to post and comment on Doc Rat strips in the Cross Time Café forum. Severe muscle spasms would wrack him with pain. Severe enough and he could pass out, only to be found slumped in his chair a few days later. Keith came near to death many times. But on every occasion that he resurfaced, he would make light of it. Friends helped him set up a motorised chair lift to help him negotiate the two floors of his residence, but a series of blows to his health and finances saw him relocating to a single-room accommodation in the Morongo Valley, in the Californian desert.
At the last count, Keith reported that feeling was starting to return to his legs and his seat. Although it was good news, it also meant a return of pain, even more pain than before, which made it impossible to sit. He had to recline, and meant that eating and drinking put him at constant risk of pneumonia.
I have no doubt that, given the option, Keith would have preferred pain to death, as he battled – and maybe at long last would have prevailed over – the illness that had robbed him of a functioning body. Feeling and power would return to his legs, dexterity to his fingers, the ability to stand and walk, and the ever-present prospect of his brain interacting with the world for one more day, and then a day after that, and so on. Keith wasn’t the sort of man to let agony stop him when there was work to be done.
Against my better judgement, I started to think of Keith as indestructible. But even the most remarkable being is still flesh. Keith went into hospital and never came out. It was hard to contact him, and the best I could do was to draw a card and email it to a friend of his, who showed him the picture from his phone. I regret I could never have final words with him. I hope he knew he was in my thoughts and of course loved. In Keith Howington, the world lost one its most remarkable inhabitants.
Keith and I both followed the web comic Endtown. In 2011, just for fun, I started to write fan ‘filk’ lyrics based on popular songs and post them on the GoComics site in the comments section. By and by, I was producing them more frequently, and Keith started chipping in with his own. The trick was to see the latest Endtown strip, write as quickly as possible a song to fit the latest episode, and post as soon into the new day as possible so the entry would be near the top of the queue, in full view. Keith and I were vying with each other, each producing five new songs a week. I admired his creations as he did mine. Someone aptly called Jenner and Level Head “the lyricist and the bard”.
Level Head has appeared occasionally in Doc Rat as the eagle Lev Headland.
Keith wrote, during the lady Anne’s lifetime, a wonderful treatise on the secrets of a happy relationship. I hope I can make this available for people to read and consider.
He was a thoughtful person, and of the many things I learned in a decade of association with Keith was the ability to share commonality even in the presence of difference. Keith would describe himself to the right side of politics, while I lean somewhat to the left. That’s if labels were actually mean anything important, which I argue they don’t. We both agreed on finding the factually right answer to a question, and in that we were cooperative. Keith wasn’t much for following the news cycle or social media, so he didn’t parrot the litany of ‘conservative values’. He just believed in reward for personal effort and endeavour, and he thought his country’s media misrepresented that sound principle. I believe a nation functions best and most cooperatively when it feels socially secure, and any reasonable media will reach that conclusion. Without saying it overtly, Keith and I knew these two tenets were not mutually exclusive, therefore there was no point in falling into arguments over it. We knew our friendship was dearer than that, and squabbling was a waste of time. Yes, we did have some issues that were irreconcilable – we put those to one side and got on with the job of getting good things done. “Make right happen,” as Doc Rat would say.
Keith and I shared a decade on planet Earth. He will not learn what happens in the story of the decade to come. He lived his life in a way that will inspire me to get the best out of every day. He would have wanted me to commemorate not what never got to do, but all the achievements he did. He was, in a very true sense, a humble hero. The best way we can honour him will be to look at his ethos, learn from it and add it to our lives
Here are the last two winning entries, for all of you who entered. The first is a seahorse receiving a shot (of what?) The second is Doctor Bill, a social media celebrity medic, who happens to be an unbelievably gorgeous peacock. Ben and Daniella were following his videos on EweTube (here). So what did you all think Doctor Bill had to say for himself when you met him in person?
(Doctor Bill was inspired by Doctor Mike, who can be found on YouTube. Check it out, to see what all the fuss is about. To help identify him, I’ve drawn a useful caricature. Doctor Mike is a family physician, like me, so he gets my vote of approval.)
Here’s the latest competition for you to enter. It’s Doctor Bill, a social media celebrity medic who happens to be an unbelievably gorgeous peacock. Ben and Daniella were following his videos on EweTube (here). So, what does Doctor Bill have to say for himself when you meet him in person?
Here’s a portrait of Jarrad’s long-suffering mother.
And not on a good day.
Now scroll down to see the caption competition news.
What’s with the doctor giving the seahorse a shot in the arm? Does a seahorse even have arms? Maybe in the weird place called the Jennerverse they do. But from this, with a clever caption, I’m hoping you’ll add the missing ingredient and turn this simple picture into a very funny single panel gag cartoon. That’s all the help I’ll give you – the rest of the joke is up to you!
We have a winner for March/April 2019
The winning entry is Daniel J. Drazen, Berien Springs, Michigan, USA
“See? Anchovies do have bones, but they’re very, very tiny.”
I (Jenner) will at FurDU in Surfer’s Paradise, Queensland, Australia from May 31 to June 2. I’ll be there to meet Doc Rat fans and sell books, including the as-yet-unreleased volume 21.
As you can see, Ben is interpreting an X-ray for the benefit of a bystander. That’s all the help I’ll give you – the rest of the joke is up to you!
Okay, that’s a bad pun, but start as we mean to go on. The even-toed ungulate in this picture is a blue wildebeest or brindled gnu. You can use that play on words as a jumping-off point, or take it in another direction entirely. But if there’s a funny caption that can round this off into a screamingly funny joke, then that’s where your job comes in!
I (Jenner) will at FurDU in Surfer’s Paradise, Queensland, Australia from May 31 to June 2. I’ll be there to meet Doc Rat fans and sell books, including the as-yet-unreleased volume 21.
I have no idea why this koala is wearing a teapot on his/her head. But if there’s a funny caption that can round this off into a screamingly funny joke, then that’s where your job comes in!
Doc Rat’s surgery is trying out some new telephone headsets. Unfortunately, Gizelle seems to have upset a spider. Just how and why I’ll leave up to you!
From today, Doc Rat is back to its usual pattern. I hope you were entertained by the my alternative presentations daily, while I was engaged in other things.
I want to thank the people at Eurofurence 24 in Berlin for making such a wonderful event with their hospitality and imaginations. I was also pleased to meet others in the UK.
And now, back to business…
Here, dear readers, is the update on the Doc Rat (Platinum Rat Productions) studio. All relocated, set up and working.
Now, I’m on a month’s holiday in Britain and Germany, including EuroFurence 24, in Berlin.
And now, here a fascinating thing. Have you ever wondered just how far back in time Doc Rat goes? Well, I dipped into my vault of early work and made compilations of the single panel gags. They haven’t seen the light of day since their original magazine publications as early as 1995. But you may spot many of the jokes as ones that later reappeared in the Doc Rat strips we know today.
Please enjoy the upcoming procession of gags detailing Doc Rat’s humble origins. And after that, it will be definitely back into new works from the canon.
Caption competition 078
On the bright side, I have managed to create a new caption competition. Click here to have a go!
Here, dear readers, is the update on the Doc Rat (Platinum Rat Productions) studio. Having moved office from one building across town to another building, followed by another move across corridor from one room to another, I’ve finally got the furniture shifted, boxes re-opened, wires and plugs connected, and am now making a major marathon effort to build up a four-week bank of Doc Rat for your enjoyment. I thank you for chilling out with the past four weeks of character sketches.
But here’s the fascinating part: Have you ever wondered just how far back in time Doc Rat goes? Well, I dipped into my vault of early work and made compilations of the single panel gags. They haven’t seen the light of day since their original magazine publications as early as 1995. But you may spot many of the jokes as ones that later reappeared in the Doc Rat strips we know today.
On August 20, I will be departing for a month’s holiday in Britain and Germany. That explains another reason for the pressure: I’m hurriedly making my preparations for EuroFurence 24, in Berlin.
Please enjoy the upcoming procession of gags detailing Doc Rat’s humble origins. And after that, it will be definitely back into new works from the canon.
Caption competition 078
On the bright side, I have managed to create a new caption competition. Click here to have a go!
Dear readers, at short notice, the Doc Rat (Platinum Rat Productions) studio has to relocate. This is going to turn my schedule upside down, in the month that will also see me making my preparations to attend EuroFurence 24.
So, with great apologies, for the next four weeks there will not be my usual Doc Rat strips. In their place, I will present you an endearing character sketch a day. Thank you for bearing with me.
Caption competition 078
On the bright side, I have managed to create a new caption competition. Click here to have a go!
Dear readers, at short notice, the Doc Rat (Platinum Rat Productions) studio has to relocate. This is going to turn my schedule upside down, in the month that will also see me making my preparations to attend EuroFurence 24.
So, with great apologies, for the next four weeks there will not be my usual Doc Rat strips. In their place, I will present you an endearing character sketch a day. Thank you for bearing with me.
Well, my good people, ConFurgence 2018, here in Melbourne Australia, was an excellent convention. It was good to see such a great turnout and such a spread of ages.
Thank you for sitting comfortably through the Rat Pause slideshow, in my absence. Now, well get back to the story. Soon, there’ll be the judging of the caption competition and an competition picture.
In the meantime, please enjoy a picture of Ben and Daniella, dressed as pirates. And see if you can see the joke in the flag.
Oh, and I will be at FurDU at Surfer’s Paradise, Gold Coast, Queensland, from 4th to 6th May.
The regular strips of Doc Rat are going to take a pause for a bit – for three weeks, to be precise. Various commitments have taken precedence over my drawing board time, the most important of which is my part in the running of ConFurgence 2018, from 23rd to 25th February. The principal guest of honour will be the wonderful artist, photographer and animator, Joaquin Baldwin. I do thoroughly recommend you consider making the journey to 
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, for our annual anthropomorphic convention, one of these years. You won’t be disappointed.
In the meantime, even though the regular strips will be on pause, dear readers, fear not. You’ll still get a daily offering, a sort of scrapbook from the Doc Rat sketch vaults. Every day will be a new surprise. Then, on Monday March 12th, we’ll rejoin the wolves and the rabbits as they toward the climax of our current story.
More news about what’s coming up in 2018 will follow.
Pat the Tiger is a massive fan of the Richmond Tigers AFL football club, in the game we call Australian Rules football. Pat and his partner Pat the Dog have just been watching their mighty Richmond Tigers at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) for the Grand Final. They’ve been shouting themselves hoarse.
RICHMOND WINS THE 2017 PREMIERSHIP! For the first time since 1980!
Pat and Pat are ecstatic. It’s going to be an exhausting night of celebration for both of them!
Click on the picture to be taken to the competition page. Then send me the funniest caption you can think of, and if yours makes me laugh the most, you’ll win the actual picture itself. Get to it.
Some people have had trouble getting the caption entry machine to work. If that happens, please just e-mail to me on :
Here are the three strips from the Doc Rat story showcasing our smiling Tasmanian devil who sells these dubious burgers from the hospital’s fast-food servery. You personally may or may not think that such an outlet has a place in a hospital, but that sort of thing does happen. (Legal disclaimer: This is a general fast food parody and is not meant to comment on the attributes of any particular company or products.)
Here it is.
Okay, a little late, I admit, but better late than never.
Jarrad is going for a run and demonstrating that he won’t be held back by a touch of exercise-induced asthma.
Click on the picture to be taken to the competition page. Then send me the funniest caption you can think of, and if yours makes me laugh the most, you’ll win the actual picture itself. Get to it.
Some people have had trouble getting the caption entry machine to work. If that happens, please just e-mail to me on :
Thank you for a genuinely funny joke that made me laugh out loud at my computer.
The prize will be on its way to you soon.
Click on the picture to see this joke and all the honourable mentions.
If you want to read Doc Rat from the beginning, until recently you would have been disappointed to find it absolutely empty from 2006 to 2014. I am working now to restore that. Every week, I load another twenty strips into the archive page, and I’m pleased to report that at this moment it’s up to DR0340, which first came out on October 12th 2007. As it takes an hour out of my working day to do it, and as I work on Doc Rat one day a week, then twenty a week is all I can manage. There’s some good reading to be had, at this stage.
Don’t forget that Doc Rat is also on Facebook and Twitter, both the latest ones and those golden oldies from ten years ago.
I will be attending Anthrocon, in Pittsburgh PA, June 29th to July 2nd, 2017. Keep an eye out for me where you see Bill Holbrook, of Kevin and Kell fame.
I really look forward to meeting everyone who can make it there. Certainly if you’re already planning to go, then look me up – we can share a sketch and a story or two.
I will be attending Anthrocon, in Pittsburgh PA, June 29th to July 2nd, 2017. Keep an eye out for me where you see Bill Holbrook, of Kevin and Kell fame.
I really look forward to meeting everyone who can make it there. Certainly if you’re already planning to go, then look me up – we can share a sketch and a story or two.
While I’m at it, I must tell you about ThronesCon 2017, a Game of Thrones convention that was held here in Melbourne on the weekend of May 20th and 21st. I had a wonderful time talking, laughing, telling stories, and also selling sketches and my limited-edition prints. As you see in the illustration, the con scheduled four of the cast performers to come to Australia. Although one had to cancel due to sudden unavoidable reasons, we still had great congeniality and conviviality from Dominic Carter (Lord Janos Slynt), Miltos Yerolemou (Syrio Forel) and Ian Beattie (Ser Meryn Trant).
When I can, I’ll give you all a better look at the caricature artwork.
Update June 7th 2017. Here’s a better look at my four caricatures from ThronesCon 2017, Melbourne, Australia.
I read Richard Adams’ Watership Down in 1978 at the age of eighteen, and for me it was, alongside The Lord of the Rings and Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, one of the influential books that shaped my dreams and imagination for a decade.
For someone who emotionally connected with anthropomorphic animal fantasy, on me it scored a direct hit. This was because it took itself deadly seriously whilst still maintaining an animal-simple world view. Life was uncomplicated, beautiful, sometimes desperate and sometimes deadly. It was the raw, vital essence of living, distilled with the complexity removed; it felt like undiluted existence Although its origins were Adams’ tale-telling to a couple of children, the final version of the story in the book of Watership Down was that of a child of nature told adult-to-adult. I have never found this vibe captured in any book I have read since – Watership Down is unique.
Not only did I fall for it utterly, it so chanced to happen that I travelled on holiday to England at the end of that year – the first time I, an Australian, had ever set foot in the ‘motherland’. This was a Watership bonanza for me. The movie had just been released, and as I rode on the London underground for the first time in my life, I was treated to the sight of huge posters on the walls, depicting a rabbit blackly silhouetted against the setting sun. This was a stunning image. A closer look showed, subtly placed behind the foreground plants and grasses, a wire snare around his neck strangling him to death. This vouched the production’s credentials – it would be a story that would pull no punches. When I stayed with family friends in Gerrard’s Cross, with access to strolls through the woods of Burnham Beeches (a world both alien and familiar to me), I was then finally able to go to the local cinema to watch the animated feature for the first time.
It was all I could have hoped for. They had made as good a movie of the book as anyone could have expected in the real world. I bought the picture book of the film (you couldn’t buy actual movies in those days. folks) and later the LP album of the beautiful musical score.
For the crowning glory, I took a train to Newbury and spent a day hiking from there to Whitchurch, through the heart of the actual Berkshire countryside in which Adams had set the story. And which, I may add, the film makers had painstakingly depicted, location by location, in their background art. This even included the actual building of Nuthanger Farm, a private residence that played a central part in both book and film. The down, the power pylons, the railway, the church yard, all were there. That month of my life was a thrill that will never quite be matched.
I don’t think Adams thought of Watership Down as a children’s book. But do I think the producers of the film felt compelled to market it as such or face commercial failure. As a result, we had the strange instance of the principal characters of a ‘kids’ flick’ tearing one another’s throats out and bleeding to death on screen. I think all that proves is it wasn’t really a kids’ flick.
This left parents with the uncomfortable dilemma of whether or not to take their children to it. I remember the next year, back in Australia, my aunt and uncle asking me whether I thought it would be frightening to my niece, who I think must have been about six at the time. They were concerned because she had recently watched another animal movie, ostensibly for children, from which she had come away traumatised – silent, clinging, cowering and refusing to speak. I sat her down and pulled out my picture book. I gently showed her some of the beautiful scenes of the rabbits and the countryside. And, admittedly, the fighting. And the lacerations. And suffocations. And strangulations. And exsanguinations. And… by the look on her face I reached the firm conclusion that if my little niece had been terrified by one single scene in some other animal movie, then perhaps a screening of Watership Down would not be for her.
I told my uncle and aunt it wouldn’t be a good idea to take her to the cinema. They thanked me for my counsel.
Oh, and incidentally, what was the original movie that had terrified the daylights out of her? The Tales of Beatrix Potter, as performed by the Royal Ballet. I never did find out why.
FOOTNOTES
Catbunny surprised me with a rather off-beam entry – it was such a departure from the obvious that it made me stop and think. I love the unexpected! Of course, you get the Eighties pop culture reference, I hope. See this entry and the other suggestions that won special mentions by clicking the link HERE
As always, I most enjoy a submission (and as it’s about a suppository, I really don’t want to call this one an “entry”) that adds an extra idea to the whole of the joke. The picture and caption together should give a better end result than the picture alone.
See this and the other entries by clicking the link HERE.
Congratulations, Catbunny and Brian, your prizes will soon be on their way to you.
Here’s the next one, to get you thinking. Remember, if you win the competition, you win the artwork. I don’t care how many goes you have at it. Try some obvious ones and some off-the-wall ones. Just go to the competition page HERE.
Some people have noted they have had trouble submitting their caption through the form. This seems to happen with some platforms or devices. Don’t be discouraged, just send it to me through the CONTACT page or e-mail me directly on
Jenner will be attending FURDU on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, from 5th to 7th May, and ANTHROCON in Pittsburgh PA, USA, from 29th June to 2nd July.
Thanks for being patient during the short spell while I caught up. I’m sure you’re all waiting to find out what exciting events happen next!
And thank you for the letters of support. Onward…!
Use your imagination to come up with a funny caption. If the entry form doesn’t work, please just send me an e-mail through the contact form or at
It is with a heavy heart that I press the pause button on Doc Rat for two weeks. Many tribulations have weighed down my progress lately, including computer malfunction, and although I hadn’t planned for it to go this way, I have had to decide that health and sanity are important things for me to value if I am to sustain Doc Rat in the long run.
So, this is just temporary. You’ll find out what happens to Daniella in exactly two weeks, because Doc Rat will commence again on Wednesday January 4th, 2017. Hang in there, rat fanciers.
Jenner
Uncle Kage has been a regular attendee at the annual Australian furry convention ConFurgence (formerly MiDFur), held in Melbourne, Victoria. He gives so much to the fans that he has helped make the event sparkle with wicked yet intelligent fun.
For ConFurgence 2017, in January 6th -8th 2017, I would dearly love to see him there again. But with the current cost of air fares, he needs a little help to make the dollar stretch that last little way.
So, here’s where I want to pitch in. I will sell an art commission. The money will go entirely to topping up the Uncle Kage travel fund with the hope of bringing him to Australia in 2017.
I will draw on paper, A4 size, a full-colour picture of your character in black ink pen and pencils. I will also scan it and provide a digitally coloured copy as well. The picture may be of your character alone, or standing side by side with Uncle Kage himself.
I will complete the commission within one month of payment.
UPDATE: THE AUCTION IS NOW OVER! THANK YOU TO THE BIDDERS AND CONGRATULATIONS TO THE SUCCESSFUL BUYER.
Jenner
Yes, I will be attending FurWAG, the Australian furry convention of the west side of the country. Given that WA is the state where I grew up, graduated from medical school, learned art, made my cartoons and writings available to the international SF&F fannish community and jumped on board for the beginning of furry fandom, it’s only appropriate I return to Perth to join in the fun of these annual weekends. This will be my fourth, and I haven’t missed a single one.
The guest this year is the fabulous artist Silverfox! Go to the web site for details.
Caption Competition Sep-Oct 2016
Here is the latest competition picture. Please send in your entries for your most side-splitting captions. I don’t yet have a winner for the July-August picture, but I should be able to announce that soon!
While moving house recently, a friend who had been involved in Aussiecon 2, the 1985 World Science Fiction Convention, found a single sheet of paper that he recognised as a piece of artwork I had created in 1984. It was one of the pieces I had submitted to the art show and hadn’t sold. So he returned it to me. A lot of my fannish art back then had used anthropomorphic animals, so in a sense my cartoons were known through the world SF fanzine community for their anthropomorphic animal characters at precisely the same time that (unbeknownst to me) furry fandom was in the process of being conceived by American fans with parallel likes and tastes.
This was a cartoon that was published in one of the Australian ‘zines of the time, taking a humorous look at the debated topic of the “no weapons policy” for costumes. I used my favourite personal characters – sort of commando sewer rats – as the ones to debate the point with a staff member. That was in 1984. A year later, I hopefully took it and a few others with me to the big convention Aussiecon 2, aiming to sell them all for big money in some enthusiastic bidding wars.
You’ll see from the attached bidding slip that the reserve price was $10. It didn’t sell.
Ink and Letratone on A4 paper, some damage and staining. Of vast historic value. It’s now back in my collection, and it is no longer for sale. As far as I’m concerned, it’s worth much more. I hope the potential buyers who held back are kicking themselves today.
The caption competition for May/Jun 2016 has been judged, and the next contest for Jul/Aug 2016 has been posted. Have fun!
If you find you can’t submit your entry using the competition form, then until we rectify that, simply go to the Contact page. Don’t forget to identify your name and home city.
Jarrad’s inadvertently revolutionary posters were based on one particular poster I saw a couple of months ago, in the university district of Carlton, here in Melbourne, I was intrigued by it. Although it implored me to Smash fascism, beyond that it was remarkably short on instructions. And I always find that pictures of adorable cats soften every message, so that made it doubly perplexing. I could imagine Jarrad wanting to spread joy and love, but messing it up in his own tangle-footed way. How far can this seven-year-old boy and his crew push the world to the brink of disaster in the name of peace?
And here’s a sketch of Quarrydog, dressed up as a medical student. Yes, of course he’s only thirteen – I’ll have to be drawing Doc Rat for many more years before he reaches university age in the story. But we can dream, can’t we?
Zootopia, in my opinion, is possibly the most nearly perfect animated move ever made. Simply put, in every single aspect it scores top marks. The look, the scope, the vista. The digital know-how to give an aspect as complex and intricate as if a real camera had filmed a real crowd in a real city. The animator’s craft so perfect and subtle and nuanced that if more fair to call it not character animation but animated characters acting. The flawless control of pacing. The beautiful, melodic, urban multicultural music score. And not least the writing .
The script of Zootopia is a masterpiece, and its writers – Jared Bush, Phil Johnston et.al. – deserve to be immensely proud.
I could talk for a long time about the significance of Zootopia as arguably the first ever big-budget movie in the modern anthropomorphic style: animal characters who take ‘human’ roles but whose animality is an integral part of the premise. And there may come a time when I do. I would enthuse at length about the shrewd sequence of logical cause and effect that propels the story, the many witty devices, the deftly-crafted humour and the richness of what I call “the emotional symphony”.
But for brevity, I’ll stick to one single aspect: Apology. Because of all the qualities of the writing that stand out, the place of apology in the storytelling of Zootopia bears a maturity rare in this category of family-targeted movies.
Yes, the vibe’s about holding on tight to your dream. But what is neatly slotted into the screenplay’s background is a precious lesson in life – how to make good on your mistakes. How broken things – and broken people – can be fixed.
To me, what nailed it were the two episodes with Gideon Grey, the boy fox who was (rabbit) Judy Hopps’ childhood bully. He terrorized her, beat her and walked away unpunished. Fast forward many years. Hopps stays true to her dream and enlists in the police academy, becomes the star graduate officer and sets out as a trailblazer for rabbitkind as Zootopia’s first bunny cop. She expects to treat others fairly and to be treated fairly, regardless of species. But while she has her successes, she also has a major public screw-up, brings what she sees as disgrace to her uniform and shatters her own dreams of making the world a better place. She tried, she failed, people got hurt, and she withdrew to the ambitionless safety of her small-town family home base.
Enter the grown-up Gideon Grey. Bigger and hungrier than ever. Shock and panic, then relief. The brain-dead bully really has grown up, not just physically but also emotionally and, dare I say, spiritually. No, he did not need to be beaten up to teach him a lesson. There was no place for retribution, score-settling nor any other comic book ‘justice’. This simple soul had found his own peace. Most importantly, he (alone or with counselling) had come to his own insight, had recognised his fault and attended to it. In so doing, he had found peace, and thereafter his every step upon the earth propagated this peace to others.
This is an astonishingly rare piece of storytelling, and on experiencing it my heart lifted and sang. The ‘villain’ took it upon himself to find his own insight, the insight that could never be forced into him with a fist. Guided by his insight, he explained to Judy Hopps his past screwed-up-ness, frankly apologized and… well, that was that.
It was sincere. Hopps was disarmed by the apology, and so was I, because quite plainly in the recent years Grey had been more than corrected. He had been healed.
What makes Zootopia a masterpiece of writing is what happens next. Grey unwittingly points Hopps to a clue that can help her get back on the trail of her major case, so off she races to the city. But subtly, what Grey has given her as well, in his own salt-of-the-earth manner, is the object lesson that you can make good on your mistakes. He is spiritual healing personified. Even when the mistakes are ones for which other people have paid your price.
And it’s then you start to realize that Hopps is a flawed character, just as was Grey. As a child at the movie’s outset, her uncalled-for public taunt of the bully at the school concert was an act of hurt that was no less excusable than his standover attack on her. And her Zootopia Police Department press conference blunder could be laid on the doorstep of her ingrained, bucolic prejudice. Just under her surface, under her gently smiling tolerance courses racism in the antithesis of the values she claims to hold so high. Not that she ever would have recognized it as such, even when told.
Grey was paradoxically ahead of Hops in the wisdom stakes. He taught her that insight heals, and with this reflection, she healed herself, her severed friendship with Nick Wilde, the damage to her mishandled case and the people of the city. And then, in the natural course of these things, adventurous crime fighting ensues, and justice is ultimately delivered.
Wrapping up, Hopps’ finishing speech to the next generation of police college graduates evidences her new moral maturity as it recaps the above and delivers her lesson on sound, workable values in a complex world. Oh, I do so sincerely hope that storytelling and scriptwriting of this calibre will be the future benchmark for all such motion pictures.
What I strive for, at least in the more serious periods of the Doc Rat stories, is a lesson in fixing wrongs, in making amends, and in healing. I try to manifest the notion that true reconciliation heals both parties, and likewise the healing of both parties is a precondition to reconciliation.
In the ‘Jennerverse’ world of Doc Rat, I have often set apologies formally in the rabbit ceremony of charonta-lamba. But the full formal ritual is not always needed. The skill can be applied at any time of making things right again. Rabbits do it on the hop, so to speak. The knowledge of the principles is the important thing – what it means and what it takes.
Apologies have the power to create peace.
I couldn’t have put it any better than the way in which it was dramatized in the story of Zootopia. I take my hat off to Messrs Bush, Johnston and the story writing team. Well done indeed.
Doc Rat first appeared on Monday, June 26th 2006. I am proud to have continued to bring a strip to my readers five times a week since then. Almost without a break. There are some occasions in that span when for technical, personal or other reasons there has been a break of some weeks, but apart from those minor gaps I have worked strenuously to keep the show on the road.
We are now well past the two-and-a half thousand mark. For the first 500, I drew them on paper. These works, in centimetres, were of the dimensions 24 x 7 – a wry joke I set for myself to remind me of the amount of my life this project threatened to claim (or at least once I added my Doc Rat duties to my main duties as a full-time doctor). The subsequent strips have been created on a Wacom tablet, running Corel Painter. My goal with going electronic was to preserve the hand-drawn feeling, so that a reader would be hard-put to tell whether what they were seeing had been crafted with ink on paper or digital ink on a screen. Certainly, though, going electronic allowed me a lot more flexibility to correct and clean up my lines, resize heads, redraw without erasing the life out of paper, and of course type in the text instead of having to letter by hand. I originally thought I would be able to create strips faster on the tablet. As it turned out, I am doing them better, but sadly not any faster than before.
Time and practice has made Doc Rat much better, actually. Even though the first strips still hold up well enough, they are necessarily early works of a person with ten years less experience.
Which brings me to the archive. Since the web site’s program was reincarnated in WordPress a few years ago, it has been a long-term goal of mine to restock the ten years of archives. The admirable Wolf Bylsma has done a lot of this, but there is still more to be done. I’m working on it.
The fannish discussion site, The Cross Time Cafe, took Doc Rat on board as one of its works for ongoing conversation. I recommend you give it a look.
The form of Doc Rat grew as the characters developed more complete lives of their own. Small story arcs became larger story arcs, and there were stretches of serious drama in amongst the usual minefield of funny jokes. That’s just how it turned out. Life is laughter and tears. My goal has been that if I am to tell a joke, I tell best joke I can. If a story, the best story I can.
Ben has gone from a single man to engaged, married and a father. Daniella and he have faced peril and death, as have many of their friends. Societal change has been on the agenda, as it is still. It’s a case of healing the small things and the big things.
I hope you have enjoyed Doc Rat for as long as you’ve been reading it, up to a decade. Now, prepare yourself for Ben’s big surprise. (Note: as the 26th will be a Sunday, the surprise will have to be revealed on Friday 24th. Okay?)
and I will mail it out to you. The mailing cost is included in the price, and remember, you need pay only in Australian dollars, which are worth very little anyway! So treat yourself.
Jenner can now be followed on Twitter. All of the current daily strips, some of the past ones and the occasional whimsical musing. Follow Jenner with @DocRatComic.
“The Doc’ gave me thith prethcripthion againtht my lithp, but I don’t think it’th working.”
– Tiger T
“Can you calculate the total for me? I’m a cobra, not an adder.”
– Melkior, Victoria, Australia
“Well, the bill seems OK, but you know I’m a lousy adder”
– Valerie Falconer, Penarth, Wales, UK
“I was told this is to detoxify my body. Is that safe??”
– Max Goof, Dublin, Ohio, USA
“Prescription for Aricept … fangs for the memories…”
Tristan Black Wolf, Syracuse, New York, USA
“I wanted to pick up a few fang-you notes.”
– John Reynolds, Concord, California, USA
“It’th right on the tip of my tongue…”
– Michelle Gaudette, Medway, Massachusetts, USA
“Please tell me I’m immune to my own poison! I bit my tongue when I saw your bill!”
– Phil McCarty, Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA
“I bit my tongue.”
Timmie, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA
“Our secretary’s real near-sighted, you see. So there I was by the stapler …”
– Dave Neil, Idaho Falls, Idaho
“Ith to help control my lipth.”
– Kim Squire, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada
“It’s a layoff notice. Jenner is replacing the cartoon.”
M Henry, Reidsville, North Carolina, USA
“…for a course of small-squealing-rodent replacement patches.”
– Jenner
Is Ben Rat an M.D.?
Well, no. You see, that’s American. In Australia, the initial graduate qualification is M.B.,B.S. – “Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery”. Of course, that’s still basically the same thing. Ben has the M.B.,B.S., and then some extra letters to represent further post-graduate qualifications.
Being a doctor has a lot in common with being a teacher. Indeed, the original meaning of the word doctor was a learned person who imparts knowledge. I’m talking about medical doctors, but of course there are many other forms of doctor in the academic world. Some doctors have Ph.D. after their names. In fact, a witty and live-spirited American scientist of my acquaintance used to boast that as a doctor of philosophy his three post-nominal letters outranked doctors of medicine with their two. That was until he saw my business card, and registered my twenty-eight. We’re friends to this day, although he sometimes still looks at me in a funny way,
Medical doctors and teachers both have a very human job. To perform well in their craft, doctors must elicit information, compile it into some sensible order and then, with a base of knowledge, come up with a correct answer, after which they finally – and this is where the teaching skills come in – impart that answer in a way that gives the patient the understanding and skills to take the problem to its resolution.
The best treatment doesn’t treat, it empowers the receiving person to self-treat. It renders the patient more capable and less prone to needing care. The best consultation is when the patient walks out the door happier, smarter and stronger than when she walked in.
So, do doctors like teaching? Ha! Just try to stop them! Ben educates and empowers his patients in the course of his consultations. He has also taught formally, in a voluntary capacity in some community education functions.
Daniella is a doctor of dentistry and works with patients. As you know, she also teaches dentistry to students as a lecturer at the Bluegum University. And she teaches Tae Kwon Do at the community centre.
Both Doc Rat and Doc Wolf started teaching Quarrydog the basics of doctoring. Mary started teaching Ben and Danni Secret Bunny Business.
All are passing on knowledge, an interpersonal service practised with skill.
The reason I introduced Simon/Quarrydog as a young character who wanted to become a doctor was, in part, prompted by the fact I also teach medical students from Monash University. I do this in a one-on-one situation in my rooms, as I work through my daily consultations. And yes, teaching is satisfying. Successfully transferring skills to someone, to enrich that person’s capacity, is an intensely rewarding thing to do.
Here’s to the world’s teachers. May they ever be recognised.
A lot has been spoken and written, and more still will be be uttered, about the breathtaking and sub-human savagery unleashed in Paris in the past day. Others will comment about the sadness, the fear and the evil; I’ll add my voice to the chant, but I’ll not try to outdo anyone in grief.
Instead, I’ll say that as a doctor, my job is not just to save lives but to enrich them. When people wonder why they are alive, part of what I do is to step in and help them try to make sense of it. When they ask why they should keep going, I use what small wisdom I have to guide them.
And so, in Doc Rat, I try to spread the philosophies I have learned, bought by years of my own experience and the life experience and losses of many, many other people. Anthropomorphic animals may not look as if they are seriously taking on the real world problems of the environment, overpopulation, racism and terrorism, but in a sense the issues that bunnies, mice, wolves and foxes face in the Jennerverse are still fixed with the same tool kit as we may use on our own problems.
“No-one should want to hurt anyone,” cried Flopsy. And that’s true. Whatever the pressing problem that brings people into conflict up against other people, no one should ever want to hurt anyone. No-one should feel happy to have hurt anyone. The moment anyone can feel okay about having hurt someone is the moment that person has become more animal than human. That person’s punishment will be worse than anything we can inflict in revenge, because a life not connected to other souls is a shallow life without meaning.
Indeed, you don’t have to have reached the stage of hurting someone to become sub-human. You can be sub-human just with the preparedness to hurt, the preparedness to disregard. Conversely, the preparedness not to hurt and not to disregard, even to our cost, that state of mind is the membership dues we pay for the privilege of calling ourselves an individual of the human race.
“Quarrydog says “It’s not okay to hurt people.” Boss Alpha Blutenstein says “Sometimes the violence we accept for granted in our own generation will look shocking to the next.” Broken people, broken things and broken relationships will be fixed, not discarded, by Doc Rat and the other healers, and when their recipients build up the strength to do so, they say “Thank you for saving me.”
We only have one life to walk our mortal journey. Sometimes, the lives of some of us will be unfairly brought to an end by the physical strength of others. Violently, in fear, in regret, in terror. I have no answer to redress that. But I can only say that to mean anything at all, our mortal journey must also be a human one. Those of us who call ourselves human know we are this or we are nothing.
And so, what is the means by which the pen counters the bloody might of the sword? In the face of face of a massacre of people for the simple reason that they were there? Only this dearly-bought wisdom: It is impossible to feel okay about taking a life and still be truly human.
The greatest self-punishment of a killer is to exist empty and damned.
Sit back and enjoy the continuing adventure of Quarrydog, as he deals with his role of bringing peace to a divided society. Doc Rat and Nurse Mary have to stitch together the torn fabric of… Look, this comic is part social activism and part funny jokes, okay?
For the next two weeks, there will be a break in the story line, while I build up a bit of a stock of strips to carry me through the coming month. I have a commitment to attend a doctors’ convention here in Melbourne and then FurWAG in Perth. With those two requirements, if I try to keep up with the current story strips, I am going to fall short.
So, I will have to put Doc Rat on hiatus. Sorry. But to keep the site interesting for you, I will be showing you every day some examples of my rough drafts and commenting on how they relate to my creative process.
For those of you who are on the edges of your seats wondering what’s going to happen to Quarrydog, I can only give you my apologies and ask you to hold on as the timer ticks down.
Jenner
To all my devoted readers, I bid you welcome to the brand new Doc Rat web site. I know the wait has been excruciating, but you will certainly find this new production has been worth the anticipation.
Why the change? Well, the program for the original Doc Rat site had been outpaced by the advances in today’s operating systems, as a result of which they no longer let it perform to its best standard. That’s why people like you were having problems with it. Naturally, this was not good enough, so it was time for a change. A big change.
I thank my webmaster Wolf Bylsma for his sterling work in creating our new home, often against difficult odds. And the wonderful Level Head for bridging the gap in the interim with his mirror site, archive and postings on the Cross Time Café discussion forum.
So what will you find in the new Doc Rat site? Well, it’s like Ben and Daniella’s nursery – good enough to start off with, with a touch of work to go. We haven’t finished stocking the archives yet, but that will come with time. Things will keep getting better.
Okay, mates, it’s time to become fair dinkum agents of the Rat and start spreading the word:
“The doctor is in.”