Raptor was a comic created by Ted Phillips after July 12, 1998. It appeared on Ted's Fun Site around that time and re-released on Thingamabob.com2 two years later.
After Thingamabob.com2 launched, Ted re-released the comic on December 18, 2000, but that site too closed in 2009.
The comic reappared when the Cracked Egg Studios web site re-released Ted's Fun Site on March 19, 2024.
The Joke
The image for the Raptor comic came from the 1993 Jurassic Park motion picture trading card set. The comic investigates what a raptor like one from the movie might say to its prey, especially prey that is fleeing, hiding, or otherwise apprehensive. Since the Jurassic Park films were recent at the time and well-known in popular culture, the expectation was that the reader would know that the raptor, that raptor, was communicating a falsehood so blatantly false that it could not be taken seriously.History
The comic appeared on Ted's Fun Site on or after July 12, 1998. When Ted's Web Site disappeared in 1999, this comic was no longer available to the public.After Thingamabob.com2 launched, Ted re-released the comic on December 18, 2000, but that site too closed in 2009.
The comic reappared when the Cracked Egg Studios web site re-released Ted's Fun Site on March 19, 2024.
Parallels to Popular Culture
It is notable that this comic predates the similarly depicted Philosoraptor meme, which was not created until 2008 and shares the concept of subverting expectations for what a raptor should say. However, it is unknown if the meme drew any inspiration, even unintentional, from Ted Phillips's Raptor; there were known instances of misspellings of "velociraptor" as "philosoraptor" online, some dating around the same time as this comic, which could have eventually caused internet communities to taunt the spellers in perpetuity through memes, completely coincidentally to Raptor's existence.
Categories:
Dinosaurs