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 hundred-year-old vampire 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 is mainly a gag-per-week webcomic. The comic, including the original hand-drawn strips can be found
here
and the old, unfinished storyline can be found
here.
This comic provides examples of:
- All There in the Manual: A lot of unused characters and additional information can be found on the author's deviantART and tumblr
- Amazing Technicolor Population: As shown in this picture vampires apparently come in blue, purple, green, orange and grey. And that's just within the one bloodline. Hell, they even have amazing technicolour tongues. Recently, a few human characters have been introduced who are also oddly-coloured. Cherry has ashy grey skin, Mycedys is red, and parts of Eric are blue. Justified for them, though- Cherry has silver poisoning from her ancient braces, Myrcedys is perpetually sunburnt, and Eric is made of dead people.
- Ambiguously Brown: Jenna. Lampshaded in the artist's comment here. Eric qualifies as well. Word Of God says the blue part of him is Japanese, but good luck figuring out what the brown part is.
- Art Shift: Rather abruptly, but general consensus is that the new, less-realistic style looks much better.
- Blob Monster: Upside-Down Amoeba Dude.
- Big Eater: Shannon.
- Bottle Fairy: Angelica.
- Chupacabra: Forms part of Shaun's ridiculous Scooby-Doo Hoax in this strip.
- Deadpan Snarker: Murray and Shannon are both this about 80% of the time.
- Drool Hello: in this comic.
- Earth Drift: ASCZ often refers to the older comics as 'the boring period in which everything was sane and relatively normal'.
- Eye Glasses: Libby and Murray
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: So far, there are vampires, dinosaurs, mermaids, mad scientists, Frankenstein monsters, chupacabras, werewolves, Eldritch horrors (including Slender Man) and land-walking dolphins. Concept art suggests there are also, gorgons, wendigos, ghouls, fish people and giant land-dwelling octopi.
- Frankenstein's Monster: Parodied-Shannon'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. He also is in advertising because he has Leo Burnett's brain.
- Friendly Neighborhood Vampires: Played with. They aren't quite at the Always Chaotic Evil level, but the Bloody Urban Vampires tend to all be pretty dickish.
- Funetik Aksent: Angelica speaks with a very thick Russian accent vvhiich iis beiingk rendered like thiis. Libby, who has an ocker Aussie accent, makes liberal use of contractions and' cuts th' ends offa some words. Murray doesn't really have an accent outside of a few token Irish-sounding phrases (for example, saying 'sure it is' instead of 'yes').
- Fun T-Shirt: Shannon, naturally, has a few.
- Geeky Turn-On: This page.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: The result of seeing IT Guy's true form.
- Green Eyed Redhead: Angelica
- 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 Dr. Caligari vibe to them. Then of course there's the people.
- Heroic Dolphin: Subverted- The dolphin in 'Sea Rapist' is a registered sex offender.
- Heterosexual Life Partners: Murray and Shannon.
- Horror Hunger: Played for laughs. Always.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Murray and Camille
- Humanoid Abomination: The IT guy, who 'may or may not be Satan.'
- Husky Russkie: Completely averted with the Pasternak twins, who are both tall, gangly and uncoordinated.
- Invisible Man: The CEO of the company Murray works for is completely invisible, except for his eyeballs. Because if his eyeballs were invisible, he would be blind. And that would just be silly.
- Land Down Under: Usually, the only way a non-Australian could guess the setting is by the odd-coloured money, the weird trees, and (occasionally) the slang. However, the most recent strip is this trope in full swing, depicting the Australian Open as a blood sport played entirely by crocodiles.
- Our Vampires Are Different
- Our Werewolves Are Different
- Overly Long Tongue: Most of the vampires, but especially Shaun.
- Madness Mantra: TROJANS TROJANS TROJANS
- Noodle Incident: Got Libby kicked out of MENSA.
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Murray. The Irishman. Also Sebastian Dark, who Looks Like Cesare.
- Planet Eris
- Retraux: Murray's prescription drug-fueled hallucination features inanimate objects with 30's-style cartoon faces.
- 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 artists comment. In strips where there are only recurring characters present, the 'guest' will often be a random object in the background.
- Spit Take: On this page
- Surreal Humour: The more recent strips tend towards the bizarre. For example, in this universe, Slender Man is a therapist.
- Who Is This Guy Again?: Bloody Urban is terrible about this in the old comics.
- X Meets Y: It's like Being Human meets The Mighty Boosh.
- You Meddling Kids: Quoted nearly word for word in the aptly titled 'Meddling Teens'
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