The World of Arthur Trope
Regulation CF: Testing the Waters/ Type: Revenue Share / Raise: $55,000-$75,000 / Min. Investment: $500.00 / Dev Plan: Humor Book Series, Animated Web Series, Mobile Game & Apps / Est. Launch: Sept 2026
“From ARTHUR TROPE and the editorial desk of PICKLEFISH COMICS — a not-quite wholly-owned subsidiary of international mega-conglomerate Synergistic Systems, Inc. — comes TROPE, the monthly digest in which every comic panel arrives with a backstory, every backstory arrives with a memo, and every memo makes the question a little harder to ignore: why on earth did they buy us?”
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When Marvin Pisch — beloved founder of indie publisher Picklefish
Comics — dies, his widow sells the company to Synergistic Systems,
Inc., a global conglomerate with seventeen sectors and no
discernible reason to want a five-person comics shop. Cartoonist
Arthur Trope launches a new strip, The Inscrutables, in Marv’s
memory. His unnamed editor launches something else: a monthly
digest in which each panel’s origin story is told alongside the
slow-motion corporate comedy engulfing the office — the
nine-member Caption Committee, the caption-scoring algorithm with
a proprietary denominator, the focus group that works weekends, and
the expense reports that are never, ever questioned.
Each volume delivers twenty single-panel comics with the stories
behind them, a long-form feature, reader mail, leaked memos — and
one more month of evidence on the mystery holding the series
together. Nobody upstairs reads the magazine. Nobody audits
anything. The sponsors predate the automobile. And the only thing
headquarters has ever asked, twice, in the same four words, is
whether the machines in Artie’s stories are “based on anything.”
TROPE is Dilbert by way of Thurber, a love letter to single-panel
cartooning wrapped in a slow-burn corporate conspiracy — equal
parts joke-delivery system, workplace satire, and elegy for the way
small, beloved things survive inside very large ones.
THE FORMAT
Told entirely through the editor’s lightly-corrected blog posts, letters,
postscripts, and found documents, the series reads in real time:
warm, wry, increasingly suspicious. Panels are black and white, as
Marv intended. Captions are contested, as the Committee insists.
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Proposed Terms of the Offering
The summary below highlights current proposed terms of the Offering. Terms are subject to change and will be set forth the offering statement.
Type of Security: Revenue Share. (How it works: Basically, your investment is a loan which we pay back to you over time from the revenue generated by the franchise, until we return to you the entire amount, multiplied by the Payment Multiple.)
Min. Investment Amount: $50 (increments of $50)
Anticipated Offering Amount: $25,000 minimum / $50,000 maximum
Revenue Share %: 20% of net revenue.
Payment Multiple: 3x. For every $10 invested, we repay a total of $30 (i.e., the amount invested multiplied by the Payment Multiple). Macguffin makes annual installment payments on this amount from the Revenue %. So in this case, Investors receive $0.20 of every $1 of net revenue generated by this franchise during the year, until the full $30 is returned.
Payment Deadline/Maturity Date: None
Use of Proceeds: Macguffin Co. will deploy proceeds toward the implementation of the initial phases of a multimedia franchise development strategy. Initial plans are outlined below, but subject change prior to Offering launch.
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RSVP to reserve an invitation to invest in the future revenue of this franchise. We’ll send you a link to the intermediary platform hosting the Offering, where you can access the offering statement for the franchise once the Offering is launched.
Note: This a solicitation of interest (“Testing the Waters”) for the securities related to this franchise. No money or other consideration is being solicited, and if sent in response, will not be accepted. No offer to buy the securities can be accepted and no part of the purchase price can be received until an offering statement covering the securities is filed and only through an intermediary’s platform. A person’s indication of interest involves no obligation or commitment of any kind.
RSVP to learn more about the development plan and upcoming Offering for this early-stage IP. Just fill some stuff in, Macguffin, and we’ll send you the full pitch deck, works-in-progress, and updated creative materials. (Indication of interest involves no obligation or commitment of any kind.)
Pitch Deck>>>
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TROPE is a hand-inked comedy universe where animals, atoms, and appliances endure life's ordinary indignities with administrative seriousness — deadpan, tender, and built to be shared.
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Artie just got back from India by way of France, where he’d been granted access to study the ancient Vedic Sanskrit comics collection at the University of Mumbai, and then received a private tour of the Lascaux Caves near Montignac. He came back Sunday night with a monster case of jet lag and Delhi belly, but he says the first-hand access to some of the world's oldest preserved single-panel comic concepts was more than worth it. Apparently he gathered an entire curriculum for the summer course he teaches at UW called "Archetypical Patterns in Single-Panel Comics, 1914-1946". I'm not sure how studying ancient Vedic Sanskrit comics and the cave paintings of Stone Age France applies to the syllabus necessarily, but some grant money came through and it opened a few doors, so I guess he'll work it in. He expensed the rest of the trip on his corporate Amex, because he says he uncovered a goldmine and has a lifetime of new panel ideas. His first big insight - after two weeks spent in white gloves handling precious fragments from stone tablets, and shards of petrified wooden planks, and faded sheets of linen parchment, under the watchful eye of Dr. Amit Bhat, the UM’s ancient comics curator - was the prevalence of "When I was your age…" gags in the prehistoric Bhimbetka rock shelters, dating as far back as mid-6th Century BC. Which was surprising because people didn’t tend to live very long in those days, so "When I was your age" gags would be limited to an age difference of maybe a decade and a half - and also because technology wasn't exactly advancing at lightning speed, so presumably there was a lot less material to work with. Yet the repeated variations on this particular gag throughout these ancient comics reveal a kind of pre-Iron Age irony that hasn't been much explored - in the Western literature anyway. Although there have been disputed attempts to ascribe comic elements to several of the cave drawings of Lascaux, where Artie observed firsthand those famed aurochs depicted as the oafs of the Paleolithic era, treated by the other animals with a certain sly condescension. Neanderthals, too, were painted by Homo sapiens with (arguably) exaggerated features to some comedic effect – yet in Artie’s analysis, those primitive works lack the comic sophistication on display in the Mumbai collection, and their influence on single-panel comic development have not, to date, withstood meaningful peer review.
Artie's second insight from Mumbai: Vedic Sanskrit had no written component - it pre-dated Brahmi script - so those comic ideas, variations of which have been found from recently unearthed stone shelters in Bhimbetka all the way to the Bay of Bengal, were drawn in ochre on cave walls and the captions were then passed down for generations by word of mouth, and only later preserved on the stone tablets, wooden planks and linen parchment that were eventually excavated and made their way to Dr. Bhat’s collection. One can only wonder how these captions evolved over those many centuries, even as the images remained frozen in time.
Artie spent the return flight running back and forth from the lavatory to his middle seat, where he drafted a paper on his findings for submission to The New England Journal of Single-Panel Comics, and doodling in his Moleskin, where he'd taped photocopies of several ancient comic images he'd found most relatable today. The oldest comic idea in Dr. Bhat's collection depicts an adult, bearded male, looking down on a young boy pushing what looks like a wheelbarrow, and saying, "When I was you’re age, we had to carry our शकट (carts) on our शुप्ति (shoulders)." So Artie decided to update this ancient gag, riffing a bit, and setting the scene at the base of a volcano, and featuring an oldish caveman and a young boy on a bicycle. Enjoy… -Ed.
Prototype
Offering Terms
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When you invest in a character franchise with Macguffin Co, you’re investing in a share of the future royalties generated by the licensing of the intellectual property, at the terms detailed in the Prospectus for each franchise.
Investing in character franchises is an opportunity to be involved in the first phases of a creative process, bringing character concepts to life, and enabling the commercialization that creates royalties for the creators and investors.
Like any start-up business, early investors receive access to an investment at its very beginning stage, when potential returns are greatest. But investing in our franchises involves risk, and you may lose 100% of your investment. If you can’t afford to lose your investment, don’t invest.
In the case of Macguffin Co., investing in our characters is meant to affordable, with minimum investments as low as $10, and accessible to anyone over the age of 18, regardless of investor accreditation status.
Our goal is to create characters that can be enjoyed for generations and allow investors of any size budgets to build a portfolio in an entertaining and hopefully profitable investment class, and to build a community of long term investors who help bring these characters life for children of all ages.
Investments are offered in accordance with the Securities and Exchange Act of 1933, managed via an FINRA registered intermediary, and conducted in full compliance with all SEC regulations.
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The Macguffin Co. business model is meant to make investing in characters accessible to everyone, but that doesnt mean it’s everyone’s cup of tea. Investing in characters is speculative. While speculative investments can offer the potential for high returns, they also come with a high level of risk. It is important to understand that the value of these assets can fluctuate significantly and there is a possibility of losing some or all of your investment. If you can’t afford to lose your investment, don’t invest.
The possibility of returns relies on the strength of the underlying concept, the execution of the idea, and Macguffin’s ability to license the intellectual property rights to media partners, and the ensuing success of the products created in the marketplace. None of which is a sure thing.
It is crucial to carefully consider the risks before making any investment decisions.
At Macguffin Co., we’re looking for long-terms investors interested in engaging with the creative process, building a portfolio of characters, and staying involved as we bring new characters to the world. If that sounds like you, we’d love for you to join us. If not, this might not be the platform for you.
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Capital raised will be deployed toward:
Ongoing content development.
Marketing and demand generation.
“There are two types of people in the world. I don’t care for either one of them.”
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The Arthur Trope Franchise
Copyright 2018-2026
Macguffin Co.
