Quote Originally Posted by Willie the Duck View Post
Jeph has clearly moved on from said characterizations
Agreed.

As to nanny/mother-hen characters, it really depends on how you look at it. As BRC points out, there is just 'the Sensible One' as a sitcom standby, and that is half the cast at times (with many of them rotating between that and 'the Wacky One' depending on whether their idiosyncrasy is being agitated at the moment (ex: Hanners can be the one to tell Marigold to get it together over a nerd-culture obsession until she gets dirty, then she runs around screaming and Marigold gets to be the adult, etc.). Bubbles is often Faye's 'Rock,' but much more as a Voice of Reason/Island of Stability rather than a nanny.
Yeah, I'm with you on this. Being "the sensible one" in a given interaction isn't the same as being typecast as a mothering figure. Nobody in the comic (except for Cubetown & Claire more recently) has gotten to that point. For the most part, everyone in the comic is actually pretty reasonable about interacting with each other and respecting people's autonomy and maturity, even while dealing with wAcKY SheNaNigaNS

When Dora was deliberately coded as being irrationally jealous when dating Marten she occasionally threatened people with a sword or other such things.
"You know him?" "Carnally. On a regular basis." remains maybe my favorite strip in the whole series. Dora's crazed expression, the wordplay of "know," the pacing of the setup dialogue, the reappearance of Chekhov's Sword thunking into the table...It's just an expertly-executed joke that hit all the right notes for me.