Jabberwocky is a manga by Hisa Masato and "adventure/sci-fi/action" doesn't really do it justice.
British secret agent Lily Apricot gets an assignment to steal back a Russian treasure only to discover that dinosaurs are real, they walk among us, and they're really pissed at being overthrown by humans!
Not to be confused with Lewis Carroll's poem Jabberwocky or The Jabberwockeez dance group.
Tropes associated with Jabberwocky:
- The Alcoholic / Functional Addict(?): Lily loves her booze. "I drank two bottles, I can't be drunk!"
- Exacerbated by the fact that she creates her weapons from wine bottles.
- Ancient Conspiracy: Dinosaurs have been living in the shadows, though their control over human affairs is spotty as of the time of the story.
- Animesque: Inverted, it's pretty Sin City / HellBoy-esque aside from Lily and the head of the Chateau L'If.
- Badass Long Coat: Nice and tattered; sometimes makes it seem as if he has wings or multiple tails.
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Galileo was a humanoid dinosaur and so was Helen of Troy! Surprisingly, Nicola Tesla is human, just really insane.
- Chess Motif: Lily repeatedly refers to herself as just a pawn to be sacrificed in order to take the king, which irritates Sabata to no end (she gets better).
- Cleavage Window: Lily's outfit has a cleavage on par with Molotov Cocktease, but with a proper clasped collar.
- Combat Stilettos: Lily actually wears chunky stripper heels but impractically high heels for fighting nonetheless.
- Driven to Suicide: Lily's mother couldn't take being an exiled traitor and killed herself in front of Lily
- Eye Patch Of Power: D'Jango has one with a coffin on it where Sabata ripped his eye out with his broken arm bones after D'Jango shot his arm off.
- Feathered Fiend: The flying dinos and their cruel "mother". The "ninjas" that they carry bear a striking similarity to the monkey ninjas of Kim Possible.
- A God Am I: A dinosaur who claimed to be descended from Adam (they were dinosaurs) wanted to use Adam's rib to unite dino-kind to defeat the monkeys. He's actually just Dumb Muscle being manipulated by D'Jango.
- Go Out with a Smile: The Glory Hound archaeologist who found Adam's Rib dies with a smile — after all this date will now be the anniversary of his death!
- Headbutting Pachy: Tuzo, a bodyguard for Dorohov, is a humanoid Pachycephalosaurid who fights by using his thick bone skull to ram through his opponents.
- Hollywood Cyborg: Has a mechanical lower right arm
- Holy Hand Grenade: It's actually the unborn son of the Russian dinosaur king
- IN SPACE!: HellBoy / The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen / Van Helsing with dinosaurs!
- Incendiary Exponent / Monumental Damage: The Leaning Tower of Pisa is turned into a flaming cannon
- Kill It with Fire / Shock and Awe / Death from Above: Tesla accidentally discovered how to spontaneously combust people
- Last of His Kind: After it was
(erroneously) reported that the ruling oviraptor family were — from a dinosaur's point of view — descended from baby-snatching cannibals, dinosaur kind turned against them and Sabata's entire family was murdered. - Latex Perfection / The Masquerade: The dinosaurs can pass as humans by wearing masks... somehow.
- Living MacGuffin: The orb that the Russian royal family uses is secretly an egg which contains the future prince of the dinosaur kingdom. The egg can be used to take control of the dinosaur kingdom by threatening the egg's father, with Dorohov intending to steal it and use it to launch a war against humanity.
- The Man Behind the Man: The Empress of China has two dinosaur advisers.
- Meaningful Name: Lily and Sabata are named after a real life idol singer and a spy novelist, respectively.
- The Men in Black: The Pinkertons are really eccentric and really deadly.
- Off with His Head!: The first time we meet him Lily knocks off his head; it's actually a prosthetic.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Somehow manages to get away with a beard and hat combo in public despite, you know, being a freaking dinosaur.
- Pet the Dog: The feathered dino saves one of her "experiments" despite not caring about them as living creatures, let alone her own children.
- The Dog Bites Back / Hoist by His Own Petard: Her "perfectly trained" children don't like that one bit.
- Purely Aesthetic Era
- Room Full of Crazy: Tesla's. He takes notes while he has a weird machine hooked up to his head and has notes on top of notes and takes note of all of them or lack thereof.
- Science Marches On: Oviraptors aren't baby-stealing jerks (noted by the author) and the "evolution cycle" of embryos has since been debunked (not noted).
- Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Very much on the ideal side, after all, little Mao hasn't done all the terrible things three kinds of divination say he'll do yet...
- Tyke Bomb: Lily's father/parents were traitors; the only thing anyone felt she was good for was dying for her country.
- Who You Gonna Call?: The Chateau D'If, that's who!
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Dorohov (Dolohov?) had to basically perform dinosaur abortions, smashing living eggs for years.
