About Karl
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Karl lives at the Toronto Zoo, in a eucalyptus enclosure he has fully claimed as his own. He arrived as a shy new resident and quickly became a favourite anyway — the koala who presses his nose to the glass, side-eyes anyone who gets too close, and has strong opinions about which branch is the best branch. Karl is not, technically, a nice koala. He is, however, an extremely popular one.
What really won Toronto over was pizza. Nobody's sure who dropped the first slice near his enclosure, but Karl decided immediately that eucalyptus was a lifestyle and pizza was the goal. He now recognizes the delivery guy by scooter sound alone, has a strong and frequently stated preference for cheese only (pepperoni is, for reasons nobody has ever gotten out of him, a personal insult), and once went three days refusing to come down from his tree until a keeper produced a slice. He's been scheming, bargaining, and occasionally sulking his way toward more pizza ever since — and he is, somehow, always at least a little bit closer to getting some.
What started as sketches of Karl napping (and glaring, and plotting) in his enclosure became a small run of comics about zoo life from his point of view: keeper visits, new neighbours in the pavilion next door, and the daily business of being extremely watched while doing very little — unless pizza is involved.
Every issue is drawn to be pored over, argued about panel by panel, and eventually memorized word-for-word by whichever small human has claimed it as theirs.