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  • Acception: While the message of acceptance despite race, gender and sexuality is a main theme of the story, the comic does tend to get a little preachy at points. For example, there's a plot point about a trans girl who gets bullied over it. The kid who does it got called out and ended up having to go to counseling as a result. But despite said kid later apologizing for it, he had to be humiliated further by getting his mother involved after he had apologized. Most readers thought that kinda goes against the message this series wants to convey. Sure, the guy was a jerk but that didn't make the victim look any better.
  • Viciously mocked with the "Final Thoughts" in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja. Almost every single moral given is completely irrelevant to the story's content and gets comically derailed in some fashion.
  • Bittersweet Candy Bowl, BEING GAY IS A-OKAY!
    • Possibly, David's finding Tess attractive in no uncertain terms.
  • The B-Movie Comic drops the anvil.
  • The Comics I Don't Understand site has a special tag for anvilicious comics.
  • Tim Buckley's self insert into this Ctrl+Alt+Del strip, where he rants at Jack Thompson. Also contains the irony that Tim is threatening Jack Thompson for saying that gamers are violent and that his video game obsessed main character performs acts of extreme violence on a regular basis (not to mention that his little spiel ends with the phrase "don't fuck with us") — which is a weird reference to Fight Club.
  • Dominic Deegan drops numerous anvils of "intolerance is bad!" We know this because everyone who acts intolerantly is usually portrayed as irredeemably evil, not to mention the fact that something horrible will probably happen to them before the end of the arc.
    • The anvil is lightened by some of the reasons for the cultural conflict between Callan and the orc tribes being very obviously irreconcilable: on the human side the knights are oppressive, violent, and have the actual authority to make legally binding rulings. On the orc side, necromancy is considered a normal magical practice and rape is a standard legal tool for compelling compliance. Dominic's family's wealthy, powerful, and generally privileged perspective is the viewpoint of the comic, and the reader is seeing how he feels about the situation.
  • El Goonish Shive has a particularly painful anvil dropped in an oddly familiar explanation of how religion works on the Uryuom homeworld.
  • Existential Comics' blunt force anticapitalism and disdain for anything resembling mainstream economics can make many strips difficult to enjoy for a lot of people
  • Irregular Webcomic! decide to drop the anvil of Be Careful What You Wish For in this strip. Intentionally, with the link to this page.
  • The autobiographical Joe vs. Elan School goes into detail about the near-constant abuse that its author endured during his three years at the titular school, as well as the PTSD he dealt with after he got out. The comic frequently highlights the systematic issues and policies that allow facilities like Elan School to operate unimpeded, and consistently argues heavily against sending children to those kinds of places.
  • Least I Could Do: A story arc that blatantly compares George W. Bush to Emperor Palpatine...published in 2011, three years after Bush left office.
    • Also, did you know that Sohmer doesn't think very favorably of Christianity? He paints with a subtle brush. Seriously, we get it
  • Loving Reaper is rather unflinching in teaching people lessons about animal neglect, abuse, and cruelty at the hands of humans, and destruction of the environment. The author even appends strips with a brief explanation of the context behind it.
  • While Chris is usually pretty good about it, Misfile has a few strips that make it more than clear that Ash's character is supposed to be read as a trans boy, and that everything he goes through is supposed to drive home lesson about accepting trans people, except for the ones that are supposed to drive home lesson about accepting gay people.
  • Miss Guillotine: The comic's overarching messages are impossible to miss: bullying does permanent damage to the victims and has long-lasting and far-reaching consequences even if you don't think it's a big deal. People will behave immorally when they aren't held accountable for their actions and are given a pass just because of their status.
  • Made fun of in this Nip and Tuck comic. Nip, a B-movie writer/star, talks about why he does not do romance in his movies. He explains how bad Hollywood romance plots are. He mentions My Fair Lady and The Taming of the Shrew and how a girl with nothing wrong with her is run through a "Magic Makeover Machine" which is supposed to end up with the hero seeing her true inner beauty. The illustration that accompanies the talk shows a simple caricature of a woman getting smashed by a hydraulic press with the word "AESOP" written on it.
  • This Nodwick storyline. Yes, Mr. Williams, we all know Microsoft is doing all that. Stop rubbing it in and switch to ReactOS already!
  • Strip 1068 of The Order of the Stick has a rather ham-fisted message of women holding back their accomplishments in the presence of male co-workers.
  • Pastel Defender Heliotrope was rather unsubtle to readers with ideas of the oppression of women and sexual identities and evils of religion. To make sure ALL the bases were covered, JDR reveals in the ending that the entire thing was started because some robots wanted to ask permission to do we're-not-sure-what but no one was around to ask. Just to make sure that she's striking out against anti-piracy legislation in the most Anvilicious way possible.
  • Invoked and lampshaded in Planet of Hats, when Kirk literally drops an anvil while delivering a lesson in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield".
  • Rain has at least one character giving an extended monologue about acceptance and issues up to twice in almost every chapter.
  • Sandra and Woo used to be pretty blunt with its anti-animal cruelty and pro-environmentalist messages. It also had one chapter that was fairly anvillicious about the very, very obscure and specific message of anti-people-who-think-diabetics-injecting-insulin-are-doing-drugs.
  • Shortpacked! consistently does this with feminism and other issues Willis is passionate about.
  • Sinfest: While the comic was always full of political humor, around 2011 the plots and characters became secondary to the messages the author wanted to convey. At first, it was about the dangers of men, third-wave feminism, sex positivity, sex workers, and the patriarchy then it evolved to fear-mongering about trans people. Around 2019 the comic took on more reactionary views, and many strips focus on the dangers of "wokeness", vaccines, the surveillance state, and internet policing.
  • Subnormality is incredibly guilty of this. In almost every strip.
  • Lampshaded/parodied here in Tally Ho. With an actual anvil no less.


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