Webcomic / Clarissa

A collection of comic strips by Jason Yungbluth, Clarissa follows the daily life of the titular girl; a Broken Bird who's abused by her father and ignored by the rest of her family in hopes of maintaining "normalcy". The series is infamous for its disturbing subject matter and Black Comedy, and by that we mean pitch-black.

Not related to the book of the same name save very similar themes.

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Tropes:

• Abusive Parents: And how!
  • Her mother uses emotional manipulation and hides behind a smile while simultaneously resenting her daughter for "stealing" her husband's affections, underscored in this strip.
    Clarissa: HA! That was a trick! Who are you trying to look all pretty for, huh? Mom is right! You are a little tease!
  • Her father, aside from raping Clarissa, also engages in emotional/financial manipulation as seen here.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: The comics have Clarissa with dirty-blonde hair as shown in the cover pages, the short film makes her a redhead.
• Adults Are Useless: Clarissa's teacher misses all of the not-so-subtle hints of the abuse that she'd depicted in the drawings in "Family Portrait", especially of "Rippyfangs and Mimi."
  Clarissa: i'm going to be late for gym. they're waiting to throw dodgeballs at me. ME ME. get it?
  Teacher: Gotcha. Kids Are Cruel. Off you go.
• Ambiguous Syntax: Clarissa meets another girl at "Take Your Kid to Work Day" who points at her cast and says "My dad did this." Clarissa assumes that she means her dad broke her arm, and starts to ask if he's done other stuff to her... but she's quickly corrected when the girl points out the kitty drawn on her cast.
• Animated Adaptation: "Stuffed Friend" got one in Stop Motion.
• Big Brother Bully:
  • Sean might be the family member who's most overt in his disregard for Clarissa, and his antics get laughed off.
  • Averted with Randy, her other older brother. Of all Clarissa's family members, Randy is the most sympathetic and friendly towards her. He seems to share her fear of their father and subtly tries to deflect his perverse attentions away from her, but when pressed he ultimately falls into the same Stepford Smiler routine as the rest of the family, although he's clearly the most uncomfortable with it.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Clarissa addresses the audience directly on the subject of how best to avoid being sexually abused by daddy during bathtime. Subverted in the end, as we see she's actually been talking to herself in the mirror.
• Break the Cutie: The entire comic functions as this for Clarissa, although her stuffed rabbit Floopsy takes a turn in "Stuffed Friend". All her other stuffed animals went the exact same way, for the exact same reason.
• Broken Bird: Clarissa, obviously.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Clarissa's imagination presents these sometimes. Special mention for her bedroom door, which she imagines is bricked, boarded, and chained with a padlock, with the keyhole boarded up too.
• Driven to Suicide: Floopsy in "Stuffed Friend". Clarissa's conversations with the bedbugs in "Bedbugs" implies she herself has contemplated this.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first strip has Clarissa be a lot more blunt about her father's molestation than future strips do. It was supposed to be a one-off black comedy strip.
• First-Episode Spoiler: While other episodes try to make it less explicit, the first strip blatantly has Clarissa bring up the fact that her father's molesting her and that everyone's trying their damndest to appear to be a normal family despite it.
• Hates Baths: Played for Drama in Clarissa's case - she likes the bath itself, but it's also a kiddy version of the Shower of Angst.
• Hidden Depths: In the Halloween strip, a despondent Sean lets slip that his father blames Clarissa's behaviour on him, partially explaining why Sean treats Clarissa so harshly.
• Horrifying the Horror: The bedbugs aren't fond of Clarissa's dad.
• Interrupted Bath: Played for drama as Clarissa does a story arc in which she gives the audience tips on how kids can get through bathtime without attracting the attention of their sexually abusive parents. When her father suddenly jiggles the door handle, she is terrified.
• It's All About Me: John shows signs of this, such as becoming angered when Clarissa is uncomfortable around him and complaining when she vomits at breakfast.
• It's All My Fault: Clarissa blames herself for "turning daddy on".
  Clarissa: (glaring at herself in the mirror) We all know whose fault this is ...
• Little Miss Snarker: The abuse has made Clarissa quite jaded.
• Precision S Strike: Floopsy lets loose with one after witnessing what happens to Clarissa. And the earliest canonical strip has Clarissa deliver the F-bomb.
• Never My Fault: Clarissa's parents, to a disturbingly true-to-life degree. Her father plays the victim when Clarissa's behavior reminds him of his perversion, and her mother is well aware of what's going on in her daughter's room at night but she blames Clarissa for seducing her husband. Her father even accuses her of not trying hard enough to stop doing the "bad things" that "they" do.
• Nothing Is Scarier: the comic naturally cannot show Clarissa being sexually assaulted by her father, but his unseen presence at the door is more terrifying than seeing him would be.
• Obsessively Normal: The main premise of the comic is that everyone in Clarissa's household tries their hardest to pretend to be a perfectly normal, all-American, middle-class family, despite it being a very much Open Secret that her father sexually abuses her on a regular basis. The comic alternates between playing it for Black Comedy and discomfort, and sometimes both at once.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The above was more than Floopsy had signed on for.
• Self-Harm: Clarissa mentions burning herself, along with scrubbing herself bloody with steel wool. Clarissa is also shown poking herself with a needle.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Falls heavily to the 'cynical' side.
• Standard '50s Father: John, Clarissa's father, is a twisted example.
• Stepford Smiler: Clarissa's entire family besides her falls into this, though the masks sometimes slip.
• Trademark Favorite Food: The reason Clarissa's mother cooks French Toast every morning is because it's Clarissa's favorite - also doubles as Food as Bribe, as she's also attempting to buy Clarissa's silence about her father's abuse with it.
• Wham Line: From the chronologically first comic: "I'm not going to pretend that Daddy didn't fuck me."
• Wham Shot: Two; the reveal in "Family Portrait" of Clarissa's drawing (a wolf with her father's glasses sexually assaulting a chipmunk with her bow), and one in "Stuffed Friend" (Clarissa's clothes being half-on after her father comes into her room).

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