"It's got some vampires but we're pretty sure it's better than twilight...maybe."
Bloody Urban is, to quote its creator, a completely normal slice-of-life webcomic, set in an Alternate Universe of Sydney, Australia populated by vampires, werewolves and other sorts of monsters.
A surreal parody of both the Supernatural Soap Opera and the typical Work Com, Bloody Urban follows the lives of Murray Manson and Shannon Arcuni, a couple of hipsters in their mid-twenties who work together in the creative department of what is possibly the world's strangest advertising company. Murray, a writer, is an awkward, slightly neurotic werewolf who is endlessly frustrated with his life. Shannon, an artist, is a gleefully insane, food-obsessed ghoul who is usually getting himself into some kind of trouble in the name of True Art. Along with their various friends and relations, they go about their lives doing things that usually precede hilarity.
Most of Bloody Urban's humour comes from the fact that, instead of the typical Masquerade setup, the general population is aware of every weird thing that exists in the comic's universe, they have always been aware of them, and they consider it all to be completely normal.
The series was mainly a gag-per-week webcomic. The comic, including some of the original hand-drawn strips can be found here
. The creator has since stopped making the comics in order to focus on producing a pilot for an animated series.
This comic provides examples of:
- Acting Unnatural: Murray in Threatening.
- A Good Name for a Rock Band: Groovy Roo and the Time-Travelling Lesbians
- All Therapists Are Muggles: Averted. Murray's psychiatrist is Slenderman.
- All There in the Manual: A lot of unused characters and additional information can be found on the artist's tumblr, and now the official bloody urban tumblr as well.
- Alien Blood: Vampires' blood is black. Ghouls' blood is green.
- Alternative Calendar: All we know about this world's calendar is that there's a September 40th.
- Amazing Technicolor Population
- Animated Adaptation: Human. A full animated series is also in the works.
- Artificial Cannibalism: Shaz finds a pack of hot dogs made from cloned celebrity meat and uses their You Are Who You Eat powers to transform into Samuel L. Jackson.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: Not alien per se, but some of the monster characters have very weird physiology.
- Black Comedy: Pizza, Dog Whistle and School Reunion in particular, but there's some dark humour sprinkled throughout.
- Blob Monster: Upside-Down Amoeba Dude.
- Bloody Hilarious: Tennis
- Bloody Murder: Green establishes that Shaz's blood is poisonous to humans if ingested.
- Brief Accent Imitation: Shaz pretending to be Murray in the last panel of Sickie.
- Big Eater: Shannon.
- Body Horror: Oh boy. For starters, there's Eric, who has two left hands and an eye that's a golfball, then there's Shaun and his xenomorph tongue, and the latest strip has a side character who is literally just a head, spine, ribcage, heart and intestine.
- There are anatomical drawings of Shaz, Shaun and Murray on the Bloody Urban tumblr. All of them are horrifying.
- Call-Back: Shaz saws amoeba in half in one strip. In the next one, there are two smaller amoebas that speak in unison.
- Chupacabra: Forms part of Shaun's ridiculous "Scooby-Doo" Hoax in this strip.
- Creator Provincialism
- Couldn't Find a Pen: Played for Laughs in Scare Campaign, then again as a background gag in Practice.
- Dinner Deformation: Happens to Shaz when he tries to eat an iPad and it goes down the wrong way. He almost chokes to death and has to have his throat cut open.
- *Drool* Hello: in this comic.
- Everyone Is Christian at Christmas: Season's Greetings pokes fun at this trope.
- Eye Glasses: Libby and Murray
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: So far, there are vampires (and not just one type, either), dinosaurs, mermaids, mad scientists, Frankenstein monsters, chupacabras, werewolves, ghouls, mothman, demons, Eldritch horrors (including Slender Man) and land-walking dolphins. Concept art suggests there are also gorgons, wendigos, fish people and giant land-dwelling octopi.
- Frankenstein's Monster: Parodied — Murray's Frankenstinian coworker Eric has two left hands, lego teeth, a hunchback and one eye that's a golfball. This poor construction is explained to be the result of the Mad Doctor being completely stoned.
- Fun with Acronyms: The company that Shaz and Murray work for is called NTBD, which stands for 'Name To Be Decided'.
- Gag Haircut: Camille gets a gag dye job in Hair Emergency
- Glamour Failure: Whenever Shaz turns into a copy of somebody, his eyes stay yellow and his skin maintains a greenish tint.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: The result of seeing IT Guy's true form.
- Halloweentown: AU-Sydney is shades of this. Despite the bright colours, the sky is varying shades of red and purple and the buildings have a distinct German Expressionist vibe to them. Then of course there's the people.
- Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Angelica.
- Heroic Dolphin: Subverted — the dolphin in 'Sea Rapist' is a registered sex offender.
- Horror Hunger: Played for laughs. Always.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: At 6'5", Murray is the tallest character in the series. Camille barely comes up to his chest.
- Humanoid Abomination: The IT guy, we think.
- Humans Through Alien Eyes: Camille is disgusted by human biology to the point where she won't go near Murray after he sneezes on her. Shaz doesn't blame her. (this doubles as Hypocritical Humour when you know what Shaz is like.)
- Incredibly Lame Pun: The very appropriately titled the Worst Pun Ever
- Land Down Under: Usually, the only way a non-Australian could guess the setting is by the multicoloured money, the weird trees, and (occasionally) the slang. However, Tennis is nothing but this trope, depicting the Australian Open as a blood sport played entirely by crocodiles. There's also a strip that features a throwaway reference to drop bears.
- Madness Mantra: TROJANS TROJANS TROJANS
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The Prime Minister of Australia (a character who will appear in the Animated Adaptation) is a very obvious pastiche of Pauline Hanson.
- Noodle Incident: Got Libby kicked out of MENSA.
- Odd Friendship: Libby and Angelica
- Our Ghouls Are Creepier: Shaz combines the supernatural powers of a traditional Arabic ghul with the pointy ears, claws and greenish skin of one of HP Lovecraft's monsters.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Bloody Urban's vampires have pointed ears, black tongues and dark circles around their eyes. They have fangs, but not necessarily on their canines. Their skin is blueish grey by default, but consuming blood allows them to appear more human. Other than that, they have most of the standard Classical Movie Vampire powers, including immortality, super-strength, mind control, and the ability to turn into bats or mist.
- There are also aswangs, which are more or less the same as the European vampires, but with different skin colours, long, spidery fingers, and disgustingly long tongues.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: Werewolves in Bloody Urban are extremely hairy, regardless of gender, and possess claws,sharp teeth, and glowing pupils even while in human form. They transform only on the full moon, but they will act in a wolf-like manner if sufficiently agitated. They're also universally colourblind and allergic to mistletoe.
- Product Placement: McDonald's, Zazzle t-shirts and Apple, as well as Australian restaurant chains like Pieface and Eagle Boy's Pizza.
- Retcon: Shannon was a vampire until a couple years into the comic's run.
- Retraux: Murray's prescription drug-fueled hallucination features inanimate objects with 30's-style cartoon faces.
- Retro Universe: Though the comic's setting was basically analogous to the present day in our universe, the show is going to feature contemporary technology mixed with a mish-mash of modern and 20th century aesthetics.
- Schizo Tech: New concept art for the animated series showing character props for Shaz and Murray features a combination PC-tablet made out of the kind of hard plastic computers were made of in the 90's, and an iPhone with a rotary dial.
- Shout-Out:
- In Neck Scar, Shaz wears a purple t-shirt with 'DON'T BOG ME DOWN, SON' written on it.
- Amoeba celebrates Festivus instead of Christmas.
- Murray's mug has a picture of the TARDIS on it.
- Shown Their Work: Ghouls in Bloody Urban have bright green blood that is toxic if eaten. As the artist's comment of Green explains, this is Truth in Television — the bile pigment that gives Real Life animals like the samkos bush frog green blood can cause jaundice and liver failure.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Brad, Shaz's classmate from grade school.
- Special Guest: Parodied — every time a nameless, one-shot character appears in a strip, they will be introduced as 'This Week's Special Guest' in the artist's comment. In strips where there are only recurring characters present, the 'guest' will often be an abstract concept or random object in the background.
- Speculative Fiction LGBT: Used quite well — the setting is a fantasy version of Earth, and so it allows for the only human character within this world to be trans*.
- Swallowed Whole: Shannon can do this to people, including his rival from 6th grade and Murray.
- Take That!: Tennis is one at Australian phone company Optus and the animal-themed commercials they used to run.
- Truth in Television: There is, believe it or not, an actual company that wants to one day produce Kanye West-flavoured sausages.
- Volumetric Mouth: Shannon's date in Nourishment has this kind of expression to show how loudly he's breathing.
- Voice of the Legion: As a visual representation of this trope, demon or Eldritch Abomination characters have black speech balloons with white text and random capitalisation.
- The Worm That Walks: Played for surreal laughs in the animated special with a man-shaped stack of newts riding the train.
- You Meddling Kids: Quoted nearly word for word in the aptly titled 'Meddling Teens'
