Tom

You can take the bear out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the bear!-Tom Tom is Ethan's stuffed bear and best friend, who, from Ethan's perspective, is a live bear and real as anyone else in the strip. The interplay between the two title characters, and the question of whether Tom was real or not (Fannin said yes, but only Ethan can see that he's alive) is what gave the strip its unique personality that remained mostly untouched during its decade-long run. Although he pronounces everything he says correctly, he is a bad speller (writing his name as "Tomm", great as  "graat", and creek as "crik"); however, he might spell his name "Tomm" and creek as "crik" simply to shorten them because his writing is large (this is far less likely with his misspelling of "great", though he might pretend to misspell it to fool around with Ethan.). Tom often helps Ethan with his inventions, yet, since they all usually go wrong, Tom is usually reluctant to help. Whenever Ethan tries to do his homework, he asks Tom to do it for him, but Ethan doesn't notice how Tom gets questions wrong (for example, when he didn't know a subtraction problem, so he put in Atlanta, Georgia). Often Tom beats up Ethan with an energetic pounce-and-tackle attack, which leaves Ethan bruised and scraped up, but not seriously harmed (this is usually how Tom greets Ethan when he comes home from school or when he opens a can of salmon). One probable theory as to Tom' existence springs from the first two strips. In these strips, immediately after Ethan caught Tom he takes him home and asks his mother what to do with him, to which his mother replies "take it home and stuff it." It is clearly depicted that Ethan mistakes this and feeds Tom. From this springs the belief that perhaps the reason that Ethan's mom doesn't see Tom as real is that they just assume he's stuffed. After all, psychology has shown that people may not always see something that's plainly obvious if it conflicts with what they are inherently predisposed to believe. Thus, the reason people don't see Tom as real is that their brains can't grasp that he could be real and that it takes Ethan's complex imagination to believe it. Many readers assume that Tom is either a product of Ethan's imagination, or a doll that comes to life when Ethan is the only one around. However, both of these theories are incorrect. In another story, Lincy Morrow has to stay at Ethan's house after school because her parents are working late. Ethan only finds this out on the way home; when Ethan and Lincy reach the house, Tom is waiting by the door for Lincy and wearing a tie. But the question is, how is Tom wearing the tie? Another instance of ambiguity is a strip in which Ethan imagines Tom and himself on the front page of many newspapers after winning a contest. Although these newspapers are clearly a figment of Ethan's imagination, Tom appears in "stuffed" form. Ethan has taken photographs of Tom, but on each occasion, when adults see the pictures, Tom appears as a stuffed toy. Also Tom pounces on Ethan when he arrives home from school. The issue remains about how Ethan would hurt himself as such. Tom's favorite food could be people (perhaps with tomato sauce, as Ethan once remarked), although he never seems too tempted to eat Ethan, so this may not actually be true.