#gear comic

ok so, i had a lot of time to draw now, yet artblock came to me recently😔🥀

February 27, 2025 - Waffleborg:

On February 26, 2025, during the initial 2 weeks I spent in the form of Gordon Quid from Nickelodeon's Catscratch, I decided to check out the Catscratch pre-cursor comic “Gear”, after seeing one or two non-spoiler videos about it.

Needless to say, the chapter 4 scene with Waffle geno-mutating into a giant robot (referred to as a Guardian in the story) kinda freaked me out.

In my attempts to relieve the stress caused by discovering this, I came across some art of Waffle as a cyborg (link below):

After this, I came up with an idea, an idea I almost turned into a fanfiction before my hyperfixation ran out of steam.

In the original Gear story, the act of turning specimens into Guardians (known as the Forbidden Mechanism) is not allowed (which doesn't stop the cats' leader, the Elder, from implementing this mechanism into Waffle).

In my version of the story, Waffle, Gordon, and Mr. Black (who's called Mr. Blik in my version, just like in the cartoon) now resemble their Catscratch counterparts.

As for Gordon, who originally fell into a hell portal alongside Emperor Pago (the big bad of the story), the portal in my version closes up much quicker, leading to Gordon only getting his right leg stuck and broken. However, he does have to get a prosthetic after an amputation.

Also, a faction of the cats' land (known officially as Newton) have gotten word of someone illegally using the Forbidden Mechanism. They attempt to create a solution that could reverse the effect.

However, there hasn't been enough time to fully test it. So, when one of these cats give the solution to Guardian Waffle after he's knocked unconscious (he's actually killed in the original story but that's not important), the end result isn't pretty.

While he's back to his normal size, he now looks like a mess of fur, blood, and metal.

He's rushed to a medical center, and despite hours of work, all they could do was turn him into a cyborg.

Even though Waffle retains his naive personality, he's also traumatized by the events of the war between cats and dogs (especially his excruciating geno-mutation into a guardian).

Without further ado, here are the doodles shown above (in the order I drew them):

In my fanfiction, I planned to begin with the backstory of the aforementioned events, leading to the present with Waffle stepping out (revealing his Cyborg form), letting his surviving brothers know that he made breakfast for them.

A simplified version of him for no reason.

One of Waffle's many nightmares about the horrible pain and suffering he went through during his geno-mutation.

Waffle looking at himself in the mirror. There's a lot of cats talking about him and Chee (a bug creature he befriended during the war) being heroes. However, from his appearance, Waffle feels more like a monster.

In a fit of visceral self-loathing, Waffle smashes his face into the mirror, not wishing to stare at his semi-disfigured face any longer. However, in doing so, this also causes his eyepiece to crack and some of his wiring to break and/or short circuit, resulting in him being unable to breathe and his mechanical body soon shutting down. Thankfully, he's rushed to the hospital/mechanic again.

During his surgery/repair, he endures another nightmare/flashback, one about him becoming his mechanical self. In the flashback, as he left the medical center, one of the cats at the center told him that the Elder was responsible for his geno-mutation. He somehow wakes up on his own instead of someone else turning him back on. Afterwards, he attempts to kill the Elder for making him go through that horrible geno-mutation, as well as not telling him beforehand. That is until the Elder reminds him of Chee (who likely wouldn't want him to do this). This humbles Waffle a bit, with him backing away from the Elder, lamenting about how he doesn't feel that he deserves to live life as a cyborg.

Additionally, the Elder was actually going to tell Waffle about the geno-mutation, but then the Forbidden Mechanism was activated sooner than he expected.