The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! - TV Tropes

Counter-clockwise from top: Princess Voluptua, Hibachi the Dragon, Molly the Monster, Bob Smithson, Jean Poule, Bob's House, Fructose Riboflavin

The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! is a serialized, science fiction/humor Web Comic by Jim Cleaveland. It began life as a print comic appearing in the newsletter and magazine of PSSFS, the Penn State Science Fiction Society, from 1993-1997, and was revived as a webcomic in May, 2006.

Bob Smithson was the world's most average man, leading a quietly dull life in the suburb of Generictown and reasonably content that way until the day he inexplicably became a Weirdness Magnet. Strange, paranormal things now happen to him almost daily. Unicorns appear in his yard. Dragons perch near his house. Alien spaceships crash into his roof. Actually, anything and everything likes to crash into his roof.

Bob sees it all through with surprising grace because, despite his seemingly infinite normalcy, he does have a few outstanding qualities. He is very kind and doesn't judge by appearances (such that he will give even a three-legged space jellyfish a chance to be friends with him if it is so willing). He has an uncommon amount of Common Sense. And yet he is generally too thick-skulled to fully grasp the frighteningly awesome implications of most of the stuff he encounters.

For a humor comic, the characters show a considerable amount of depth. As absurd as the situations they encounter are, most of the humor derives from how the different characters react to them, and how they interact with each other.

• Bob Smithson, the title character, is the world's most average man. He runs a news stand in Generictown.
• Dr. Jean Poule is Bob's girlfriend, a biologist at the local college.
• Molly the Peanut Butter Monster is a pink furry monster born when Jean and Bob collided on the sidewalk, accidentally mixing an experiment of Jean's with Bob's jar of peanut butter. Sweet, brilliant, naive.
• Princess Voluptua is heir to the throne of the Nemesites, the local space empire. She appears to be a beautiful woman, but her real form is a giant butterfly creature.
• Snookums is a giant alien monster that got shrunk to the size of a basketball but still weighs many tons. Molly keeps him as a pet. Bob calls Snookums a "tentacle bunny."
• Agent Ben & Agent Jerry are two FBI agents who frequently get stuck with the unenviable task of investigating Bob.
• Fructose Riboflavin is the greatest criminal in the Nemesite Empire.
• Galatea (Golly) is another peanut butter creature grown by a rival scientist. Far more angst-ridden and megalomaniacal than Molly.
• Lari and his three siblings are ninjas who escaped pursuing samurai by entering a hibernation trance, and overslept. Lari is Molly's boyfriend, having initially mistaken her for a Japanese fox girl spirit.
• Roofus is a robot Molly built to repair Bob's frequent roof damage, but who unexpectedly turned out sentient.
• Hibachi is a fire-breathing dragon. His race evolved in the Age of Dinosaurs, and currently lives on the planet Butane in the Kuiper Belt. He frequently acts as Voluptua's flying steed.

Has a character sheet.

Ran twice a week on Tuesdays and Saturdays for most of its history, then fell into some nasty schedule slip. After announcing a hiatus in June of 2018, the comic resumed in November 2018. Went back on official hiatus in October, 2019, and resumed in August, 2020.

Was one of the very last comics actively hosted on Comic Genesis before that site's final tech crash. It was hosted briefly on Smack Jeeves, but has now finally settled in at ComicFury.

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The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! contains examples of:

• Action Survivor: Bob.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Though Voluptua still hates Fructose Riboflavin and wants him to face justice for his actions, she can't help but feel sorrow for him once Bob tells her his origin and she personally sees how pathetic he truly is.
• Aliens in Cardiff: Generictown is a seemingly dull little town in the middle of nowhere that attracts craziness – or rather, Bob does, and he lives there.
• Aliens Never Invented Democracy: Princess Voluptua, the butterfly-like heir to an empire centering around the neighboring brown dwarf of Nemesis and viceroy of our solar system.
  • Though the Nemesites have a parliament, and the dragons have the "Draconic Althing."
• The Alleged Computer: Dean Martin's TRS-80.
• All Girls Like Ponies: Jean & Molly with the unicorns.
• Alliterative Name: Floyd Fitznewski.
• Amusing Alien: Molly.
• Ancient Astronauts: Inverted with the dragons, who started on Earth and left. Played straighter with their contemporaries, the Nemesites, but humans were apparently unaware of their visits.
• Apathetic Citizens: By now, most of the people of Generictown are aware of all the insanity that revolves around Bob and his household. Most of them just don't care or are actively annoyed by it.
• Arranged Marriage: The first story arc, with Voluptua and Ahem.
• Artificial Family Member: Many. Molly the Peanut Butter Monster considers Bob and Jean her parents (and she does have a little of Jean's DNA). Molly's robot Roofus calls her "Mom." Molly's clone Galatea calls Molly her "sister," calls Jean "Mom," calls Bob "Uncle," and calls the scientist who made her "father" even though she hates him. Molly's other clone Djali calls Jean "Mom," Molly "Sister," and can't seem to decide if Galatea also counts as Mom or as Sister. And Galatea's own creation Gosh calls her "Mom." Oh, and Jean's engagement ring has become part of a Hive Mind of sentient crystals, and once called her "Mom," to which she responded "Oh, don't you start!"

  Voluptua: (to Jean) "And your family has too many kids. But you know that."

• Art Shift: The ninjas without mask are draw in more anime-like style.
• Baby Planet: Fleen.
• Beautiful All Along: Princess Voluptua's true form.
• Big Dumb Object: Coney the Island.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: The Bigfeet.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Rocko Sasquatch.
• Brain Bleach: Bob needs some after seeing Rocko's Shirtless Scene.
• Butt-Monkey: Bob's roof.
• Casual Interstellar Travel: Justified. There's no FTL, but the Nemesites are absurdly long-lived, and relativistic-speed travel is ubiquitous.
• Cast of Snowflakes: The character designs are all very distinct, and even reflect a variety of art styles – most notably the ninjas, who are drawn in manga style, and the Furmians, who look like they stepped out of a Looney Tunes short.
• Catch Phrase: Roofus: "I will fix the roof!" And Jean likes to say "Egad!" a fair bit.
• Cerebus Syndrome: the several early strips where more of surreal Sci-Fi comedy stories. However, while still comical, later arcs become evidently longer and more character driven.
• Character Development: Molly and Golly are born identical, and we get to see exactly how circumstances mold them into such very different people.
• Children Raise You: Bob and Jean raising Molly.
• Christmas Episode: Annually. This is probably the nicest.
• The Comically Serious: Bob
• Contractual Gag: Bob's roof has to get destroyed at least once per story arc. Bonus points if it gets destroyed, fixed, and re-destroyed in a single storyline.
• Crossover: There have been brief crossovers with Melonpool, Zortic, Sketch Comedy, Zeera the Space Pirate, and The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids. As well as a strip contributed to Dr. McNinja's◊ site.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Bob once tried to take on Riboflavin, an old but competent hand-to-hand combatant, but Riboflavin easily trashes Bob around.
  • Galatea promptly pays him back on the same coin.
• Cute Monster Girl: The peanut butter monsters Molly, Golly, Jolly, as well as Volly in her insect form all count.
• Cyber Cyclops: Roofus.
• Dances and Balls: Which turn out badly.
• Dinosaurs Are Dragons: The Dragons had a civilization in the Age of Dinosaurs.
• Dirty Old Man: Mr. Dirtygeezer.
• Doppelgänger: Galatea, to Molly.
• Dragon Rider: Voluptua and Hibachi.
• The End of the World as We Know It: Most story arcs involve at least some danger of this.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Pirates of Ipecac appear to be named "Captain" and "Technician". At least, that's how even they refer to each other, and they're married, so...
• Everytown, America: Named Generictown.
• Evil Twin: The character of Galatea plays with this trope.
• Fantastic Racism: Many dragons resent the Nemesites; and hardly anyone takes Earthlings seriously.
  • Not even the sasquatches.
• The Federation: The Nemesite Empire.
• Fierce Unicorn: After a female unicorn is mutated by a strange pollution, her offspring becomes giant monsters that torment Generictown as Unigar the Vast Unicorn.
• Flowery Elizabethan English: Hibachi and other dragons doth speak this way.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Bob who's calm and kind (phlegmatic), Jean who's easily angered (choleric), Molly who's extroverted and cheerful (sanguine), and Voluptua who's sober and pessimistic (melancholic).
• Freakiness Shame: Voluptua displays this at one point.
  • The trope is averted by Molly, who is quite matter-of-fact about her strangeness.
• Future Slang: "Frass," used by the insectoid Nemesites. Look it up. It means bug poop.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Molly & Galatea.
• Generic Name: Generictown.
• Genius Ditz: Molly. Also Derpwell, the seemingly idiotic pizza parlor worker who is actually well versed in particle physics.
• Ghibli Hills: Pitcheresk Forest.
• Grammar Nazi: The North American Grammar Squirrel.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: Princess Voluptua.
• Halloween Episode: The annual appearance of the Halloween Monster.
• Have You Come to Gloat?: When Bob finds Galatea at the lowest point in her young life, shivering alone behind a trashcan in a downpour, she snarls, "So... You followed me! Why?? Come to gloat at me, while I'm in this pathetic state? How petty!" She's wrong, of course.
• Heel Realization: Played for Laughs here.
• Head-Turning Beauty: Thanks to an error when shapeshifting into what she believed was an average human appearance, Princess Voluptua is this. The fact that Nemesite outfits look like one-piece swimsuits adds to the effect.
• The High Queen: Princess Voluptua is the ruler of our solar system. Earth just doesn't know it.
• Higher-Tech Species: The Nemesites.
• Hologram: Galatea's disguise-projecting beret.
• Hidden Elf Village: The Bigfeet.
• Hitchhiker's Leg: Molly, of all people, attempts this while hitchhiking in this strip, but the fact that she's covered with fur proves a hindrance.
• Humongous Mecha: Roofus, W2:9000, & Molly's robot lion.
• I Can't Do This by Myself: Galatea tries to get her sister Molly to help, because she doesn't want to have to conquer the world all by herself.
• Impossible Hourglass Figure: Voluptua has one (both her wasp-waisted natural insectoid form and her humanoid disguise).
  • Lampshaded when she meets a female human for the first time and makes a mental note to yell at tech support for getting human proportions wrong.
• Incredible Shrinking Man: Snookums used to be much bigger.
• Insignificant Little Blue Planet
• Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: Roofus.
• Instant Expert: Supergeniuses Molly and Golly.
• Interactive Narrator: The narrator is always at least lemony, and will sometimes interact with the cast.
• Interspecies Romance
• Kaiju: Snookums's original form, Unigar the Vast Unicorn, The P.E.P.S.I. Monster, Molly's robot lion, Djali the Giantess, Gosh the Butterfly of Iron.
• King Mook (Literally).
• Leeroy Jenkins: Fitnewsky doesn't really understand how a riot works...
• Lightworlder: Nemesites are from a low gravity planet so ordinary humans have greater strength and stamina than them. Because of the Square-Cube Law, Djali is better able to handle the Nemesite homeworld's gravity than Earth's, but she needs a breathing apparatus because lower gravity means a thinner atmosphere.
• Local Hangout: Akbar's Malt Shop. There are other restaurants, but everybody in the comic seems to frequent Akbar's.
• Love Dodecahedron: Explained here.
• Mad Scientist: Dean Martin, though he'd deny it; also Molly & Galatea; and certainly Slick Simmons and the Rogue Canadian Scientists.
• Mali: The character Sorbet is originally from Mali, and there is a lengthy flashback scene involving one of her ancestors in medieval Timbuktu.
• The Masquerade: The Nemesites have a (loosely enforced) Alien Non-Interference Clause regarding Earth, ostensibly because until we start serious space travel, we're officially just wildlife. It turns out, though, that first contact with Earth's previous civilization, the dragons, went really badly, and Voluptua is very concerned that the inevitable unmasquing goes better this time around.
• The Men in Black: Agent Ben & Agent Jerry.
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: Riboflavin wants to conquer the Earth and threatens to destroy it if they don't surrender. Bob lampshades this and makes Riboflavin look pathetic. The strip is here.
• Monster of the Week: Monsters are fun!
• Muggle Foster Parents: Bob & Jean to Molly.
• Nietzsche Wannabe: Galatea does a pretty good nihilistic rant at one point.
  • She did grow up reading Nietzsche, after all.
• No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: Lampshaded with Jean's formula that accidentally produced Molly.
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: Voluptua has these... even when she's a butterfly!
  • Seeing Jean without a shirt prompts Voluptua to exclaim "Well, those aren't ovipositors!" which probably explains things.
• No Transhumanism Allowed: Generally true for the Nemesites, despite their high-tech nature. Galatea and Voluptua spend a series of strips discussing The Singularity at one point, with the Princess describing why they try to be moderate with their technological use and Galatea grumpily calling them a bunch of cowardly Space Amish.
• Occupiers Out of Our Country: Zippobic's complaint about the Nemesites on Butane.
• Official Couple: Bob & Jean.
• Older Than They Look: Voluptua is at least 300. So are the four ninjas.
• Our Giants Are Bigger: Djali/Jolly.
• Perfect Pacifist People: The Fleenians. Consequently, they keep getting robbed.
• Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs: The dragons sure learned their lesson after the whole iridium bomb fiasco 65 MYA.
• Phlebotinum Rebel: Galatea.
• Planet X:
  • The dragons terraformed a planet in the Kuiper belt named "Butane" after leaving Earth.
  • The Nemesites (of whom the dragons are vassals and Earth is a "wildlife preserve") are from a brown dwarf star hypothesized to be just outside the Oort Cloud.
• Police Are Useless: Officer Baskin and Officer Robbin refuse to believe that anything interesting ever happens in town, and will ignore particularly ridiculous reports. New police officer Sorbet Kohlrabi has upset the status quo by actually caring about the job and being reasonably competent at it.
• Poster-Gallery Bedroom: Molly's room has had posters of Jose Carerras, Gamera, Stephen Hawking, High School Musical, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, and William Shatner as Alyosha in the film The Brothers Karamazov.
• Powered Armor: Abby Primrose.
• Premature Aggravation: In the 196th strip, Jean has just been harshly reminded of something stupid Bob did months ago. She shows up for their date and starts yelling at him for no apparent reason.
• Pretty Boy: Molly explicitly identifies Lari the ninja as a "Bishōnen." He's normally surrounded by a cloud of sparkles.
• Punny Name: Almost everyone, most notably Dr. Jean Poule (Gene pool).
• Rebellious Princess: Voluptua.
• Rip Van Tinkle: Upon awakening from a 300 year sleep, this is Lari the Ninja's first thought. When his siblings wonder if the strange modern world is the afterlife, he disagrees because "I don't think the dead pee."
• Roofless Renovation: Constantly carried out by professional roof-fixing robot Roofus. "I WILL FIX THE ROOF" indeed!
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Voluptua.
• Running Gag: There are several, but the main one is anything at all crashing into Bob's roof.
• Scolding the Fourth-Wall Breaker: Bob is prone to fourth-wall-breaking, and his down-to-earth girlfriend Jean always calls him out on it.

  Molly: Hey, mommy! Daddy's breaking the fourth wall! It's all avant-garde and stuff! Keen, huh?

  Jean Poule: Oh, I hate it when he does that. It's so confusing.

• Seen It All: Akbar seems to have drifted into this, responding to a hostile spaceship showing up at Bob's house by just muttering that he moved here from New Jersey because he wanted some peace and quiet.
• Shout-Out
  • This page has one to Everyday Heroes.
  • Pinky and the Brain, everyone?
  • A subverted "Scooby-Doo" Hoax by the original gang.
  • And here the author confess to be making shout outs of his favorites programs as a child.
  • DC and Marvel Comics respectively.
  • Kim Possible here and (subtly) here ("Lipsky's Cocoa Moo")
  • Heavy Metal and Clash of the Titans in the last panel.
  • Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House" here. And Peppermint Patty from Peanuts gets another Z-minus.
  • Howl's Moving Castle here.
  • The Little Prince here.
  • Rendezvous with Rama in the caption text here.
  • The Uplift novels by David Brin here.
  • WordGirl here.
  • Frosty the Snowman here, here, and here.
  • Steve Ditko here and here.
  • Barbie, Gundam Wing, and Slaughterhouse-Five here.
  • Taz-Mania and A Prairie Home Companion on orange juice and cereal box labels, here.
  • Baoh, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Elvis Presley here.
  • Cowboy Bebop, Flash Gordon, 3-2-1 Penguins!, Doctor Snuggles, Josie and the Pussycats In Outer Space, and Doctor Who, here.
  • The Brothers Karamazov, Harold and the Purple Crayon, Gulliver's Travels, and Godzilla, here.
  • Pippi Longstocking, Frankenstein, and Aliens here.
  • Doonesbury, Harry Potter, Pokémon, The Dover Boys, Where's Waldo?, Spider-Man, and Love Hina here.
  • Blessid Union Of Souls, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Bob Dylan, Citizen Kane, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and The Brothers Grimm here. Really.
  • Dune, the MCU, Star Trek, Bravestarr, Transformers, Robotech, The Beverly Hillbillies, Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, Magic: The Gathering, The Mandalorian, and old commercials for Volkswagon, Sprite, and Cap'n Crunch cereal here.
  • And of course, the mega-crossover that is Molly's Dollies Theater, where Molly plays with all her toys together.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Molly & Galatea.
• Simpleminded Wisdom: Pretty nearly Bob's defining characteristic.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: The strip plants itself firmly on the idealistic side with this encounter between Bob and Galatea.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Molly's speech patterns are made of this.
• Space Amish: The dragons, to an extent.
• Space Pirates: The Pirates of Ipecac.
• Space Police: Officers Zodboink and Krelch.
• Squee: Jean has moments of these... ... especially here ...and here!
• Starfish Aliens: Aliens are never humanoid in their true forms, except for crossover cameos with other webcomics.
• Suburbia: Generictown.
• Take Over the World: Galatea, Fructose Riboflavin.
• Take That!: directed to One More Day, and later to Joe Quesada.
• Talking the Monster to Death: Bob is good at this.
• Techno Babble: Frequently lampshaded.
• Terraform: Butane, adopted planet of the dragons.
• Theme Twin Naming: Molly, Golly, & Jolly.
• There Are No Global Consequences: Lampshaded.
• Time Abyss: Many storylines involve either extraterrestrial or ultraterrestrial civilizations that predate humanity by eons. Notably, the Nemesites have legally owned Earth since dinosaur times, and are just now debating the question of whether or not to consider these new "human" creatures sentient.
• Too Dumb to Fool: Bob.
• Tsundere: Jean.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Voluptua regularly; Riboflavin and Galatea sometimes.
• Übermensch: Galatea. At least in her own estimation.
• Unfazed Everyman: Bob takes things in stride pretty well.
• Unicorn: They purr!
• Unobtainium: Borfomite.
• Unperson: The Nemesites consider Earthlings "wildlife".
• Unsound Effect: Including "Heavy!" "Defenstrate!" and (in space) "Silent Kaboom!" The sound of silence is eventually officially made "Ninj!" (the sound that ninjas don't make).
• Uplifted Animal: The Furmians are an entire lost civilization of such.
• Wacky College: Generictown U. is showing some signs of this.
• Wave-Motion Gun: Borfomite beams.
• We Are as Mayflies: Well, compared to Nemesites and Dragons.
• Weirdness Magnet: Bob.
• Weirdness Censor: Most of the townsfolk, but Mr. Bystander is the worst offender.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Molly, Galatea, Roofus.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Generictown.
• Where's the Fun in That?:

  Fructose Riboflavin: "Bloodless victory"? Where's the fun in that?!

• Whoopi Epiphany Speech: Bob.
• Wild Take: Jean. In spades.
• Wonder Child: Molly.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Galatea.
• The World Is Always Doomed: Many storylines involve some threat of the Earth being destroyed or conquered.
• The World Is Just Awesome: Frequently: here, here, here, here, and here.
• Younger Than They Look: Molly, Golly, and Jolly are each less than a year old.

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