“And no, I don’t call it ‘enhanced strength’. We, as a society, have called it super strength for well over a century – ever since the first graphic novels featuring characters sporting it appeared in the 1930’s. I don’t see the point in changing that now, just because in the past thirty of forty years super strength is a reality thanks to psionics being born and cybernetics taking big leaps forward and the media thinks that’s a reason to make it sound scientific.
I’m super strong. I’m not ‘enhancedly’ strong or whatever crap they want to call me.”
— The Whitecoat
The Descendants is a
Web Serial Novel, Written by Landon Porter. It can best be described as an all text
comic book, as it is presented in the form of issues, annuals, one shots and mini series just as if it was any other comic book universe.
Primarily, the main body of the work concerns itself with a group of
characters as they work to protect themselves and each other from a corrupt organization that wishes to capture and experiment on the younger members of the group.
The series swings between being a love letter to comic books, reveling in traditional
Comic Book Tropes, and a deconstruction of the
Dark Age of comics.
Word Of God even states that early versions were a blatant
Take That at Marvel's
Civil War. Luckily, it stays mostly in the vein of the love letter, mostly to
Teen Hero books and family themes.
A
Character Sheet for this series can be found
here.
It can be read
here
.
This series provides examples of:
- Affably Evil (Most villains. Even the demons are polite. Liedecker's schtick, in particular, is to be an upstanding member of the community.)
- All Girls Want Bad Boys (Subverted in an issue of the same name.)
- Anti Villain (Vorpal, clearly. Liedecker to a lesser degree.)
- Badass Normal (Liedecker)
- Big Bad (Simon Talbot and Project TOME)
- Book Of Shadows (The Book Of Reason, and presumably the rest of The 4 books, spontaneously grow new material. Even in digibook copies.)
- The Chessmaster (Brother Wright)
- Simon Talbot is starting to show signs of this too.
- And Thunderhead.
- Code Name (Academy students had a tradition of giving themselves these, so most psionics in the US have one.)
- Cute Monster Girl (If it's female and non-human, it will be one of these. Of course, Your Milage May Vary )
- Dark Chick (Shine and to a lesser extent, Impact)
- Death By Origin Story (Whitecoat’s favorite professor)
- Differently Powered Individuals (The superheroes are called "prelates" by the media, but many of the heroes (as per the page quote) know exactly what they are.)
- Enemy Civil War (Most apparent with the Brother Wright/Project TOME split, but Morganna/demons and demons/demon baboons, too)
- Enemy Mine (Even demons intent on hunting down and consuming the emotions of humans don't like Morganna.)
- Everythings Better With Monkeys (Ape Knight and a horde of demon baboons that appear in one issue)
- Everythings Better With Platypi (Morganna keeps one around for the poison)
- Expy (Liedecker is essentially Diniverse Luthor played sane and much, much more dangerous.)
- Gadgeteer Genius (Not only Laurel, but Warrick’s non-powered girlfriend as well.)
- Genre Savvy (Warrick swings between this and Wrong Genre Savvy from issue to issue.)
- I Have The High Ground (Warrick, most heroic fliers)
- Instant Runes (Occult uses these during the 4 arc.)
- In The Hood (Occult wears a hood that casts magical darkness over her face.)
- Involuntary Shapeshifting (Seems to happen a lot to tertiary characters.)
- I Was Just Passing Through (Odd heroic sample with Hope 'helping' Vorpal with some smugglers when she just wanted to get to a repeater.)
- Magical Girl (Occult is a Magic Warrior)
- Meta Origin (most heroes are psionics )
- Mind Control (both Avatar and Thunderhead's schtick, although Morganna doesn't hesitate to apply it when needed)
- Mutants (Called 'psionics' here.)
- Mysterious Watcher (it’s been almost
24 36 issues and we still don’t know who “George” is)
- Nightmare Fuel (Fellgaze’s power)
- Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant (Juniper has moments of this.)
- Our Monsters Are Different (Trolls and Demons especially)
- Parental Abandonment (Mostly averted: We’ve met almost all the main characters’ parents and know why they’re allowed to stay at Freeland House)
- Public Domain Character (Morganna… only not really)
- Rouge Angles Of Satin (Rare, but all the more grating for it)
- Secret Identity (Though at this point, there’s not much reason for it: their biggest enemies know who and where they are.)
- Shout Out: (Many, but especially the names of the tentacles Isp and Osp)
- Show Within A Show (Malady Place. The first act of the pilot is on the site.)
- Sliding Scale Of Idealism Vs Realism (Firmly on the Idealism side)
- Super Hero School (And how: The Academy, the Brunswick School, Voice’s School, the Liedecker Institute…)
- Super Hero
- Superpower Lottery (Some people control universal forces, some people... are prematurely bald.)
- Take That (The briefly seen villain Wartorn more or less *is* Mark Millar and paraphrases Millar as a justification of his villainy)
- The Libby (Lily Goldenmeyer and with the new school comes Betty "Rapunzel" Sinclair)
- Thou Shalt Not Kill (Constantly. It's rare to even have a villain kill someone.)
- Tome Of Eldritch Lore (The 4, each of which contain the source code for the universe's local magical laws. One of them is called the Book Of Madness. All have their own force of will, are extremely dangerous, and perhaps worryingly, can be photocopied or digitized with both copies retaining those attributes.)
- The Book of Passions in particular seems to think it's perfectly okay to sic monsters on its Chosen One.
- Villain With Good Publicity (Liedecker. He’s managed to get the heroes to name a school after him! )
