A Soft Dog for the Room That’s on Fire

KC Green drew the strip in 2013, part of his webcomic Gunshow: a small round dog in a little hat, sitting in a burning room, drinking coffee, completely at ease. This is fine. It was a joke about denial, about the human capacity to normalize catastrophe in real time, about choosing comfort over action while the walls come down. By December 2016 it had stopped being a joke.

Donald Trump heading for the White House. Brexit lurching toward implementation. Far-right parties mainstreaming across Europe while the people who were supposed to prevent these things explained patiently that the institutions would hold. The dog sitting in the fire. The dog sipping his coffee. This is fine.

Topatoco released the full merchandise run right on schedule: the plush dog, hoodies, shirts, mugs, phone cases. Somewhere between fifteen and forty dollars, depending on how tactile you need your psychic damage to be. I understood the appeal completely. There’s something about being able to hold the thing that names what you’re feeling—even if what you’re holding is a stuffed animal and what you’re feeling is unspecific dread. The year wasn’t over yet, and nobody had any clear sense of how much higher the fire was going to get before anyone thought to open a window.