Sturgeon’s Law
, created in 2013 by William Lowenthal and Thomas Mack, is a webcomic about an adversarial group of up-and-coming supervillains (or at least just criminals) trying to take over the world. The main characters work at the eponymous law firm, which was originally created to defend supervillains in court; the company later decided to cut out the middleman and try to take over the world themselves. The comic shows the efforts of one particular group of “Troubleshooters” to achieve world domination, or at least deal with their corporate bureaucracy.
Sturgeon's Law contains examples of:
- Big Eater: Max is apparently fond of koalasagna.
- Bilingual Bonus: Pierce was a senior vice president at Apate Industries. 'Apate' is Greek for (and the name of the god of) deceit or fraud.
- Caligula's Horse: Before joining Sturgeon Law, Pierce was senior vice president under such a CEO.
- Comedic Sociopathy: Marissa in a nutshell.
- Complexity Addiction: Even checking in to a hotel proves unnecessarily difficult.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: There’s a possibility that some of PierceCorp’s products may contain babies.
- Dirty Communists: The moon base project would have been successful if not for communists (and Jane Fonda).
- Doublespeak: Pierce is a master at spewing out corporate buzzwords.
- Easter Egg: There’s a Lovecraftian reference in Comic #11.
- Equal-Opportunity Evil: The cast is quite diverse in terms of race and gender.
- Generic Name: Rakesh is from College State University. Go fighting Mascots!
- Halfhearted Henchman: Jenn in a nutshell. The trope may also apply to Max, his combat prowess notwithstanding.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Marissa has problems dealing with her anger constructively.
- The Load: Although every team member is arguably incompetent or a sociopath or both, Jenn is too much of a slacker to be of much use to the party.
- Manchild: Max.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Marissa has one, as she insists on pointing out at any opportunity.
- My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: Jenn tries out the Japanese she learned from anime when checking into a hotel, despite the concierge's being fluent in English.
- Mystery Meat: Sturgeon Farms Extruded-Slurry Meat Brick: So warm, so dank, so delicious.
- Naïve Newcomer: Not only has Rakesh not figured out that the rest of the company doesn’t share his altruistic streak, but he’s unaware that the company is anything more than a law firm.
- Noodle Incident: Whatever Marissa and Max need a wombat and a bone saw for, it probably isn’t safe. It’s also unclear what exactly happened at the Helen Keller Museum.
- Techno Babble: Jenn attempts to cover up her incompetence with Star-Trek-style technobabble, with mixed results.
- The Slacker: Jenn works at the company only to fund her anime habit, and she doesn’t work very hard.
- Take That!: New Jersey, Deepak Chopra, Caltech, Jane Fonda, Australia, and many others.
- Theme Naming: The names of missions are of the form Adjective + Animal: Luminous Ocelot, Falling Penguin, etc.
- Villainous Friendship: Although they certainly aren't there yet, there are some indications that Pierce and Marissa from might be slowly moving toward Type IV.
- With Friends Like These...: Max is in a one-sided version of this trope.
