Katarina is a Webcomic published by Riot Forge. It acts as a prequel to The Mageseeker, starring League of Legends's eponymous champion, Katarina.
It can be found on Webtoon here.
Katarina provides examples of:
- Affectionate Nickname: As part of their brother-sister bond, Katarina and Talon are "Kat" and "Tal" to each other.
- Ancestral Weapon: Katarina's signature daggers turn out to be the emblems of House du Couteau and the possessions of whomever is head of house.
- As You Know: Talon reminds Kat that Marcus du Couteau has been dead for three years, so the whole Du Couteau estate belongs to her.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: Since the comic is from Katarina's point of view, we see her calmly evaluating a situation — both in terms of what she'll do and what she thinks the other person will do — even as she's carving her way through it. She almost never loses her head, even when she's clearly in pain.
- Bloodless Carnage: Despite the many lethal battles in the comic, not one drop of blood spills from anyone or splashes on anything. Even when Katarina reveals significant claw-inflicted wounds to her friend Drann, her injuries are more akin to nondescript dark-red gashes on her abdomen (just a bit darker than her eye scar) rather than what actively-bleeding lacerations should look like.
- Devious Daggers: Talon and Katarina specialize in throwing knives in addition to her larger daggers, though there's quite a bit of hand-to-hand fighting as well.
- Don't Think, Feel: During a binding ritual near the end of the comic, Drann admonishes Katarina for getting lost in thought and tells her to remember a moment when she felt a sense of 'connection.' She thinks of Garen. It works.
- Empowered Badass Normal: While already a highly-skilled fighter, Episode 9 reveals something about Katarina's daggers in the present day. She is magically bonded to them after a ritual from her hemomancer friend Drann, facilitating her in-game feats of impossible manipulation of her daggers in addition to teleporting to them.
- Eye Scream: It comes up early that Talon was the one who left the scar on Katarina's eye. She returns the favor when he attempts to assassinate her... though it's significant that that's ALL she does.
- Hand Behind Head: Talon takes this posture in Episode 8 when Katarina apparently wakes him up in the middle of the night, looking for their father. It covers the fact that he's reaching for a knife hidden in the collar of his pajamas.
- Innocuously Important Episode: For a companion piece to The Mageseeker, it seems odd to follow the trials and tribulations of Katarina, since she's from Noxus and would otherwise have nothing to do with anything in Demacia. Why is it relevant? It sets up a reveal late in the game that she was the one who killed the late King Jarvan III, not Sylas or any of his allies.
- Interquel: Not only does it take place before The Mageseeker, the Demacia segment takes place during events in the Lux comic.
- Male Gaze: A given considering that Katarina is the focus character, the webtoon does not shy away from showing her figure. A not quite in-universe example can be seen in the Episode 5 cover, tracing Garen's eyes would show they are focused squarely on Katarina's cleavage.
- Ship Tease: Episodes 5 and 6 details Katarina's first encounter with Garen, and by Episode 7 it seems he left quite the impression on her, given that she's thinking of him.
- Wham Episode: Episode 4 finally reveals why Katarina is important to the game: she was the the true killer of the late Jarvan III.
- Who Watches the Watchmen?: Episode 10 has Swain clearly indicate that he envisions Katarina having this purpose. She finishes off the conversation where he states this by regarding that she already knows how she'd kill him after having seen him in action against Marcus Du Couteau.
- Wrecked Weapon: Katarina breaks one of the two daggers of House du Couteau in Demacia.
