Webcomic / Sleipnir: Equine Invader from Jupiter

Sleipnir: Equine Invader from Jupiter is an indie kaiju webcomic written by Rana with art by Khaliah Ingram, which ran from 2020 to 2021.

NASA scientist Clint Douglas Williams is not having a good day, being forced to spend time with his sarcastic sister Jessica and stern father David on their horse ranch after his volatile temper lands him a week-long forced vacation. But Clint's day is going to become a lot worse when a ninety-eight foot-tall purple horse-like alien with eight legs arrives at the Williams' ranch, followed by a swarm of alien robotic hummingbirds; and what seems like an easy escape from his troubled family life reverse-engineering the alien tech for the military turns deadly serious when the robotic hummingbirds turn out to be incubators for alien bioweapons that only the giant alien horse—codenamed Sleipnir—can stop.

In 2021, it was announced that Sleipnir: Equine Invader from Jupiter would be crossing over with fellow indie kaiju webcomic Gurral the Smasher in a spinoff aptly titled Gurral VS Sleipnir.

Links: WEBTOONS, Tapas

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Sleipnir: Equine Invader from Jupiter has examples of the following tropes:

• Abusive Parents: According to Clint, his parents viewed his interest in science as a waste of time and would beat him if they caught him slacking on chores. When he came home with an almost-broken arm from being bullied, his father slapped him and called him a sissy. Clint finally Calling the Old Man Out leads his dad to have a Heel Realization, later morosely asking Jess if he's a bad father... though Jess reveals that Clint was misremembering and over-exaggerating things.
• Animal Nemesis: Downplayed with Clint regarding Jericho, a stallion with whom he had an antagonistic relationship as a child. Still alive and healthy as, well, a horse almost two decades later, Jericho promptly headbutts Clint into a patch of mud and feces before trying to bite him, forcing Jess to break up the fight before her brother can get hurt. Despite the antagonism between them, Clint is heartbroken when General Kincaid kills Jericho when the horse attacks him to protect Clint.
• Bigot with a Badge: General Kincaid calls his Number Two, a Mexican-American soldier by the name of Jimenez, "Nacho" as a derogatory nickname.
• Black Sheep: Clint is a scientific genius and rocket engineer employed by NASA, which his stern horse-ranching father David sneers is a waste of time.
  David: You're nothing more than a glorified fireworks technician, wasting money firing oversized bottlerockets into the sky! You don't do anything productive!
• Blatant Lies: Kincaid tells his troops that Austin has been evacuated to protect civilians from the rampaging kaiju... while panicked civilians are shown fleeing through the streets.
• Breath Weapon:
  • Sleipnir can spit beams of purple energy from his mouth... though the first time they're shown using it the Valkyrie Unit simply absorbs the energy beam.
    Kincaid: Ah hell no...
    Jimenez: Sir?
    Clint: What's it doing?
    Kincaid: Haven't you boys ever watched a giant monster movie? Nacho, the sunovabitch is about to fire! Get us the hell out of the way!!
  • Fafnir can spit gobs and torrents of corrosive Ominous Obsidian Ooze from its mouth.
• Calling the Old Man Out: When his father bursts into the lab and starts yelling at him, belittling his work at NASA as "firing oversized bottlerockets into the sky", Clint explodes and berates his father for years of emotional and physical abuse... which his sister Jess later reveals was misremembered and blown out of proportion.
• Canis Major: Fenrir—named after the giant god-eating wolf from Norse mythology—is a cyborg canid kaiju that grows larger the more it eats and can mutate into more powerful forms.
• Cyborg: Due to being incubated in a damaged Valkyrie unit, Fenrir ended up fusing with the components responsible for converting energy to matter—resulting in it growing larger and more powerful every time it eats.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Clint's sister Jess is introduced teasing him for coming back to the family ranch when he swore he'd never do so, and levels an unamused stare when she learns his reason for being on forced vacation is throwing a coffee cup at an intern.
  • When General Kincaid says that Clint reminds him of himself when he was younger, his lieutenant, Jimenez, snarks that for a moment he thought there were two of him.
• Extreme Omnivore: Fenrir is a canid cyborg that is capable of eating just about anything and converting it to biomass, growing and metamorphosing at a rapid rate as a result.
• Face–Heel Turn: The Sequel Hook reveals that Cris blames Sleipnir for Cynthia's death and has started a paramilitary organization called Niflheim in order to hunt the equine alien down and kill it. Making matters worse, Cris decided to use the visage of Fenrir—the monster that ate Cynthia—-as Niflheim's logo.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Father: David, Jessica and Clint's father, sternly disapproves of the former's career as a scientist and has always demeaned him for his lack of interest in helping run the ranch. After Clint finally has enough and blows up at his dad, it's revealed that Clint's recollection of events was over-exaggerated... though the incident leads David to re-evaluate his parenting and their relationship improves post timeskip.
• Finishing Stomp: Upon discovering that General Kincaid has killed her beloved horse Jericho, an enraged Jessica delivers a brutal stomp to his head while he struggles to break free from the ropes binding him. She's stopped from killing him, but she does knock out several teeth.
• Heel Realization: When General Kincaid smugly orders for the military to finish Sleipnir off when the alien horse is badly injured Taking the Bullet for them, Clint realizes what a monster he is and attacks him. Kincaid easily overpowers Clint and smugly tries to break his leg, then kills Jericho when the horse tries to protect Clint. This leads to Jimenez—already troubled by Kincaid planning to drop a nuke in the middle of Austin, Texas—deciding that his boss has gone too far and briefly knocking Kincaid out with a punch to the head.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Clint Williams, a NASA scientist overseeing the satellite project that discovered Sleipnir, is introduced screaming into his phone while driving with a serious case of road-rage, and it's revealed he's at-risk of losing his job for throwing a cup of coffee at an intern in a fit of rage. This is revealed to step from years of having his interest in science belittled by his father, and once they make amends Clint becomes a calmer person.
• Insane Admiral: General Kincaid is a gleeful warhawk who's downright giddy for the chance to nuke what he believes to be an incoming asteroid, and when it's protested that Russia and China may take umbrage he sneers that they can bitch to the President about it. When Sleipnir makes Earthfall, he immediately launches an attack on them—deliberately almost destroying the Williams' ranch in the process—and wants to recruit Clint to build newer and better ballistic missiles to prep for World War III. When Fafnir and Tick Tock are spawned, General Kincaid decides to let them run rampant through Austin, Texas to bait Sleipnir back to Earth, kill Sleipnir when they're weakened fighting the "gecko" and "rabbit", and then mop up the two remaining kaiju with a nuke—threatening to strap a soldier to the bomb when he expresses reluctance to comply with the orders.
• Karma Houdini: In the epilogue, Clint considers Kincaid only being dishonorably discharged to be this, arguing that the former general deserves to be imprisoned or even executed for his warcrimes.
• Kill It Through Its Stomach: In the penultimate chapter "Shadow of Fenrir", Fenrir swallows Sleipnir whole and starts draining the alien horse's power reserves... which overloads its body, resulting in its muscles rupturing through its skin before it explodes.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Clint Williams is a bitter, sarcastic hot-tempered jerk who lashes out at his employees and family alike, and initially wholeheartedly approves of the military trying to kill Sleipnir despite his sister's protests that the giant alien horse is innocent. However, he eventually has a Heel Realization and turns on General Kincaid when he sees how insane the man really is, and following the timeskip has improved his relationship with his father and coworkers.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: Clint Williams is a scientific genius who works for NASA, contrasting his older sister Jess and father—who run a horse ranch outside Austin, Texas. This fosters an antagonistic relationship between them, with Clint resenting his father's tough parenting and his sister for being the golden child.
• Metamorphosis Monster: Fenrir starts off as a skinless canine creature with a sci-fi Tesla coil and tubes sprouting from its back and neck. After swallowing a nuclear missile, it undergoes a metamorphosis into a more powerful form with an armour-plated head and two Tesla coils sprouting from its back instead of just one. By the time it arrives on the battlefield, Fenrir has mutated into a much larger black-and-red wolf-monster with markings resembling Sleipnir's own. After eating Tick Tock and Fafnir, it undergoes another metamorphosis into an even more powerful form big enough to swallow Sleipnir whole.
• Mildly Military: The military base that Clint, Fred, and Akash are assigned to in order to study the destroyed Valkyrie Units is run by Cris—who wears a navy blue suit instead of a labcoat or military dress. The resident head engineer, Cynthia, is a chipper young woman with vibrantly dyed blue and green hair that definitely flaunts military regulations.
• My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: After Clint blows up at Fred and Akash, the latter mutters that his life flashed before his eyes... and was surprisingly boring, lamenting that he didn't take more risks in high-school.
• No More for Me: Invoked and then subverted when a homeless man witnesses the Valkyrie mechs arrive on Earth, glancing at the bottle of beer in his hand like he's going to pour the rest out... before declaring that he needs something even stronger.
• No-Sell: Fenrir simply swallows the missiles fired at it or absorbs the energy from their explosions, and also absorbs the energy from Sleipnir's Breath Weapon.
• Powered Armor: Tick Tock, the rabbit bioweapon, is covered in a suit of red and white mechanical armor once it emerges from its incubator.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Several to Norse mythology. The giant purple eight-legged alien horse is codenamed Sleipnir after the eight-legged horse demigod, the hummingbird robeasts are codenamed Valkyries after the divine warrior-women, the draconic Bioweapon Beast is codenamed Fafnir after the greedy dwarf-turned-venomous dragon from the The Saga of the Volsungs and the Literature/Nibelungenlied, and the cyborg canine Bioweapon Beast is codenamed Fenrir after the god-eating wolf. Tick Tock the rabbit robeast is called out for breaking the pattern by Akash, who notes that it seems more like something out of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
• Robeast: The Valkyrie Units are hummingbird-shaped alien robots that attack Sleipnir seeking to drain their energy. One of them absorbs a nuclear explosion instead, crash-landing on Earth. They serve as incubators for alien bioweapons shaped like a wingless dragon, a rabbit, and a dog, which they inject with Sleipnir's energy to cause them to grow into Bioweapon Beasts.
• Sacrificial Lion: Just as the main characters think they've put Fenrir down, it lunges and swallows side-character Cynthia and an unnamed soldier whole—killing them both immediately and leaving Cynthia's coworker Cris devastated.
• Sequel Hook: In the final chapters, as Austin rebuilds and the main characters relax and recuperate, Cris finds a disgraced Kincaid—dishonourably discharged for his actions—sulking in a bar and recruits him to help her avenge Cynthia by killing Sleipnir. Meanwhile, in deep space an ancient space station built by the civilization that created the Valkyrie Units reactivates and sends a probe called Sunder to investigate what happened to them.
• Ship Tease: Akash falls for Jess the moment she puts Clint—Akash's intimidating boss—in his place for yelling at their father. In the epilogue they become an Official Couple.
• Suddenly Shouting: When reunited with Fred and Akash, Clint asks why they thought he'd be mad with them given they got him sent away from his very important job to stay with his sarcastic sister and cantankerous father who disapproves of his life choices and belittles his work, and failed to warn him about the asteroid that turned out to be a giant alien horse—shouting that he's furious and should strangle them... before calmly saying that he won't because he gets to study the remains of some alien robots.
• Super-Scream: Fenrir is capable of emitting a howl powerful enough to stun Sleipnir and knock planes from the sky.
• Super-Speed: Sleipnir is capable of flying through space at such extreme speeds that a distance that would take human spacecrafts almost a year to traverse only takes them a few hours.
• The Take:
  • As Fred and Akash—Clint's assistants at NASA—are being escorted to a top-secret military base, they speculate that Clint has befriended General Kincaid and intends to have them killed for not warning him about the meteor/UFO/giant alien horse that made Earthfall at his family's farm. When they enter the room and are jubilantly greeted by Clint, who exclaims he's happy to see them, both of them sport looks of utter disbelief on their faces.
  • When Fred sprays Fenrir in the face with a fire extinguisher, the cyborg canine Bioweapon Beast pauses to level an unamused Death Glare at him before trying to eat him.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Fenrir lunges at Cris to devour her... and then stops, sniffs her, and abruptly leaves to go eat a nuclear missile instead.
• Villain Respect: General Kincaid is furious when Sleipnir escapes the military's attempt to kill them, but perks right back up when Clint suggests they collect the smashed alien robots and reverse-engineer their technology.
  Kincaid: I like the way you think, boy!
• What the Hell, Hero?: The moment Clint's father learns he's home, he tears a strip off his son for being too busy with work to keep in touch or even come to his own mother's funeral—something that leaves Clint visibly shaken—and threatens to kick him out the moment he gives him any sort of bad attitude.

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