New characters of the week
As I said before, two new characters joined the storyline this week and both of them are new to the strip.
Ignatz
Matty Squared has been given a helper and a replacement for his former cat, Kitty, in the person of a mouse he has named Ignatz. In the Krazy Kat comic strip from 1913-1944, Krazy Kat was in love with Ignatz, but in return Ignatz was constantly throwing bricks at Krazy Kat.
Character design
Matty's Ignatz is a blend of computer references and a couple of nods to Krazy Kat's Ignatz Mouse. Ignatz looks a little like a real mouse, mostly in the head, but is shaped more like a computer mouse, with a flat side in front and a curved part on his back. Where his tail should be, there is a coiled wire that leads to a device Matty speaks into to give commands. In place of (back) legs and feet, Ignatz has a single mouse wheel or scroll wheel that he uses to move around.
Ignatz' arms and hands are single lines, like those of the original Ignatz and his tail is not straight like a real mouse's tail but a kind of a zig-zag like the tail of the mouse in Krazy Kat.
Our Ignatz talks in hexadecimal numbers representing the ASCII code number for each letter of the alphabet, the way characters are represented in computers. Often in the background of scenes with Matty and Ignatz, there is a sort of brick pattern. This could also be a blend of computers and Krazy Kat. I mentioned before that the classic 1976 arcade game, Breakout and its many clones have a similar brick pattern, but every Krazy Kat comic involves Ignatz throwing a brick at some point, so it could also be a reference to Krazy Kat.
Pokerface
As you might expect from the name, Screwball's friend, Pokerface, is not one to show much emotion. Pokerface has principles, but they're bendable in the right circumstances.
Character design
Pokerface bears several resemblances to Blackjack and the two of them may be related. Both of them are named after card games and they have somewhat similar tastes in fashion. Blackjack also wears a very wide-brimmed hat but of a somewhat different shape on top. Pokerface wears a light-coloured shirt with a black tie, but Blackjack always wears a black shirt with a red tie and a grey pin-striped jacket on top of that. We haven't seen any jacket that may be hidden by Pokerface's overcoat. Here are Blackjack (left) and Pokerface (right) side by side for comparison:
Matty Squared
Matty Squared is not new this week, but his appearance has been greatly refined since the last sequence we saw him in. Here is a comparison:
Compared to his first appearances, Matty Squared has become more square. He's wearing the same outfit but he's now made up more of straight lines, sharp corners, and some circular arcs, to go with his computerized environment. He has also been simplified slightly, without the detail in his shoes (at least in this view) and without the folds of his ascot tie.
In common with the original Matty Square (without the d), Matty still has the turned up nose that sometimes looks like nothing but nostrils that Chet Gould used on many of his characters. Matty Square had squarish-shaped (rectangular, actually) eyes, but the computerized Matty Squared wears rectangular glasses in front of those eyes. You might almost think that Matty Square wore glasses, but there was never any sign of a bridge tetween his eyes or any line that would indicate that glasses were anchored behind his ears. Here is a view of the original Matty for comparison purposes.
