About Matchstick Cats the webomic

A Page About Matchstick Cats Comics, MS Paint, Accessibility and more.

Comic sample. Two cats talking.

Don't tell me you're worried about the death by curiosity nonsense?
Of course not. That's a myth.

From outside of frame: I don't see it Where?

Not a moth. A myth. Philiop, don't climb up there.

From outside of frame;
Ow.

Windows Paint LOL?

Windows Paint 3D, actually. I’m no luddite. Now on a Mac Mini using Windows booted up in Parallels, installed for no other purpose than to run Paint. MS Paint has served me well. Sight loss has made it very difficult to learn anything new.

The cats were originally on a white background. In my case Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) causes severe aversion to white backdrops, bright images and the first 416 episodes of Matchstick Cats. Also sunlight, sunglasses, artificial light, darkness and cyclists. In fact I stopped using a computer entirely for almost four years. Don’t worry, the rest of this page is fun. Also your mom.

Two random comic strip frames. Philip the cat says "And in a well designed hotel the main bar has the same decor and layout as the mini bars." In the second frame he says "I'd probably lie and say no. Then fake a call from my vet about my mezzanine levels."

Magnified Comics and Carousel

Philip the cat shouts "Okay Gogle, what does P H D stand for?".
A voicereplies "Done. Your reminder's set for four fifteen.".
Philip goes "Okay, good.".
Next frame, the other cat, Justin, says "Just out of curiousity, where do you keep your phone?".

Depending on your browser or magnifier settings, clicking on a comic then clicking again on the thumbnail that appears, will give you a large fully magnified version. (Except for some very early reduxed episodes which are glued together in bunches of five or ten) Your browser or magnifier may work differently or need setting up. You can now also binge post-reboot era episodes in carousel form on this Archive.org page.

Vintage Matchstick Cats Reduxed:

I’ve done a rough and ready conversion of very early Matchstick Cats episodes to dark backgrounds, while tidying up the text where needed: reduxed vintage episodes.

Image of Philip the Matchstick Cat, peeking up from behind the bottom line of the frame.

About Matchstick Cats

Comic sample. Philip: And I'd reather not eat human flesh, unless completely unavoidable.

Justin: Of course. That's a last resort.

Philip: So I'm hoping there's a Linda McCartney version.

Justin: Wait. WHAT?

Philip: Justin, please, I'm on the phone.

Since 2003 Irish hobbyist humourist, podcaster, socially awkward cat obsessive and later cat owner Neal O’Carroll has honed the art of starting humour writings with no idea how the first sentence will end, never mind what he will say.

From an early age (27) O’Carroll was starting sentences with “Two Cats walk into a Bar” more frequently than his peers. (Some early results a can be seen in the Writings section)

Starting in 2004 with nonsense humour bkig Neal’s Belch on the original NewsBurp.com* humour site, he soon adapted the method to writing simple, dialogue-heavy stick figure webcomics to accompany his writings. Originally with the short-lived Matchstick Meditations, consisting of a matchstick man talking nonsense to the camera.

By the end of the year this had evolved into Matchstick Cats, And the rest is similarly uninteresting.

By 2006, Neal was using the same method to create improvised comedy molologues on his Into Your Head podcast, which has since clocked up 880+ episodes. The last couple of hundred are quite listenable. Meanwhile, he made an apparently disposable solemn promise to himself never to write his own “About” page in the third person.

Philip: But you HAVE a mouth, don't you? Justin: No neccessarily. We've always left it to the imagination. Philip: Justin, I hate to tell you, but your pants don't go up nearly as high as you think.

More: About Into Your Head podcast

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***no relation to defunct Irish comedy podcast Newsburp, or the unrelated U.S. blog that that owned the domain NewsBurp.com for a few years before it reverted to this site.