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"A cup of tea? A drop of milk? A spoonful of poison? At first nothing would make very select club called Green Manor stand out from any other English club. Yet behind its thick walls, sunk into its deep chairs, hides the biggest bunch of con artists, bandits and murders that Queen Victoria's England has ever seen."
Synopsis

Green Manor is a Franco-Belgian comic made by Fabien Vehlmann as a writer and Denis Bodart as the artist.

It concerns the secrets inside the eponymous Smoky Gentlemen's Club told by an old man named Thomas Below who suddenly went insane just before his retirement.

Christopher Thorn, a renowned professor in the field of psychology is asked to study the old servant and is told the Dark Secrets that lie in the manor.


This comic book provides examples of:

  • Abusive Parents: Not the physically abusive kind but emotionally and verbally abusive,"The Testament" has a rich old man avert the Final First Hug and damns his children by screwing with them through their inheritance and laughs at them as he dies. Then there's this man who holed up his daughter in a room and let her starve to death because she was in love with a painter. Thus including Offing the Offspring.
  • Affably Evil: A good portion of the members are like this, one notable example is the unnamed short man in "A Small Crime Serenade" who invited a servant of Green Manor who would ask servants to drink with him, would apologize to children for hurting them accidentally, and killing people because the timing corresponded to a tune in his head.
  • Ailment-Induced Cruelty: MacMunay is one of the regulars at the club where Extreme Doormat George works as a waiter and is constantly abusive towards him, even threatening to have him fired. However, George doesn't hold it against MacMunay, knowing his irritability is due to an old war wound. When Lord Virgil forces George to choose a man to be killed by Lord Virgil's assassin, he uses disappearing ink to write MacMunay's name and reappearing ink to write Lord Virgil instead.
  • Amalgamated Individual: Played for Drama: A police inspector learns that the extremely prolific Serial Killer John Smith, who kills with a different method every time and leaving a letter reading "I will kill again", is actually a huge number of copycat killers who independently hit on the idea of murdering an Asshole Victim and blaming it on the original killer (something the general public will never accept, especially since he only puts the pieces together after one of them confessed). He then gets himself arrested, putting an end to the murders by taking the blame for them. A fellow inspector is shown to be cutting up an "I will kill again" letter on hearing the news, implying he too was going to murder his overbearing wife.
  • The Alcoholic: Lord Killian which is theorized that he accidentally killed himself while fighting off hallucinations caused by his drinking which was submitted to the police. Probable, but no.
  • And I Must Scream: Averted in that Lord Wyatt could still write, then played straight once his condition worsens. He still has the last laugh on the one responsible for his condition.
  • Animal Assassin: Or Lord Killian was killed by a monkey trained by a Jamaican woman he spurned. Not that also.
  • Anti-Hero: Detective Johnson is a Great Detective but he also has a lot of pride. It serves as his Fatal Flaw and it kills him in the end. Also, it makes him a very bad loser.
  • Aristocrats Are Evil: Justified since the stories revolve around Smoky Gentlemen's Club Green Manor, a man has to be in the upper class to join.
  • Asshole Victim: Yes, Karma Houdinis were harmed in the making of this comic.
  • Batman Gambit: Tons and magnificently used.
  • Beneath the Mask: Inspector Hill, cool, level-headed, and stoic. Who knew you had a hidden God complex.
  • But Now I Must Go: Daniel does this after a cruel joke inflicted on him. Naturally, his family worries. Then the pranksters become more worried when they realise he brought his surgical tools with him and he knew they played the trick on him. He didn't really mean any harm, he just went off to Paris to become a poet and abandon his dull life.
  • The Cassandra: Two men play it differently. Lord Virgil admits to running a criminal organisation yet people around him shrug him off thinking he's drunk. Daniel, on the other hand, advises one prankster on how to get out of the mental asylum shortly but doesn't care to help when the prankster doesn't follow.
  • The Chessmaster: A man Did Not Get the Girl kills her fiancee subconsciously. Then there's Handicapped Badass Lord Wyatt in an And I Must Scream state.
  • Complexity Addiction: The twist behind "Voodoo Night". It appears that Lord Killian was murdered by his simple wife Elizabeth, who had the motive and was the only one with him at the time, but there's so many odd details that it doesn't fit, such as the chicken giblets and the woman's message written in coal. After theorizing and theorizing, the gentlemen of the Green Manor conclude that it was voodoo from a spurned Haitian lover. It turns out that Elizabeth did kill him, and the wives of the club protected her by adding those odd details, knowing that their husbands would look for the fascinating perfect crime instead of the obvious solution.
  • Critical Psychoanalysis Failure: Subverted in "In the Head of William Blake" where a surgeon named Daniel fascinated with Blake wanted to examine the deceased poet's brain instead. He disappears with his surgical tools and the pranksters who decided to trick him fear for the worst. In the End, Dr. Thorne may have gone this way too.
  • Dark Secret: That Smoky Gentlemen's Club is so full of respectable bluebloods and gentlem— what do you mean it's fully of evil people?
  • Dead Man's Switch: Detective Johnson had a letter to be sent to Sir Montgomery in case of his death. I am a poor loser. Bang Bang.
  • Death by Irony: A judge saves a man from a hanging after having a heart attack just after he convicted the same man since his alibi was too convenient. He saves the man in time. Not realizing he wasn't having a heart attack, but a gun shot to the back after he had refused looking into the case again. He lampshades it before he dies.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Its understandable that women can be annoyed at men who host all these parties but not attend them because these men want to hit the bottle. So it's perfectly understandable that they let his wife get away with murder when she killed him when she snapped.
  • Disney Death: Subverted. Lord Wyatt may have survived the fall but he becomes mostly paralyzed until it worsens.
  • Driven to Suicide: The Spear of Longinus does this to its unwitting holders.
  • Escalating War: What happens when you cross Egomaniac Hunters and Hunting the Most Dangerous Game.
  • Evil Brit: Duh.
  • Evil Gloating: And yet a handicapped man still one-ups the villain after the gloating.
  • Evil, Inc.: Lord Virgil runs an intricate system where he is untouchable and untraceable.
  • Evil Old Folks: Some of the members, unless their ages are stated otherwise.
  • Fatal Flaw: Exploited. Detective Johnson's was Pride.
  • Faux Affably Evil: Lord Virgil gives a Secret Test of Character to George of killing Grumpy Old Man MacMunay, though Lord Virgil is doing to see George fail. Lord Virgil loses when George Takes a Third Option.
  • Final First Hug: Averted. He was a mean bastard when he had a family and he became a manipulative mean old bastard who damned all his children when he kicked.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: The short man in "A Small Crime Serenade" he was born with a very unassuming appearance that led people to ignore him. Boy, was that a mistake.
  • General Ripper: General Miller. Of course, it's not a massacre, it was just strategy.
  • A God Am I: Defied. Anyone who deciphers the mysteries of the Spear of Longinus and has a god-complex will die.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: The pranksters Lord Buckner and Lord Melvin wanted to just teach Daniel a lesson in speaking against them by removing Blake's brain and then allowing Daniel to examine Blake's head without knowing the brain was removed. Now Daniel's gone with his surgical tools and he begins to send them ominous messages taken from Blake's works.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: The detective solving the "John Smith" affair turns himself as the killer. Because there is no John Smith and it was just an excuse for murderers to blame on the non-existent Serial Killer.
  • Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Two egomaniac hunters bored after killing the greatest beasts, decide to duke it out as the Greatest Hunter with themselves as the hunter and the other as the prey. It's the wasps that got them first.
  • Incorruptible Pure Pureness: George will never wish anyone ill despite hating that person even if Lord Virgil puts the metaphorical gun to George's head and orders him to do it. He Takes a Third Option though it doesn't leave him any better.
  • Inspector Lestrade: The inspector who accuses Dr. Thompson as a murderer just because the victim married Dr. Thompson's love and then upon investigation, accuses anyone involved in moving the body as the murderer. He was right.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: So play a dangerous game of wits with a detective? Please take into account that he may have friends with Undying Loyalty who would activate the Dead Man's Switch.
  • Perfect Poison: An old man poisons everyone in his sending off party because he got sick of all their pretentiousness.
  • Scary Stinging Swarm: Two Egomaniac Hunters duke it out and upset a wasp's nest. Ironically, it kills them instead of the great beasts they have been hunting.
  • Self-Made Man: Lord Sanders kept his own children from getting their hands on most of their inheritance after he kicked so his youngest son leaves to become this, rather than see his Big, Screwed-Up Family fall apart since their father set it up to screw each other over to get a bigger share of the pie. He came back a rich man. This was what Lord Sanders had hoped to invoke and succeeded with the youngest.
  • Serial Killer: The short man and John Smith. Unfortunately, John Smith doesn't really exist.
  • Sore Loser: Detective Johnson is a poor loser, not that we could shed tears for the winner.
  • Terminally-Ill Criminal: The "John Smith" story has a man murder his wife and disguise it as the work of the elusive Serial Killer John Smith, then confess his crime to the inspector on the case. As he explains, he's going to die soon of an Incurable Cough of Death, so he confesses out of respect for the inspector's work, giving the key to the mystery: "John Smith" is actually dozens of people each murdering an Asshole Victim they know and pinning it on the killer.
  • Tricked to Death: The Spear of Longinus (or the spearhead, rather) has a coded message engraved on it that gives a recipe for an elixir of invulnerability. The alchemist who wrote it down says that it is destined to fall into the hands of a world conqueror, but as he himself is too old for it, he leaves the lance and the recipe in the hands of one more suited for the task. The elixir only confers a euphoric high on the drinker who thinks he's invincible, and quickly ends up trying to prove it (with fatal results) if he harbors such megalomania. The alchemist did this in the hopes of removing the kind of people with that level of ambition before they could get too dangerous, even centuries after his death.
  • Yandere: Sir Alfred Montgomery pulls the usual If I Can't Have You… card and succeeds along with winning against his Arch-Enemy, Detective Johnson. Fortunately for us, Detective Johnson is a poor loser.


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