Courage the Cowardly Dog is one of the most fondly-remembered childrens cartoons of all time, and here are 10 awesome commemorative bits of fan art.
Courage the Cowardly Dog was a horror-comedy for kids, and it delivered both laughs as well as frightening monsters in each episode. The show ran from 1996 to 2002, with 52 episodes and four seasons.
The show focused on an old couple, Muriel and Eustice, who live in the middle of Nowhere with their dog, Courage. Despite being cowardly, Courage the dog does everything in his power to save Muriel and Eustice from all kinds of horrors ranging from angry ghosts to creepy cat con artists. The cartoon inspired many artists, with many contributing their own homages to the series. From scary monsters to Nowhere places, here are ten pictures of Courage the Cowardly Dog fan rat.
4 The Series Is Really About Domestic Abuse
Its pretty easy to see how abusive Eustace is both to Muriel and to Courage, so one fan came up with a theory that adds a layer of harsh realism to the cartoon. The fan took a deep dive into psychological analysis after reading up about the puppet theory that Muriel and Eustace were puppets and Courage kept playing with them so he wouldnt be alone. They decided to take their theory further, and in an attempt to understand “what the show meant to the young children watching it,” they came to a very realistic conclusion.
Basically, they saw Courage as a young anxious child constantly trying to protect their mother from their abusive father, or at the very least he was designed to relate to children suffering from anxiety and domestic abuse. They also explained their belief that Courage has an anxiety disorder, which is why hes scared of everything.
10 Eustice Scaring Courage
Made by Dylean, this art piece was part of a thirty-day speed paint challenge. Dylean wrote “the idea is to dedicate at least 30 min a day with a painting of any animation. This is day 12, Courage the Cowardly Dog.”
The painting is of one of the most iconic scenes in the show: Eustice scaring Courage with his mask. It is an occurrence that happens in the opening of each episode and sometimes in an episode.
Courage is not the only dog in his show. Meet Shirley, the green Chihuahua who appears in a number of episodes as an anti-heroine. She is a fortune teller, and her cute design and magical abilities have made her a fan favorite. Episodes she appears in include “Shirley the Medium,” “The Curse of Shirley,” “Record Deal,” “Swindin Wind,” and “Muted Muriel.”
The artist, cinemamind, has done a lot of Courage the Cowardly Dog fan art, and this is not their only piece on this list.
This is another piece of fan art by cinemamind. Instead of focusing on a character though, they focused on a very popular scene. Its from the episode “Perfect.”
In the episode, Courage meets someone simply called “The Perfectionist” who makes Courage go through a ton in an attempt to be perfect. However, there is a fish in the tube that dispenses some amazing wisdom to Courage. The fish is known as “bathtub barracuda” by fans.
The artist KateKaz named this fan art “Courage the Not-so-Cowardly.” Indeed, the characters look different. Muriel has a gun, and Courage is a bulldog. Well, maybe Eustice is still pretty much the same guy, since he looks just as unhappy.
This piece was actually made for a digital design class, and the assignment was to redesign a “one-hit-wonder type character.”
Every dog protagonist needs a cat antagonist. Courage the Cowardly Dog did just that with Katz. He is a con artist who tries to take advantage of Muriel and Eustice all the time. He appears in every season in the episodes, “A Night at the Katz Motel,” “Klub Katz,” “Katz Kandy,” “Katz Under the Sea,” and “Ball of Revenge.” This is another piece out of cinemaminds Courage the Cowardly Dog collection.
Another piece by cinemamind, this episode brought tears to the eyes of many fans, as its often considered to be the saddest in the series. The episode was “Last of the Starmakers.” The story centered on space squids who make stars, but they are going extinct due to being hunted by space whales.
A father squid sacrifices himself to save his family, and they land on Earth and meet Courage. Courage makes an effort to help the babies hatch so that their species do not go extinct. At the end of the story, the mother squid dies and turns into a garden.
6 Courage & His Family Are Living In A Post-Apocalyptic World
Some fans come up with the most creative fan theories, but one Courage The Cowardly Dog theory stands out because of how much it actually makes sense. After a series of comments on Reddit, a fan shared their view that the setting for the show is actually taking place in a post-apocalyptic future where the world was ravaged after a nuclear fallout.
The monsters and aliens are really mutated creatures that survived, and the UFOs are just sports model hovercrafts for those that survived. The fans explanation for why Muriel and Eustace are normal human beings is that they are the new Adam and Eve who emerged from a military vault where they were protected. Courage is a mutated dog that protects the only humans on Earth from being killed. Its a little bit of a stretch for the cartoon for sure, but with how outlandish the show is, its not really that far-fetched.
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