David Lynch - the iconic filmmaker behind such pop culture icons Twin Peaks, The Elephant Man and Mulholland Drive - sadly ed away on January 15, 2025. Lynch's surreal but humanistic work is rightly celebrated, but there is one project that's at risk of disappearing into obscurity - The Angriest Dog in the World. The Angriest Dog in the World is a comic strip originally published by the now defunct LA Reader. Each installment uses the same art, focusing on an enraged dog as fragments of cryptic conversation drift out into the garden from a nearby house.

The strip ran for nine years and was included in the comic anthology Cheval Noir, as well as having an incredibly limited-run release (only 500 copies) in a bound collection containing 17 strips. With its original home on the web now redirecting to Lynch's YouTube channel, the majority of The Angriest Dog in the World is at risk of becoming lost media. Thankfully, enough still exists that we can showcase 10 of the most surreally funny entries in Lynch's long-running comic.

10 Say What?

Who Is Inside the House?

While The Angriest Dog in the World focuses visually on the enraged house pet, the only thing that changes from strip to strip are the words of the unseen family inside the house, with their names seemingly given at different points as Bill, Sylvia, Pete and Billy, Jr. In Lynchian style, the family don't seem aware of either the dog or its distress. Very little about the strip's 'characters' is revealed, and The Angriest Dog in the World has been compared to Lynch's Rabbits in how it contrasts impenetrable characters with a recognizable format - in this case, a comic strip, and in the case of Rabbits, a traditional sitcom.

9 Police Record

The Angriest Dog in the World Includes Some Groan-Worthy Jokes

In this strip, The Angriest Dog in the World showcases its habit of executing goofy jokes, referencing the band The Police and its famous member Sting. While Lynch included bleak humor and philosophical one-liners in the strip, many of its entries are made up of simple gags that you could find in any joke book. For example:

Bill... Monopoly jam? What the hell is that?

They say it's a game preserve.

Of course, these goofy jokes are contrasted against the presence of the titular canine - "the dog who is so angry he cannot move. He cannot eat. He cannot sleep. He can just barely growl. ... Bound so tightly with tension and anger, he approaches the state of rigor mortis." This unmoving, constantly growling audience makes even Lynch's goofier jokes slightly disturbing, as mundane gags are blithely repeated in the presence of an animal trapped in a near-unbearable state.

In a fun detail, part of this comic is 'burned away' - a typically weird, unexplained detail from a director who often used fire imagery in his work.

8 Really, Really, Really Damn Good to Know

The Angriest Dog in the World Has Something to Say

A lot of coverage of The Angriest Dog in the World argues that it's without meaning - a goof on Lynch's part. However, the director never hid that he had something to express with the comic. As reported by taking up transcendental meditation. The practice freed him from a feeling of immense anger that had taken over his life, despite the fact he couldn't name the source of it. Lynch explained:

I made life kind of miserable for people around me at certain times… So, anger - the memory of the anger - is what does the Angriest Dog. Not the actual anger, anymore. It's sort of a bitter attitude toward life. I don't know where my anger came from, and I don't know where it went.

While The Angriest Dog in the World isn't as dense or layered as Lynch's film work, it still successfully conveys this "memory of anger." From 'jokes' that don't bring any actual joy to the ceaseless but meaningless rage of its title character, the strip is about how it feels to be overtaken by a rage-fueled worldview. That comes across clearly in the strip above, where one character shares a fact which could, in the right context, be interesting and worthy of discussion. However, in the mindset of The Angriest Dog, it's a meaningless comment that changes nothing and means nothing.

7 Don't Add Up to Beans

David Lynch's Distinctive Voice Shines Through

Lynch's voice is incredibly clear in this strip, showcasing his penchant for folksy turns of phrase. In this article from Comics Beat - a transcript of a Facebook post - LA Reader editor Dan Barton recalls how Lynch would deliver his comic.

Lynch had submitted the art a few years before I arrived. Every week he called in the captions by telephone. ... The intercom on my desk would buzz, and the receptionist would say: "It's David Lynch" as if the pizza had just arrived for lunch. I would pick up the phone and we would exchange pleasantries and then he would say "I got another Dog for you." I'd write down the captions and then he’d sign off.

Running for nine years, The Angriest Dog wasn't a mere pre-fame project for Lynch, but rather a project he kept up week after week. Lynch's commitment to this kind of lesser-known side project was a feature of his years as a household name, and recalls his more recent habit of posting daily weather reports to his YouTube channel. Barton re:

I've heard from a former Reader staffer about how Lynch would call in every week from the set of "Dune," the phone service in Mexico making the calls filled with static.

6 You Talk About Bananas

The Angriest Dog in the World Gets Around to Some Genuine Wisdom

In this strip, it's easy to read the one-liner as genuine advice - even seemingly ridiculous matters become serious when they matter to the people around you. It's advice that people working on every level of entertainment can take to heart - as funny or silly as a comic like Jim Davis' Garfield or Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts may feel to readers, they're worth millions to their creators and the various people whose jobs hinge on their existence.

At the same time, it's possible to read this statement as a blasé or frustrated denial of real meaning. In a world where circumstances force you to take 'bananas' seriously, where does meaning come from? After all, the sentiment doesn't help the dog in the garden, who remains seething. Of course, there's a more literal meaning to the dialogue, given that Lynch literally worked with several monkeys in his career, notably including his short film What Did Jack Do?, where Lynch interrogates a capuchin monkey.

5 The Idea of a Straight Line

WHY Is the Angriest Dog in the World So Angry?

This comic includes a non-sequitur that could be freighted with meaning or could mean nothing, however we're inclined to think it's the former. The available comics from The Angriest Dog in the World often decry a lack of certainty and concrete facts. As with 'Really, Really, Really Damn Good to Know,' the character complains that even on the pure level of mathematics, the world has ceased to make sense. In another comic, one of the people inside the house complains, "If everything is real... then nothing is real as well."

The argument for The Angriest Dog in the World having meaning is helped by the fact that Lynch instigated the project, rather than being asked to create something. A report by Medium relates Richard Gehr (an editor at LA Reader when the comic started), saying that:

Lynch called up the editor James Vowell, and said, 'Hi, I'd like to do a comic strip for you,' and James wisely said, 'OK.' And David Lynch said, 'Well, it's kind of a weird concept. There's only like one…part.' And James said, 'Well, OK, let’s see how it goes.'

Lynch also confirmed that the things said by the indoor characters are linked to the dog's rage, with Medium reporting that when asked why the dog is so angry, Lynch replied, "That’s a mystery. Certain clues come from the world around him." It may be that the dog is feeling a version of what the characters say, that his rage renders their reflections meaningless, or that their varying thoughts only underline that for the dog, nothing ever changes.

4 I Like Fish Hooks

Lynchian Darkness Subverts The Angriest Dog in the World's Simple Gags

The Angriest Dog's goofy jokes return, but this time with some surreal, morbid imagery reminiscent of Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou, which Lynch cited as an influence on his own work. It's worth noting that today, it's essentially impossible to read Lynch's Angriest Dog in the way he intended. LA Reader published a new comic a week for nine years, with the art never changing.

The grim constancy of the dog's situation is hard to replicate in a list like this, and it's fair to say there's added meaning when a character is depicted as trapped in unyielding rage once a week for nine years straight. The sense of being trapped within such a dark emotional state would be far more palpable with the missing ingredient of real-life time ing.

3 A Reason for Everything

The Angriest Dog in the World Gives the Game Away

Even more directly than earlier entries on this list, The Angriest Dog comments on the sense of fragmented meaning. The statement that "There is usually a reason for everything" obviously includes the premise that sometimes, there is no reason - a dark realization that almost seems to mock the dog's suffering while reflecting the "bitter attitude toward life" that Lynch described as his inspiration.

2 Better Than This

Lynch's Comic Is Characterized by Double Meaning

In another pun-like phrase, Lynch's characters share a sentiment that is usually meant to celebrate the good times. However, for the furious dog outside in the dark and cold, it's a chilling threat that things will never improve - the kind of dark sentiment that often accompanies feelings of depression. It's worth noting that - like much of Lynch's work - The Angriest Dog in the World isn't all bad vibes. The presentation of a dog so angry it can't move is inherently silly, and may even mock the title character's mindset - it's possible things could get better if the dog felt capable of taking any action towards improving its lot.

Another possible reading is that held by PETA, which used the strip to help publicize arguments against keeping dogs outside with "no one to keep them company, no enrichment, and no shelter - a reality that many "outdoor dogs" endure every day." It's possible to see The Angriest Dog as arguing that rage is a reasonable response to an genuinely unjust world.

1 The Angriest Dog in the World

Lynch Hits Peak Meta

In a subversion of his comic's strict and simple premise, this entry of The Angriest Dog in the World includes no speech coming from inside - just the s that fans are used to. Again, it's possible to see this strip as devoid of meaning or packed with it. The dog's anger continues whether its owners are present or not. Again, when presented as a weekly installment in a long-running series, a wordless version of the comic accrues extra meaning, stripping away any hint at the 'reason' behind the animal's anger. Medium recalls Lynch's comments about the nature of rage, stating:

I don't know why I chose a dog. It has more to do with people and that the idea that anger is so intense… I was curious about anger. Once you're angry, you're really, really angry.

Those are just 10 entries in David Lynch's nine-year run of The Angriest Dog in the World - hopefully, efforts are underway to uncover and safeguard the many, many strips that are still uned for. While The Angriest Dog in the World may not have been as popular as a movie like Blue Velvet, it's clear that David Lynch had something to express about thoughts that a lot of people can relate to.

Source: Will Salmon, GamesRadar; Comics Beat; Volodymyr Bilyk, Medium; Elena Waldman, PETA