Webcomic / Out at Home

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Out at Home is a webcomic by Alex Wendzel that started on November 19, 2008. It started as a family sitcom-style strip, but morphed into a comic about HighSchool-aged Kate Beckett (Not this one) and her best friend Penny O'Brien. The comic combines slice-of-life dialogue and attitude with outlandish, outsized situations and gags. Most of the strips fall into story arcs, sometimes with added audio or video content. Each arc is separated by one-off gags. It's different, as it rarely if ever delves into the emotional and relationship drama featured in most webcomics about teenagers.

The comic is technically done, as the last strip foreshadowed some sort of reboot.

The new comic is called Living to Death.

Out at Home includes examples of:

• Accidental Misnaming: Andrew Luaertet (the agent in the Appetite for Destruction arc) continually calls Thurman "Thimrod". When corrected the first time, he simply states that Thimrod has more bite and continues to refer to him as Thimrod.
• Art Evolution: The artist bet on art school and the strip was the winner.
  • Penny was the only one to notice the various tweaks the author made regarding the drawings.
• Bond One-Liner: Ordog cracks one after beheading a man with a garbage can lid.
  Ordog: I think it's time to take out the trash."
  [Ordog picks up a garbage can lid and heaves at his pursuer. It slices through the man's neck, beheading him.]
  Ordog: "...pickup Monday, eight A.M."
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Penny, a bunch of times.
• Call-Back: In one strip, Penny mentions that it's the third-worst situation she's ever sobered up to. A while later, we see this.
• Cool People Rebel Against Authority: Thurman has a habit of doing this, from listening to Dubstep (and abandoning it when Herman likes it too), to "Waiting up" for his father to come home from a date.
• Crazy-Prepared: At least Penny has this covered with her alarm clock, on account of her breaking them every morning, just look here.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: The General to Mim: "You worthless whore! I'm going to boil your eyes and feed them to the bears!"
  • Also, Mim does this in Herman Beckett's Funtime Question Computer Show when she threatens to cut out Herman's eyes and balls and switch where they're positioned on his body.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Mim has it out for Herman for firing her... which was entirely her fault. That doesn't stop her from trying to kill him, though.
  • Skye had a massive enough grudge against Kate to fake her own death and frame Kate for it. And all because she was using the red crayon in grade-school.
• Dissimile: The General does this in one strip.
  The General: "The American soldier is a finely-tuned machine, capable of literally anything except for the things it cannot do."
• Erotic Eating: Subverted (like most of the Fanservice moments) here.
  Alt Text: If anyone is actually turned on by the last panels of comic 2, PLEASE get help.
• Everything's Cuter with Kittens: Herman doesn't like the sound of the "United Evil College Fund", but is convinced when told that a $100 donation rewarded the donor with a free kitten.
• Fiction 500: According to the cast page, Herman's net worth surpasses the GDP of Uruguay. His ability to attract wealth is so great that he receives a literal boatload of money, in the form of a yacht filled with gold coins, just for starting a podcast.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Alasdair serves as this due to his frequent infidelity - but every now and then, he reminds them why he's their friend.
• Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: Invoked here, because Dustin always wanted to do it.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Near the end of the Prom arc, Kate has a very well-deserved reason for it. She shares it with a cop later.
• Mathematician's Answer: Thurman tried this on a Geography test - he answered "Earth" for half the questions.
• Medium Awareness: Penny has a very firm grasp of her existing in a webcomic, though she doesn't always address it. Best exemplified here.
  Kate: Why are you talking to that wall?
• Mistaken for Gay: Generally not a good sign when even your father thinks this. Although he is the resident Cloud Cuckoo Lander.
  Penny: G'night, everybody!
• Non-Indicative Name: Operation Karate Bullets, a top secret military initiative which Herman is nearly killed just for appearing to get in the way of, is... a health care plan.
• Noodle Incident: Penny has a few of these tied to her being drunk. Some are mentioned here.
• Not Helping Your Case: Penny informs Kate that she's not what one would call "Dainty".
  Kate: I am so dainty! ...I am dainty as fuck!
• Oblivious to Love: Kate is this in spades during the Prom arc, culminating in this.
• Precocious Crush: Eddie has a huge one for Penny, starting here.
  Eddie: Penny... she shines as bright as the coin that bears her name.
• The Power of Love: When trying to get Eddie to do her a favor, Penny uses his crush with an offer of an on-the-mouth kiss. He manages to not only get a 2-hour project he'd expected to be tight done immediately, but also ran it to her side fast enough that even she was shocked.
  Alt Text: You baffle Penny, you're doing something REALLY unusual.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: When Kate is tried for the murder of her classmate Skye, Herman investigates the case. He eventually announces in court that Kate is innocent because Skye isn't dead. At this point Skye, who'd been observing the trial incognito, reveals herself and confesses that she'd faked her death to frame Kate. She asks Herman how he'd found her out, and he replies, "Well, I couldn't figure out who killed you, so I just figured you weren't dead." Skye undergoes a visible, if silent, Sanity Slippage in the next panel.
• Shout-Out: One story arc is called "Appetite for Destruction".
  • In the background of the school play there can be seen a Tardis and the Starship Enterprise.
  • The alt-text of this strip reads "He's one oooold mutha–SHUT YO MOUTH!"
  • Kate mentions sharing a name with another Katherine Beckett in the first strip in the Halloween arc.
  • Kate apparently likes Death Cab for Cutie.
  • Comic 200 has the same twist as Duck Amuck.
  • Strip 300 borrows a pair of characters from Dinosaur Comics.
• Stylistic Suck: The clip art Wendzel used for The General's slideshow presentation on Operation Karate Bullets is intentionally out-of-date.