The Strange Tales of Oscar Zahn is a Fantasy Webcomic by Tri Vuong hosted on Webtoon (formerly on Tapas Media) and can be read here
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The story tells the escapades of Oscar Zahn, a paranormal investigator who deals with the supernatural on a regular basis. Though, to be quite honest he isn’t quite normal either. He’s got a floating skull for a head and lacks a body of his own necessitating him to physically project one to move and interact with the world. And on top of that, said skull is host to an ectoplasm devouring Eldritch Abomination that is only reined in by his will.
But make no mistake, despite his appearance and circumstance Oscar’s a friendly guy to be around and is firmly on the side of good. He’s a friend to both the living and the dead, and his work entails easing the spirits of both. Though he handles several gadgets and is not afraid to fight against evil, Oscar's greatest strength in his line of work is his compassion.
This work provides the following examples:
- Accidental Suicide: Charlie Harper’s death came at the hands of not the Germans, but his own Ross rifle. As he aimed and pulled the trigger the gun malfunctioned and backfired resulting in him blowing his own brains out. The narration and Charlie himself suspect this is the reason why he retained his sense of self as a spirit compared to his deceased compatriots.
- A Day in the Limelight: The Doppelganger is a short story arc that focuses on Agnes and her trouble involving the titular creature who stole her body to have a roof to sleep under.
- All There in the Manual: Additional tidbits of lore can be found on Tri Vuong’s Patreon.
- An Arm and a Leg:
- In trying to fend off the fishmen while blind, Percival gets both of his arms ripped off. Not that it deters him from trying to kick them, however.
- Right as Johann ignites another one of his bombs, Oscar grabs a hold of it and his hand. The explosion destroyed Oscar's body and made Zon retreat into his skull, but it also took out Johann's hand in the process. Curiously, no blood was spilled from the stump.
- Black Speech: Zon, the Ectopus living inside Oscar’s skull, speaks in this. That being said, he is capble of stringing simple words together as well. The Fish People that crawl onto the Cassiopeia is noted to speak a language that bears a striking similarity to what Zon speaks in.
- Chekhov's Gun: After being cast overboard, Oscar muses he could take apart the nearby Detritus fish but dismisses the thought. Later on, said fish would make up the parts that would be later used to restore the Cassiopia and Edmund's body.
- Dead All Along: Turns out Charlie Harper getting his eye shot out by his own gun from the backfire wasn't such a treatable injury but rather his cause of death.
- Demonic Possession:
- A ghost named Roger ends up taking Agnes' body so it could sleep in her house. Roger ends up giving it back when other ghosts that were lured to her home begin tearing it apart.
- Several ghosts possess Sheriff Anderson by forcing their way into his mouth. He gets exorcised when Maddy gets back the candle and uses it to untether the island from the physical plane.
- Eye Scream: Charlie's bandage covers his right eye that was shot out thanks to his gun backfiring. As gone over later, it was what actually killed him during the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
- Fish People: After entering the Charybdis, fishmen begin swarming the Cassiopeia and attacking the crewmembers.
- Fun with Acronyms:
- The device that will allow the Cassiopeia to travel inside the Charybdis is called the Oscillating Sonorous Capture Automatic Robot Mk 1 or O.S.C.A.R.
Abraham: Does... he know he named the thing after himself?
Edmund: I can never tell with him.- Oscar was once a member of the (now defunct) society of Cryptocartography And Necrological Exploration or C.A.N.E.
- Ghost Invasion: After the candle was stolen from Witch Lake's island, the dead are no longer content to just roam that little patch of dirt.
- Ghostly Glide: Nora in her current state is able to do this.
- Ghost Ship: The Cassiopeia, a ship helmeted by mysterious spirits labeled the Hydronauts which allows them to traverse the Astral Ocean.
- Glowing Eyelights of Undeath: The few ghosts that avert this trope in the comic can be counted with one hand.
- Going Down with the Ship: Edmund, transformed as a Hydronaut and the position as the Cassiopeia’s captain, volunteers to ram it straight into the Ectoplasmic membrane the Ectovore is grabbing a hold of to free the souls it has been snacking on for almost two decades. Subverted later in that while the ship is destroyed, Edmund still has some fight left in him to detonate the O.S.C.A.R. to put down the Ectovore for good. And due to both himself and the Cassiopeia being entities of spirit and memories neither of them stay down for long.
- Good Is Not Soft: Oscar is a compassionate paranormal investigator, and it is his job to ease the spirits of the departed and thus isn’t out to beat them into the next world (hence his aversion to utilizing the Ectopus, it being an eldritch parasite that took everything from him aside). If, however, you’re someone who goes out to torment or even destroy them then don’t expect him to take such evil lying down. Not even Johann, an old friend in C.A.N.E, is exempt from this. The moment the man asks him to choose a side, Oscar answers by punching him square in the face.
- Good Old Fisticuffs: Edmund tends to resort to more direct and physical means, such as when he assaulted Oscar in their first meeting or when he confronted Abraham for throwing Oscar overboard and leaving him behind in the Astral Sea. It doesn't change when he becomes a Hydronaut as upon awakening, he beats the ever-living daylights out of any fishman he sees.
Oscar: I don't think you really understand your new captain yet, Theo. The only thing Ed usually has under his sleeve... is his fist!
- Gratuitous German: Courtesy of Johann. When surprised he tends to exclaim: "Heiliger strohsack!"
- Heroic Sacrifice: The question of going into the center of the Charybdis and detonating the O.S.C.A.R. is passed around. Oscar initially volunteers out of guilt regarding Zon's rampage but Abraham shoots Edmund, forcing Oscar to save him while Abraham handles the payload instead. Then a fishman decapitates Abraham and when they're forced deep inside the Cassiopeia. In the end Edmund, now a Hydronaut, makes the decision to go but it doesn't last for long.
- Hope Spot: It seems that Walter's father, David, would survive falling on his head but he ends up dead anyways with the next chapter opening with his funeral.
- Horrifying Hero: A talking skull host to an Eldritch Abomination he may be, but Oscar seeks to help people both living and dead.
- Humanoid Abomination: Nora Grey and Johann Corpus (to a lesser extent) qualify; both were presumably changed by the same incident that turned Oscar into what he is in Alaska.
- Jacob Marley Apparel: A case for many of the ghosts who still look like a human such as in The Last Soldier of Somme. Madeline and later her father lose some of their clothes while shedding their mortal coils but are otherwise wearing the same clothes when they were still alive.
- Lactose over Liquor: Oscar’s preferred drink when coming to an establishment. It even applied when he was still a normal human as he Can't Hold His Liquor otherwise.
- Lovecraftian Superpower: Oscar’s skull is host to an Ectopus named Zon which comes bursting out to assail anyone unfortunate enough to be around it. It's through his intelligence that he is able to rein it in and Oscar would much rather not have it appear at all.
- Mechanical Animals: The Detritus Fish which inhabit the Lower Seas appear to be this. Oscar theorizes they’ve evolved from the junk cast into the seas and the emotional resonance of the objects brought them to life.
- Mega Maelstrom: The Charybdis, a massive whirlpool that is the source of the S.O.S. signal still being sent out to Edmund's old radio. It's actually a tear in the Astral Ocean, and inside lives a massive Ectovore that feeds on the 70 crewmembers that Edmund left to die.
- Monochrome Apparition: The ghosts in The Ghost of Witch Lake storyline sport this. Many are a faint, light blue while Madeline is much brighter.
- Off with His Head!: Right as Abraham goes to sacrifice himself to detonate the O.S.C.A.R., a fishman separates his head from his body. Being a Hydronaut, it doesn't kill him, but since his humanity is slipping away he's living on borrowed time anyways.
- Our Fairies Are Different: In the past, the Fey once walked alongside mankind when they were still aware of the existence of forces beyond mortal comprehension. At some point, such knowledge was forgotten, leaving the Fey to pick up on their work alone. In the present, Sebastian is the last one remaining to shepherd the dead as the rest left the world behind.
- Prophet Eyes: Johann has this underneath his glasses. They more than likely came as a result of the incident that changed Oscar.
- Ramming Always Works: To free the souls of the Zhong Tai No.4 from the Alpha Class Ectovore, Edmund rams the Cassiopeia straight into them.
- Red Sky, Take Warning: When the dead begin to march towards Witch Lake, the very sky turns into a crimson red due to the sheer amount of ectoplasm pouring from the island.
- Skull for a Head: A defining feature of Oscar Zahn, assuming you don’t see an ordinary man instead. He states he actually is just a floating skull that creates a psychic manifestation of a body to move around. Zon is the very reason why he’s reduced to it.
- Something-Nauts: The Hydronauts is a name Oscar coined for the trio of beings that helm the Cassiopeia and are tasked with junk to preserve the Cassiopeia, a spirit of memories.
- Survivor Guilt: Edmund's decision to ignore the Zhong Tai No.4's pleas for help out of an otherworldly fear continues to haunt him in the present, both figuratively and literally. His first instinct after becoming a Hydronaut and fending off the Fishmen is to make up for such cowardice.
- That Man Is Dead: Madeline states in her current state she doesn't really feel like her old self anymore.
- Town with a Dark Secret: The little quiet town of Witch Lake. The Witch Lake’s only pride is a strange little island in the middle of the lake that resembles a witch’s hat. It's also on that island that a girl named Madeleine Hepburn suddenly died and became a ghost while out camping with her dad, Ken. And it's not just her that still walks among the living as countless other ghosts appear at night albeit though they're much more mindless. The local authorities have suppressed the story involving Maddy and the sheriff is well-aware of the supernatural activity going on over there.
- Undead Child: The first ghost Oscar investigates in the webcomic is that of a stillborn baby that still clings to the house of its parents.
