Daisy Owl

File:Quick Reference.jpg

Daisy: "Oh no! Here comes a meteor! So much for the dinosaurs!? Cooper: "Oh, but I'm too quick! I dodge your meteor!" Daisy: "Oh, but the debris from the impact is blocking out the sun, destroying the rich ecosystem you depend upon!" Cooper: "OH NO! I'M FOSSILIZING! REMEMBER ME....AS BONES..."

Daisy Owl is a comic strip by Ben Driscoll that began in 2008. It is slightly similar to both Calvin and Hobbes and Achewood with its often light, whimsical humor and simple grayscale line art.

The webcomic follows a precocious girl named Daisy and her adoptive father Mr. Benjamin Owl. Mr. Owl is an actual owl. Rounding out the cast is Cooper, Daisy's little brother, and Steve Brown, who is Mr. Owl's friend who is also a bear (a polar/grizzly hybrid raised by humans, to be exact).

They live in a seemingly normal world, except for the talking animals, wizards, and super-advanced honey making technology.

Currently undergoing pretty extreme Schedule Slip - there hasn't been a new comic since June 2010, when Driscoll stopped with no warning at the beginning of a new a storyline, as well as deleting the entire comment section on every strip. After fan inquiry in the Cracked.com forums(where the strip had initially gained popularity), Driscoll announced that cartooning professionally turned it from something he wanted to do into something he had to do, and he had gone back to being a programmer. He said that he will wants to continue the comics in the future, but the ongoing lack of Daisy Owl is making the fanbase rather sad.

Tropes used in Daisy Owl include:

• Alt Text
• Arch Enemy - The futon.
• Art Shift - In this strip to amplify the drama
• Berserk Button - Mr. Owl of all people loses his cool (not to people thankfully) while playing Monopoly and Risk, since he always forgets that he hates actually playing those games.
  • And of course, kidnapping his kids.
• Big No - Here, when Steve realizes that he just accidentally initiated an orphanage's self-destruct sequence.
• Boring but Practical - Cooper realises that a real dinosaur would be very hard to take care of and prefers to have toys. Also brooms are apparently the ideal space weapon because of a lack of bullets to create air leaks or edges to cut your suit on. The perfect weapon and quiet too.
• Casual Danger Dialog - After Steve's Big No, he tries desperately to fix the problem...and one of the people he's theoretically just sentenced to death comes along and fixes the problem in less than a minute, mocking Steve for shouting random gibberish at a computer.
• Characterization Marches On - Compare Steve's initial apearance to how he behaves now; they're completely different.
• Children Raise You - Played with - the children fell out of the sky one day, but Mr. Owl was fairly mature already, has maintained his slightly immature interests, and they seem to have done absolutely no matchmaking for him. They do make him go to the vet, which could be construed as "raising" him.
• Crazy Prepared - NASA is running a Space School to train grown Space Babies to fight invading aliens. They don't know of any invading aliens- or any aliens at all- yet, but better safe than sorry.
• Dangerously Genre Savvy - "WANTED" posters are equipped with doodle moustache detectors.
• Department of Child Disservices - DSS would take Daisy and Cooper away from a perfectly lovely father just because he's an owl who lives in a treehouse and doesn't wear any clothes, but they never find out even though he meets with Daisy's principal.
  • Actually Daisy says that is what would happen. Also the house isn't to code.
• Dude, Where's My Respect? - After going through so much to save Daisy and Cooper from Space Baby school, Steve is forced to suffer through the horrific ordeal of sitting in the middle seat.
• Eye Scream - After reading this strip you may not want to go to the dentist for a while.
• Family-Unfriendly Death - SPLORT
• Fantastic Racism - Polar bears and brown bears represent white and black people respectively.
  • I have no idea what you're talking about but you just ruined a perfectly good joke about bears.
• Feather Fingers - Mr Owl
• Foreshadowing - Blatantly in the alt text in this strip
• Fun T-Shirt - Daisy disapproves. You can buy it.
• Funny Animal - The animal characters are basically this, although they do retain some animal characteristics.
• Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal - Steve usually wears a hat. Mr Owl, however, normally wears nothing.
• Hammerspace - Lampshaded in this strip.
• Heterosexual Life Partners - In the strip's description, it says Daisy is "being brought up by an owl and a bear". Steve and Mr Owl also take a bath together in one strip, although the Ho Yay implications are lessened by the fact they find it awkward.
• Implacable Man - Justified in that it apears to be a small calliber handgun and Steve's a bear.
• Is That What They're Calling It Now? - Steve complains about kids with "knife shoes". Owl asks if he means "ice skates" and Steve responds with this.
• Mad Scientist - Steve's boss has strong elements of this, what with his obsession with honey production and the incredibly borked-out inventions he comes up with (such as a process to shorten hibernation and an alarm that specifically signals little old ladies).
• Mundane Fantastic
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero - "Nice going, jerk". It's so bad that the self-destruct message itself is calling him out on it.
• Noodle Incident - Apparently, Daisy's had a bad experience with saving monkeys
• Now Do It Again Backwards - when Cooper's stuffed animal is injured by falling down the stairs, Cooper suggests the radical treatment of... "falling back up the stairs?"
• Obstructive Bureaucrat
• Papa Wolf - Mr. Owl, who is willing to fight NASA and stow away on a rocket with no astronaut training if it means saving his kids.
• Pass Fail - Steve, who is part polar bear, part brown bear, passes as a polar bear, while his brother looks more like a brown bear.
• Platonic Cave - The fly is trapped by Daisy
• Precision F-Strike - Mr Owl playing Risk
• Racist Grandma - Steve's parents are prejudiced against humans
• Running Gag - Steve's bad stand-up comedy dreams.
• Schedule Slip - Once due to the author going on a trip, and now happening indefinitely.
  • The last one went up on June 3rd 2010. Driscoll has stated that the comic started to seem too much like a chore to him to enjoy it. But he also has said that he isn't necessarily done with it, either.
• Serious Business - Everything
• Shaped Like Itself - Beans are made of beans.
• Shout-Out - There was that time when Daisy and Cooper were eating cereals called Beartarto Puffs.
  • Dilbert gets one in the alt-text of this strip.
• Social Services Does Not Exist - Averted. Social services do exist; that's why Daisy and Cooper can't call the police when Mr. Owl doesn't not return home late at night.
• Species Surname - Mr. Benjamin Owl
• Spork - Steve has a bad dream involving them in this strip
• Symbol Swearing - In this strip
• Talking Animal - Although the animal characters are basically Funny Animals, Steve hibernates, and Mr Owl feels embarrassed when he can't fly and once served mice for dinner
• This Is Sparta - I. WILL. NOT. LOSE. ANOTHER. MONKEY.
• Unsound Effect - frequently, becoming a Running Gag. However, apparently The World Is Not Ready for "bib bib bib", and "affix" was similarly rejected.
• What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome? - The world will have its honey
  • Since everything in this comic is Serious Business, this manages to come up every few strips.
• What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous? - Enjoy the middle seat
• White Dude, Black Dude - In this strip
  • I have no idea what you're talking about, and you're ruining a perfectly good joke about bears.
• You Fail Biology Forever - Played for laughs and often fitted with a lampshade in the Alt Text.
• You Should Have Died Instead: Inflicted on this fly