"You'd think they'd never seen a gigantic ship erupt from the ground and open a monster-spewing tear in the fabric of space and time before."
— Stephanos, Chapter 1
Jon Stewart: You can ... teleport?! AND you have telekinetic powers?
Anderson Cooper: Err ... yes?
Jon Stewart: I'm still having trouble wrapping my brain around the whole 'everyone I've ever known has superpowers' thing.
Cooper: Oh please, Jon. It's not as if I've been hiding it!
— Jon Stewart and Anderson Cooper, Chapter 5
An unofficial fan webcomic by Page Branson wherein Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and many other 'fake news' corespondents receive superpowers, receive a magical MacGuffin, or just happened to have had superpowers all along and they've just come in handy today, because today's the day that Dick Cheney reveals himself as an Evil Alien Overlord bent on destroying our planet, stealing Stephen's magical MacGuffin, and drinking the blood of pandas. Our heroes fight their way through monsters, possessed comrades, Evil Twins and mountains of tropes on various Fetch Quests and rescue missions.
The old site is now defunct, but the author e-mails the comic to readers on request
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See also: The Colbert Report and The Daily Show.
Provides Examples of:
- Alternate Universe: All the villains so far came from one, as well did Tek Jensen. To make things better, each universe contains some version of of Stephen and Jon. One of them was Tek's master, who died.
- Animal Motifs: Stephen has a bird motif, more specific a phoenix, as he is frequently confronted with bird-related remarks.
- Stephanos' usage of a web to entangle enemies and such a pattern appearing on Jason's neck when he is being controlled by movement, his looks and in particular his mark are all very evocative of a spider. This might be because he frequently was/is
the person who likes to be and was in control. It also befits his true cruel and manipulative nature. As a bonus, there is a trapdoor spider called after Stephen. - As such, Yonathan's long scarf which extends to the ground, shapeshifting and main usage of claws and of course his mark heavily reference a wolf. This is reflective of his brash and savage nature. The wolf also represents loyalty, which is fitting to the fact that he only is being evil because his best friend is.
- Stephanos' usage of a web to entangle enemies and such a pattern appearing on Jason's neck when he is being controlled by movement, his looks and in particular his mark are all very evocative of a spider. This might be because he frequently was/is
- Arachnid Appearance and Attire: Stephanos, both there and on a later occasion. A purple spider-like creature attacking in a way that limits movement? Sounds familiar.
- Badass Normal: Anyone on the cast who didn't get superpowers makes the most with whatever's lying around.
- Bears Are Bad News:
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Dick Cheney - Evil Alien Overlord.
- Berserk Button: Riggle’s appears to be people harming John Oliver.
- Olbermann does not like it when people trash-talk America's Pastime.
- The Berserker: Lewis Black fights monsters with a chair and rage.
- The Big Guy: Rob Riggle, listed on his profile page as "Comedian/Last Action Hero."
- Calling Your Attacks:
- Tek gets in on it with the "Spinning Tek Kick!!!"
- Celebrity Power: What the comic runs on. Everyone in conjunction with The Daily Show or The Colbert Report has superpowers, or something that gives them superpowers.
- Chekhov's Gun: Just tell me this line isn't going to be relevant later:Yonatan: I can smell something hidden... Something even greater than the blood of a time lord. Something monstrous...'
- Chromatic Arrangement: Played with, since Stephen is red, Jon is blue and Steve is green, even though Jon seems to be the main protagonist, Steve acts like The Smart Guy and Stephen... Well, Colbert seems to be The Lancer if anything. He wishes he was The Hero, though.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Almost everyone, especially the bad guys.
- Each character is color coded with an aura and the color of their eyes that shows a bunch of stuff such as the color purple to denote anything//anyone on the side of evil, or if it's a protagonist, their eyes and auras represent their powers. See the entry for Technicolor Eyes.
- When Stephanos and Yonatan are released from Cheney’s hold on them, the purple in their outfits and eyes drains away, to be replaced with red and blue respectively. Lampshaded here.
- Compelling Voice: Brian Williams. It's called "gravitas."
- Cool Versus Awesome: Current event and politics comedians use magical melee weapons to fight an evil vice president from a parallel universe.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: Jon Stewart and other Fake News comedians were saying that Dick Cheney was evil for years. Too bad nobody believed them until it was too late.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: Yonatan in the arms of Stephanos. Maybe?
- Distracted by the Sexy: Actually helps Jason Jones to break free of Stephanos’s mind control.Jason Jones: You, like many before you, have once again underestimated the power of the boner!
- Eldritch Abomination: Cheney and his ... things.
- Evil Twins: Stephanos and Yonathan to Stephen and Jon, obviously.
- Fastball Special: Rachel Maddow is positively gleeful about being able to try it.
- Flash Step: Stephanos and Anderson Cooper can both do this, and John Oliver can as well when he can get his time travelling screwdriver to work.
- Hammerspace: Steve Carell uses much more money than would naturally fit in the sack on his back to make ropes, columns, and particularly the origami bird.
- Heel–Face Turn: A long-awaited one for Yonatan, dragging Stephanos along with him.
- Heroic BSoD: John Oliver suffers one of these once he remembers what he forgot about the time war.
- If You Ever Do Anything To Hurt Him: A frankly scary one from Jon to Stephanos and Yonatan regarding Stephen’s trust to ensure that their Heel–Face Turn stays turned.
- "I Know You Are in There Somewhere" Fight: Jon says this almost verbatim to Stephen.
- Later on, Riggle gives John Oliver a speech in the same vein.
- Later on, Riggle gives John Oliver a speech in the same vein
- Insult Backfire: Stephanos enjoys being evil.Jason Jones: You *cough* bastard!Stephanos: Oh, flattery won’t save you now!
- Kick the Dog: "Or did you mistakenly believe yourself to be something more?"
- A bit literally here since Yonathan has a wolf motif.
- Lampshade Hanging: Stephen tells Jon that Jon's Evil Twin is in love with Stephen's Evil Twin.Jon: Great! Jesus, start the fan fiction now, ladies!
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Played with, since John Olliver can't remember what happened to the rest of the time lords, but he has pretty good memories otherwise. It's just why he's on Earth and how he got here that's been giving him trouble.
- Let's Get Dangerous!: The end of chapter six:Stephanos: Oh, so the fangs come out. I've had to hear about you all night. It's about time I found out what all the fuss is about.*focus on Jon's Determinator expression*Stephanos: Let's get started.
- Let's You and Him Fight: In Chapter 2, Jon gets into a violent disagreement with Samantha Bee and Jason Jones before the later two finally realize what's going on.
- Later on, it happens with a possessed Stephen and Jon.
- Love Martyr: The cries of "Oh, Yonathan." are beginning to wipe out the normal fandom cry of "Oh, Stephen." because of this trope.
- Made of Iron: For how often it is mentioned how fragile humans are, all human characters are remarkably resilient.
- Mind-Control Eyes: Stephen, after he gets possessed. Bonus for still following the color scheme with purple = evil.
- Minion Shipping: Stephenos and Yonathan have all-but declared this to be canon.
- Mr. Exposition: John Oliver. Also other characters, from time to time.
- My Master, Right or Wrong: Yonathan has this attitude towards Stephanos. He doesn't like the dark one, or what they do, but he'll do everything to be with Stephanos.Yonathan: ''Don't you remember when it was just the two of us? How great it was? Think about it. We could leave, start over. Find a remote planet for you to dominate...
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Stephen checks to see if there are any guarding the lance under the studio.Stephen: No curses, no zombie pirate ninjas?!
- No OSHA Compliance: On Cheney's Lair:Stephen: Jesus, can this place get more ominous?Jon: Needs more spikes. And glowy shit.
- Oh, Crap!: 'Mistakes have been made.'
- Jon during his fight with a possessed Colbert. Seen here.
- Done by Yonatan here right before he gets a tree dropped on him, also doubling as a Curse Cut Short.
- Cheney himself has one later on.
- Jon during his fight with a possessed Colbert. Seen here
- One-Winged Angel: Stephanos gives the speech almost verbatim here
- Our Presidents Are Different: Bush is a classic President Buffoon as shown at the begining of the story.
- Person of Mass Destruction: Turns out that John Oliver was turned into one of these in order to win the Time War.
- Pietà Plagiarism: Stephanos holds Yonatan this way after the latter’s Heroic Sacrifice.
- Please, I Will Do Anything!: Stephanos’s bargain with Jon Stewart if he saves Yonatan’s life.
- Power Gives You Wings: Kinda-sorta here when Stephen gets his spear.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Stephen has red eyes, and he's one of the protagonists as long as his eyes stay red, that is.
- It's more along the lines of 'Purple Eyes, Take Warning'.
- Sand In My Eyes: “And for the record, there’s dust in my eyes. Manly dust.” (Spoilers)
- Scarf of Asskicking: Both John Oliver and Yonatan sport one.
- The latter's one is meant to invoke the image of a wolf's tail.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Steve seems to have enough money to do this to the laws of physics, via some sort of wealth-related magic and positive chi.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers!: Part of Bad Wolf’s skill set.Riggle: I mean, who needs all those silly rules about time and paradoxes when apparently you can simply choose to ignore them?Colbert: That is a frighteningly good point.
- Shipper on Deck: Stephen appears to be gleefully and actively playing matchmaker for Stephanos and Yonathan.
- Shout-Out: Loads and loads of them. The main ones are to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, but shout-outs and references to Doctor Who, Sailor Moon and Star Wars are very prevalent.
- Jon later references this Thanksgiving rhyme here.
- Stephen fights with a spear and has a red motive like Kyoko Sakura from Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
- You are trapped in a strange purple web!
- Rob Riggle's wearing Ryu's costume, and Samantha Bee and Jason Jones are clearly based off of Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask, with possibly some Utena influence in Samantha's epaulets and piping.
- Aasif Mandvi has gloves and a flower which grant him flight and fire powers.
- Wyatt Cenac has a pair of familiar-looking shoes that give him superspeed. He later sings the theme song to SatAM and does a Spin Dash.
- Larry has a deck of exploding playing-cards.
- Larry, Wyatt, and Aasif bought their power-ups from a familiar pair of dealers who initially offer to sell them fireworks.
- Silverman and the correspondents are also dressed like the Turks.
- Steve's bag of money looks like a giant gourd strapped to his back.
- And his style of using his powers, as well as the poses he strikes while doing so, essentially makes him a Moneybender.
- Contrary to popular belief, it is Paul Dinello who is the current owner of Cap's shield after he grabbed it off of Stephen's mantelpiece during the fight with the hellbear.
- Eric got his lightsaber from the same mantelpiece, during the same fight.
- Keith Olbermann is basically Colossus, even teaming up with Maddow for a Fastball Special. He also says that Bad Wolf's "bampf'ed" away, which is probably a reference to Nightcrawler's teleportation.
- The monster in the sewer is a giant mutant ninja turtle.
- The thing behind the gate a.k.a. Steve Carell looks like the prison for the nine-tailed fox.
- Riggle's "One punch, ah ah ahh!" is probably a reference to the Count.
- Tek's master was a fan of fine Asari wine.
- There's a couple of Ghostbusters references in there, too.
- Jon later references this Thanksgiving rhyme
- Speak of the Devil: Tek Jansen really should have known better.
- Superpowered Evil Side: Bad Wolf.
- Taking the Bullet: Yonatan does this for Stephanos, although it's less of a bullet and more tentacle-claw things.
- Talking Is a Free Action: Even in the middle of the most heated fights, there is enough time for many one-liners and snarky comments.
- Technicolor Eyes: Everyone. No, seriously, just about everyone with any sort of super powers has this in order to showcase their powers and alignments due to the color coding that will match their similarly colored battle auras. The only exceptions are the characters who get their powers from items, and even then some of said characters still have it.
- Anything evil will have purple eyes.
- Including the possessed.
- Jon's are blue for his lightning bat.
- Colbert's are red for his fiery spear.
- Steve Carell's are green for his affinity for money-magic.
- Anderson Cooper has light blue eyes for telekinesis and teleportation.
- Samantha Bee has ice blue eyes since she's An Ice Person.
- John Oliver has yellow eyes to denote his time travel theme. Or because he's a time lord.
- Allison Silverman has silver eyes, though that's most likely more of a play on her name than the fact that she can clone herself, since she hasn't really displayed much of an aura yet.
- Anything evil will have purple eyes.
- Thief Bag: He didn't steal any of it, but the giant sacks of money Steve Carell wears on his back certainly count in appearance at the very least.
- This Is Gonna Suck: More than once, usually from Jon or Yonatan.
- True Companions: Everyone involved with The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, really. Inspirational speeches and all.
- Try Not to Die: Yonatan’s advice in preparation for the final battle.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Yonatan, here, and later with a purified version.
- Note also that he says 'Understood' instead of 'Yes Sir'. Where he normally would say 'Yes Sir'; he now says 'Understood' because he feels no longer subservient.
