It's like if Fighter could draw and made a webcomic.
Swords
is a webcomic by Matthew Wills about a fictional universe where swords are very important, taking many different roles, as well as being filled with sword themed wildlife. While the comic has a unique lore and an on-going story, it also features many one-shot comics that just end in sword puns.
Swords provides examples of:
- Aerith and Bob: See the gods Argok, Baltad, Bograk, Greg and Kargob.
- Amusing Injuries: All the time. It's a bit of a logical conclusion what with the comic's over-use of swords in whatever capacity Matthew Wills can think of.
- Anachronic Order: Lampshaded in comic CCXL, "The Boredsword is Defeated".
- Angry Eyebrows: After failing to guard the Sword of Absolute Fury, the Dwarf hides his failure by creating a new one, which is just a normal sword with angry eyes drawn on it.
- Arms and Armor Theme Naming: Just to be even more obvious, plenty of Bit Characters as well as more significant ones are named after kinds of swords, parts of swords, or occasionally Named Swords.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The Dreihander, a sword so big, the King of Drakness (sic) cannot lift it.
- Baguette Beatdown: From "The Knight's Loaf", it's the titular loaf.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: An Averted Trope — all kinds of characters, male and female, retain cuts inflicted on them and are visibly scarred in later strips.
- Boomerang Comeback: The Swordarang, a boomerang with two bladed tips. Money back guarantee! Well, yeah, considering adventurers using it keep getting stabbed on the return, it's guaranteed they'd ask their money back.
- Bungling Inventor: Sickle, who's (sword-related, of course) inventions never end up being anywhere legitimately useful. Understandably, King of Drakness eventually fires her.
- Call-Back: Sickle once made a Dreihander, which is to say a "three-handed sword". She puts this knowledge to good use later by knowing the gods sword is a three-handed sword too.
- Cat Up a Tree: In "Just a Sprout After All", Quest Sprout and the Sword Dragon he's riding in search of a worthwhile quest decide against joining an epic battle against the Demon King in favor of just saving a cat up a tree.
- Comic-Book Time: Averted for the joke in CC, "One Year Anniversary". It's been a year since the first comic, and it apparently really did take Bread Knight a whole year to reach the Demon King.
- Cool, but Inefficient: The Sword of Unspeakable Darkness looks scary, but it only has an attack power of 1.
- Cursed with Awesome: A man cursed with a dragon's arm, which allows him to wield a giant sword in that arm with ease. The other man in the comic is cursed slightly more conventionally and has a fish arm which can't even grip a blade.
- Cute Slime Mook: Bathad's Blade's soul usually appears like this. The only word is can say is "Stab" with different inflections.
- Depraved Dentist: The Bite Knight performs dentistry with, you guessed it, a sword.
- Disproportionate Retribution:
- The monk in "Caught Red-Sworded" has a sword that turns red when enemies are nearby. Eating the last cookie is enough to be considered an enemy, which is punishable by stabbing.
- Invoked and referenced near-verbatim in CCLVII, "Revenge Edge".Alt Text: You shouldn't trust a sword whose entire job description is "disproportionate punishment".
- The monk in "Caught Red-Sworded"
- Door Fu: The Bread Knight asks a Doorsmith to make him a shield, and receives a tiny door-shaped shield.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The webcomic is named Swords, and in fact, swords appear in almost every single comic in some way.
- Eyepatch of Power: Subverted with Sickle, who is a woman with an eyepatch complete with a few Rugged Scars on her face too. She's clearly just a Bungling Inventor, and probably just lost her eye and got those scars due to her work on sword inventions. Though it does later turn out that she's worthy to wield a godsword still.
- Fastball Special: In CCXXXIX, "Long Range Sword", the Red Barbarian prepares to throw a sword-wielding boy at Xiphos.
- Finders Rulers: Parodied in a strip where the Plague Doctor pulls a sword out of a kidney stone and becomes the Kidney King.
- Flaming Sword:
- LIX, "Powerful Flamedge" has one that only burns its wielder.
- CCLXV - Fire Types features four blades that vary in both size and flame content.
- LIX, "Powerful Flamedge"
- Flat "What": Joyeuse's reaction, after being beaten in the Swor'nament by Rapier Tapir, and learning this makes him the new king of Hiltshire. And then another one when Rapier Tapir actually talks.Rapier Tapir: Thankyou, everyone, for this great honor. I will do my due diligence to reign with kindness and dignity.
- Florence Nightingale Effect: The comic's version of Cupid uses a sword to cut peoples' hands off so they can fall in love with the person who heals them.
- Giant's Knife; Human's Greatsword: A short sword to an orc is a long sword to a fawn.
- The Gods Must Be Lazy: "XIV - I Left My Blade..." shows the god Kargob literally just dropping his sword in Xiphos.
- Gravity Screw: The Sword of Up. Whatever it points toward is "up". So, if you hold it parallel to the ground, everything starts falling in the opposite direction. It needs to be kept "up" all the time.
- Gratuitous Disco Sequence: Behold the Disco Blade! A magic sword that can apparently summon such sequences on a whim.
- Hand Puppet: CCXII, "Achilles Heel" shows one sock puppet stabbing another. The last panel shows that the puppeteer actually stabbed his own hand.
- Healing Shiv:
- There's a Blade of Healing, that actually reverts people to how they were before getting wounded. Overuse will cause age regression.
- There's also a sword used to vaccinate against swordpox.
- Humans Are Average: Not as magical as elves, not as strong as dwarves, not as smart as orcs... but they sure love to try.
- I Am Not Left-Handed: The Bridge Bandit in CCCX, "Pattern", uses the same attack pattern against all his foes, until a canny observer pushes him past that.
- Infernal Retaliation: CCLXVIII - Fire vs. Fire shows a man stabbing a lava golem with the inferno blade. This seems to have just put it aflame while not hampering it at all.
- Insufficiently Advanced Alien: CCXXIV, "Starswung" shows an alien presenting humanity with a gift - a sword! Two other humans of course tell him that they've got a lot of those in weirdly large quantities, and the alien is quite impressed with the craftsmanship of a human sword he is shown.
- Impossible Pickle Jar: DCCXXIX, "The Everstabbed", has a man seek out "The Everstabbed": an entity made up of black void energy that is "kept eternally bound between life and death by the sword that cut through [their] heart"... to ask them to open his pickle jar. The Everstabbed can't open it either.
- Improvised Weapon: The very first comic has a knight making due while in search of a sword but happening upon a bakery. Inverted in very many other comics which instead contain a sword intended specifically for a purpose beyond killing... which usually still end up cutting people accidentally.
- Katanas Are Just Better: Discussed in LVII, "Katanas Are Cool"; apparently the Barbarian's son thinks so. He, however, sheds a single tear at his son being a nerd.
- Klingon Promotion: Non-lethal version. Because the Sword Tapir defeated Joyeuse in one-on-one combat, and because she was technically queen of Hiltshire at the time, that meant the Tapir is the new king of Hiltshire.
- Lady Looks Like a Dude: Mere, the fighter from a Maori-like tribe, looks like a burly man... until she press Chad the Bastard Sword against her bosom, giving him a nosebleed.
- Literal Disarming: Poor Entrails the Dark Knight gets this happening to him, after he was already missing one arm beforehand (heh).
- Literal Metaphor: A Swordmaster declares that the sharpest blade is the mind. So his student learns how to cuts through things with only his head.
- Logic Bomb: The Smartsword has thousands of enchantments that let it do almost anything, but being shown a Captcha on a scroll causes it to explode.
- Meaningful Name:
- Xiphos, who is named after an ancient Greek kind of sword. One of his wives, Kopis, and his daughter, Harpe are both named after other kinds of ancient Greek swords, too.
- The three Wraiths - Wraith with Bandana, and Wraith with Hair and Wraith with Scar.
- Mundane Solution: You don't need a cool magic sword to stop the spread of swordpox; all you have to do is wash your hands. Incidentally, this strip was released during the early days of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: Olack (the Orphan Eater) forges a thousand swords in the hopes of getting a new title. The first person to see him after he finishes asks if he's Olack the Orphan Eater, which he protests that he only did that once. However, the Alt Text claims they have at least stopped calling him Olack the Non-Recycler.
- Once per Episode: There is a sword involved in some way. Probably not a regular sword, but nonetheless there is a sword of some kind. At the least, someone's going to make due for sword usage, like the very first comic. The sole exception is one comic that released just before April Fools.
- Open-Minded Parent: Kopis may be a Barbarian, but she doesn't mind if Harpe wants to be a Knight. Surely that will still entail Harpe destroying her enemies regardless.
- Our Dragons Are Different:
- CXXII, "Sword Dragon" has a normal-looking dragon that vomits a storm of swords.
- CCLII, "Sword-Nosed Dragon" has a more unusual dragon which looks like a giant, flying, flexible sword with eyes and legs. Its enemy is the Sheath-faced Leviathan.
- CXXII, "Sword Dragon"
- Our Elves Are Different: The elves in the comic are unusual in that they more closely resemble orcs than humans, though given that orcs were originally defined as being corrupted elves this probably makes more sense than most depictions. What's most interesting is that while elves do appear to be better than humans, it's the orcs who are the most technologically advanced (to the point of having their own Steve Jobs analogue).
- Plague Doctor: The character Plague Doctor MD, a medically trained troll who wears a surgical mask and a plague mask at the same time for extra safety.
- Pokémon Speak: The Quest Sprout can only say its name while looking for, well, quests.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: The Quest Sprout, a baby plant creature going on its own quest.
- Rugged Scar: Subverted by Bread Knight, who suddenly appeared with two scars across his face and only one eye. These were explained as being inflicted in CCLXX - Bag of Infinite Swords, from him opening the bag.
- Running Gag: People get cut up in the comic, lethally or otherwise, as is pretty appropriate with all of those swords around.
- Seadog Peg Leg: "LXXIV - Captain Swordbeard" has one with two peg legs. Except, of course considering this comic, the peg legs are blades.
- Shout-Out: So we have a one-armed, one-eyed Dark Knight named Entrails, huh?
- Stable Time Loop: CLXXVIII, "Time Knife" has an explorer trapped in an endless loop of grabbing a Time Knife and being sent back in time.
- Stealth Pun: The punchline of "DIX- A Hard Job", is a dick joke.
- Talking Weapon: The series has several magical swords that can talk, the most famous probably being the Sword of Truth.
- CCVIII, "Mansplaibur" has a Sword That Corrects People.
- Chad is a reoccurring character who, other than talking, appears to be an ordinary sword. Really he is half Merblade and half Sword-orc.
- CCVIII, "Mansplaibur"
- Temporal Abortion: The Time Knife lets the wielder retroactively kill a target without even time-traveling. Unfortunately, as the assassin finds out, it also prevents the client from paying them as they no longer remember the victim.Alt Text: Always get paid before you create a paradox.
- Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: The simple artstyle doesn't make the faces of women especially clearly feminine compared to men, but they tend to be drawn with two lines coming out of their eyes to indicate long eyelashes.
- Theme Naming: Many of the named characters (with the notable exception of the gods/demons) have monikers that refer to type of swords (or other weapons), historical swords, or are otherwise sword-related: Harpe, Sickle, Xiphos, Joyeuse, Sharp Sharply, King Hilton, Mere, Ōdachi, Knife, Stabbins the Fawn, Dirk the Fawn, Baselard the Fawn, Langeschwert, Hack, Glaive, Shank, Cutter, Mincer, Hash, Jian, Kopis, Shiv, Emperor Ricasso, Knifey, Slicer, Lord Wakizashi, Choil, Dagger the Gnome, Edge the Merblade, Black Stabbeth, Hiltilda, Sabre, Quillion, Estoc, Stiletto, etc.
- Turn-Based Combat: Defied in CCXLII, "Real Time Combat". The warrior is stopped from attacking by an adventurer because it's not his turn to attack. The warrior attacks anyway.
- Turns Red: Referenced in the Alt Text of CCCX, "Pattern". The bridge bandit fights over a hundred opponents with only his most basic moveset — leading the nearby observer to think that is all he has.
- Unexplained Recovery: Piercy the Pilgrim has pulled out his own heart (which was the sword all along) with the expected results, and appeared in more comics since. Perhaps these were simply before he pulled out his own heart, but that has not been made explicit.
- Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object: In "Spill", a cart is carrying a barrel of "Unstoppable Attack Swords" and another of "Immovable Defense Swords". The carriage bumps over a rock, spilling its shipment, and when the swords mix it results in a massive explosion.
- Use Your Head: XII, "Which Type of Sword is the Greatest?" shows a student cutting a sword with his head because "The sharpest blade is the mind".
- Vampiric Werewolf: In CXL "Halloween Special", a warrior is bitten by a swordpire, cut by a wereswordnote , and had her guts devoured by zombies, in rapid succession on her way to a date. The final panel shows her as a three-way hybrid of vampire, weresword, and zombie.
- Was Once a Man: CXCII, "Valentines Sword" has a man who was turned into a beast by a cursed sword. Removing the sword ends the curse, but the maiden puts it back in as he looks better as a beast.
- Wham Episode: "Destiny Calls" and "A New Threat Rises", back to back, in which in order to fulfill Baltad's prophecy, Bread Knight must challenge Rapier Tapir to a duel to claim Hiltshire for himself. And Bread Knight's father is also looking for him. And Bread Knight's name is Ryan.
- White Male Lead: In XLVIII, "Leadership", the elderly couple (wrongly) assumes the White man must be the party's leader.
- World of Pun: A good majority of the swords and sword-based objects in this webcomic have a Punny Name.
- World Shapes: An in-universe myth is that the whole world is a sword wielded by a god. The narrator then immediately says that the world is, of course, round.
- You Are Too Late: In CC, "One Year Anniversary", the Bread Knight finds that the princess he set to rescue already left during the one year it took him to reach the Demon King.
