Chris

From Candypedia
Chris
GenderMale
Age3
Birthday2005
SpeciesCat
BreedKorat
Family
ResidenceMike’s house
DebutDecember, page 14
November 2, 2011 (2011-11-02)

Chris is the baby of Mike’s family, a grey kitten who spends most of his time on the page being carried, chased or handed off to whichever of his older siblings is closest. He adores Lucy, and he thinks the world of Mike, whether or not Mike happens to be paying attention. His spotlight chapter, Adult Supervision, ends with him beaming at his mother with two black eyes, both of them acquired on Mike’s watch.

Personality

Leave Chris on a couch and he will be off it, face-first, within a page. He is a sunny, slightly feral toddler who treats every bump as a curiosity and every grown-up as staff. The chaos he causes is almost never on purpose. He does have his loyalties, though, and a very firm idea of how an evening at home is supposed to go.

Chris cheerfully echoes Mike’s horror in Adult Supervision.

Nothing that happens to Chris bothers Chris very much. When he crawls off the couch and blacks his eye during Adult Supervision, he answers Mike’s horrified shout by cheerfully parroting it back as “Oh, gawd!”[1] He then pokes at the bruise himself, just to see what happens. Before the night is over he has soaked his own face with an icy washcloth, eaten a mouthful of ground parsley and tumbled out of bed as soon as Mike turns off the light.[2][3][4] Veronica’s commentary sums him up as bruising like an apple, and the comic plays every one of those injuries for slapstick.[1]

Chris gets his toy, then promotes James to minion.

Once he can talk in sentences, Chris wants two things from the world: destruction and merchandise. Chris waits outside Mike’s Tae Kwon Do studio in It’s All in the Mind with his mother. He marches up to her with a fist raised and announces “I wanna smash a BLOCK.”[5] At Burger-Tron in Good Enough he is too short to see over the counter, so he pops up slapping it and demanding a toy. When James hands one over, he accepts it with a smug “Thanks, minion.”[6][7]

For all that, Chris is a creature of habit who notices more than the grown-ups think. His evenings with Haley follow a fixed programme of a panda movie and oranges, and he is thrilled to sit through the same film yet again with Mike, demanding a replay when it ends.[8] He picks up on tension too. He flattens his ears when Lucy slams the front door on her way out of December, and in Second String he stands beside his mother looking worried while she shouts into her phone about who is supposed to be looking after him.[9][10] He is also quietly proud of himself, grinning when Haley reports that he ate everything by himself.[11]

Appearance

By It’s All in the Mind, Chris can join the grown-ups, if not their conversation.

Chris is a small grey kitten with green eyes, the same colouring as his brother and sister.[12] As a baby he is usually bundled in onesies: he starts the evening of Adult Supervision in a blue one and finishes it in green after the washcloth incident, then wears the green one again on stage in Curtain Call.[13][3][14] Later appearances dress him more like a little kid, including the shirt and trousers he wears while watching his favourite movie with Mike in Second String.[8] At home he sleeps in a red race-car bed, which he is not very good at staying in.[4]

He visibly grows over the comic’s run. In December and Adult Supervision he is an infant who has to be carried and crawls where he wants to go.[15][1] By It’s All in the Mind he is walking beside his mother and holding her hand, and by Good Enough he is a preschooler standing on tiptoe to see over a fast-food counter.[16][6] Veronica has noted that in the Volume Three era Chris, Haley and their father were drawn a greenish grey while Mike leaned bluer like their mother, a distinction she later dropped so that Mike matched his siblings.[12]

Significant events

Chris is first mentioned in December, when Lucy asks a frosty Mike how his little brother is doing and gets told it is no big deal.[17] He appears in person later that chapter in Haley’s arms, eating a cookie and reaching for Lucy, and he is still around at the end of the evening to flinch at her exit.[15][9] Adult Supervision gives Chris his starring role. The parents go out, Haley ducks out for pizza, and Mike spends his first-ever night in charge watching Chris hurt himself in new and inventive ways before the family comes home to find him with two black eyes.[13][18][19]

Afterward he becomes a fixture of the background. Sue borrows him for her school play in Curtain Call. He plays the toddler version of Mike’s heroic character and sits on the stage-mother’s lap with his tongue out while she tells him his sister is watching over him from the sky.[14] He gets a throwaway mention in Safe Boundaries when Mike is sent to the pharmacy for his ear medicine.[20] He sits with Haley on the couch in Boy Toy, and he grins at Mike from behind the couch when Sandy is brought home in Model Girlfriend.[11][21] He waits outside the Tae Kwon Do studio with his mother in It’s All in the Mind while Mike breaks a board, and he terrorises the Burger-Tron counter in Good Enough.[16][7]

Chris has no patience for Mike’s attempt to have a phone conversation.

By Second String, Chris has become a scheduling problem. His mother cannot reach Haley and is already arguing with another parent about who should be responsible for him, so Mike ends up minding him for the night.[22] The arrangement sticks: in Line in the Sand Chris is climbing over a distracted Mike during a phone call, and in Tickets Please their mother is thanking Mike yet again for taking Chris off her hands.[23][24]

Major relationships

Mike

Mike’s first night in charge ends with genuine affection in Adult Supervision.

Mike gets handed Chris at the worst possible moments, and Chris adores him regardless. Their first night alone together in Adult Supervision is a comedy of Mike’s nerves rather than Chris’s behaviour. He protests that he has never watched Chris before, decides it can’t be that hard, and then refuses to call his parents after the first black eye because he is sure only he would get the blame.[18][1][2] Veronica’s commentary calls him an anxious goody-goody for exactly this reason.[2] Even so, the tenderness is real. He tucks Chris in fondly at the end of the night, and Chris beams up at him at the curtain call of Curtain Call right before Mike dumps him on Sue to run after Lucy.[4][25][26]

Later, the roles have flipped and Mike is the one offering. When Haley is unavailable in Second String, he tells his mother she can leave Chris with him and gets a delighted “Mai-kul!” for his trouble.[22][8] He sits through the panda movie bored stiff, then softens into a tired smile beside his enthralled little brother.[8] Of course, the favour soon becomes the routine. Ellen calls Mike a lifesaver and tells him he is lifting so much off her shoulders. Mike himself looks more and more worn out, half ignoring Chris on the couch in Line in the Sand and getting told he isn’t sleeping enough in Tickets Please.[27][23][24] Veronica’s commentary on the couch scene sides with Chris, telling Mike to read him a book or something.[23]

Haley

Haley knows exactly how Chris has been eating, and makes sure everyone else knows too.

Haley is Chris’s usual sibling babysitter, a job she handles matter-of-factly and not always willingly. She is the one holding him in his early scenes, and Veronica’s commentary confirms she is usually the sibling in charge, with a sympathetic nod to middle-child struggles.[15][18] Her approach to the job is brisk. In Adult Supervision she plants Chris on a protesting Mike with a flat “Time to learn.” and sneaks out, then fakes sleep in bed when their parents get home and gets thanked anyway.[18][28] When she is around, though, she knows him well. She reports on his eating habits to their mother in Boy Toy, and Chris describes their standing routine to Mike as “Panda movie an’ oranges!”[11][8]

Haley is usually the sibling expected to cover childcare. Her not answering texts is what pushes Chris onto Mike in Second String, and their mother waves away Mike’s worries about studying with the remark that Haley doesn’t ace her exams anyway.[22][27] By Tickets Please Haley can only glare from the kitchen while Mike is praised for a chore that had long been expected of her.[24]

Ellen

Even mid-crisis, Ellen keeps one worried eye on Chris.

Ellen dotes on Chris in person and frets about him the rest of the time. She holds him in her lap at the end of December, teases him about whether he gave his sister any trouble in Boy Toy, and walks him hand in hand to Mike’s Tae Kwon Do test in It’s All in the Mind.[9][11][16] She is also the one who disciplines him. When he slaps the Burger-Tron counter demanding a toy in Good Enough, she is mortified, scolds him by name and wags a finger at him all the way out the door.[7] Veronica’s commentary notes that she does not tolerate harassing minimum-wage workers and only raises good children.[7]

Ellen scrambles to find someone to watch Chris. In Second String she is shouting into her phone that the person on the other end is Chris’s parent, not Haley, while Chris watches with a worried face.[10] She turns Mike down at first, insisting that Chris shouldn’t be his problem, and then accepts with such relief that she is still thanking him chapters later in Tickets Please.[22][27][24] At the end of Adult Supervision, Chris greets her with a beaming “Mommy!” delivered through two black eyes.[19]

Minor relationships

Lucy

Lucy has Mike’s household’s youngest member entirely on her side.

Chris is the one member of Mike’s household who never got the memo about Lucy. He reaches for her from Haley’s arms in December chanting her name, and she boops his nose and declares she will never get sick of him.[15] Lucy asks after him even while she and Mike are barely speaking.[17] His attachment supplies the punchline in Adult Supervision, when Mike holds the phone to Chris so he can say hello to Sandy and Chris shouts “Lucy? Lucy!!” into it instead.[29] Veronica’s commentary agrees with him that Lucy would have been great at the babysitting.[29]

Sue

In Curtain Call, Sue accepts Chris with the expression of someone owed hazard pay.

Sue finds a practical use for Chris in Curtain Call, casting him as the toddler hero in her play and declaring him a natural afterwards.[30] Her reward is being handed a clinging Chris mid-celebration so Mike can chase Lucy, which she accepts with a scowl.[26]

Quotes

Thanks, minion. Chris, accepting the toy he demanded from James in Good Enough

Lucy? Lucy!! Chris, saying hello to Sandy on the phone in Adult Supervision

I wanna smash a BLOCK. Chris, to his mother outside the Tae Kwon Do studio in It’s All in the Mind

“Oh, gawd!” Chris, parroting Mike moments after blacking his eye in Adult Supervision

Panda movie an’ oranges! Chris, explaining what Haley does with him in Second String

Mommy! Chris, greeting his mother with two black eyes in Adult Supervision

Trivia

  • Chris began life as a girl. In Veronica’s childhood version of the comic Mike had a baby sister, probably named Crystal, and Veronica turned her into a boy for BCB to shake a childhood superstition about youngest siblings.[15]
  • Veronica has said Chris was born when Mike was twelve, shortly before the comic began, and described him as “about 3” in both 2015 and 2018; Oliver predicted a timeline would reveal mistakes in his depicted age.[31][32] By Second String the commentary calls him almost old enough for kindergarten.[8]
  • Adult Supervision was originally a Volume Three book exclusive and went online in December 2013, chosen to close out that part of the archive after two very dark chapters.[13]
  • Chris’s first published comic appearance was in the non-canon what-if Disaster Dominoes, sitting at a table with Haley, roughly nine months before his main-comic debut.[33][34]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Adult Supervision, page 3
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Adult Supervision, page 4
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Adult Supervision, page 6
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Adult Supervision, page 7
  5. ↑ Chapter 103: It’s All in the Mind, page 3
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Chapter 117: Good Enough, page 2
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Chapter 117: Good Enough, page 3
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 Chapter 124: Second String, page 20
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Chapter 68: December, page 37
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Chapter 124: Second String, page 17
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 Chapter 87: Boy Toy, page 19
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 “Ask response on recolouring Mike and his family”. 2026-05-23.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Adult Supervision, page 1
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Chapter 74: Curtain Call, page 15
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 Chapter 68: December, page 14
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Chapter 103: It’s All in the Mind, page 2
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Chapter 68: December, page 6
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 18.3 Adult Supervision, page 2
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Adult Supervision, page 9
  20. ↑ Chapter 78: Safe Boundaries, page 22
  21. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 36
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 22.3 Chapter 124: Second String, page 18
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 Chapter 127: Line in the Sand, page 3
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 24.3 Chapter 129: Tickets Please, page 6
  25. ↑ Chapter 74: Curtain Call, page 33
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 Chapter 74: Curtain Call, page 34
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 27.2 Chapter 124: Second String, page 19
  28. ↑ Adult Supervision, page 8
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 Adult Supervision, page 5
  30. ↑ Chapter 74: Curtain Call, page 18
  31. ↑ “Ask response on Chris’s age”. 2015-09-24.
  32. ↑ “Ask response on how old Chris is now”. 2018-12-24.
  33. ↑ Disaster Dominoes, page 1 🔒 (members only)
  34. ↑ “Ask response mentioning Disaster Dominoes as unofficial”. 2017-09-18.
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