History ComicStrip / ScaryGary

* OurVampiresAreDifferent: Gary is a fairly classic vampire (burns in sunlight, can turn into a bat, sleeps in a coffin, etc.), but he isn’t what someone would imagine the average vampire to be.

* HeelFaceTurn: The premise of the series is that Gary is a formerly ruthless vampire who had a change of heart and moved to the suburbs, with the story starting shortly after the move is complete.

HeelFaceTurn: The premise of the series is that Gary is a formerly ruthless vampire who had a change of heart and moved to the suburbs, with the story starting shortly after the move is complete.

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[[folder:M-W]]

* TheIgor: Dr. Frankenstein’s henchman Egor checks all the boxes. The only thing really setting him apart from other fictional Igors [[SpellMyNameWithAnS is that his name is starts with an "E".]]

* GraveRobbing: When talking with Leopold about their respective bosses over drinks at a bar, Egor mentions that Dr.Frankenstein makes him rob graves every night.

* HopeCrusher: When the poltergeist takes possession of Gary’s Echo Dot, it seems content to make Gary feel worse about himself.

* ExtraEyes: Some of the monsters that pop up have more than two eyes, and shape-shifter Sheila has at least eight.

* TechnicallyNakedShapeShifter: Shape-shifter Sheila has clothes on when disguised as human women, but appears to be wearing nothing in her real form.

* ArtEvolution: Gary starts out with misplaced eyes, but over time their placement evens out.

* MinimalistCast: The ''Travis Minus Scary Gary'' strips in a clear ShoutOut to ''Webcomic/GarfieldMinusGarfield'', with every character expect Travis removed from existing strips.

* Invisibility: The invisible man is completely invisible, and gets mistaken for a self-driving car at one point.

[[/folder]]

Scary Gary is a NewspaperComic written by Mark Buford, which debuted in several newspapers on June 16, 2008. Scary Gary follows Gary, a recently retired vampire who tries to live peacefully in the suburbs with his demonic henchman Leopold, a BedsheetGhost named Owen, and severed Head-in-a-jar Travis. The series is something of a SliceOfLife that mostly runs on large doses of BlackComedy, which is often provided by Leopold, although he’s not the only monster around causing mayhem & destruction.

* AnAxeToGrind: One of Leopold’s many murder weapons.
* AnachronismStew: It’s not clear how technology progressed over the years, but Gary has home video recordings of himself as a five year old kid in 14th century Romania. There weren’t any iPhones at that time though.

* BadIsGoodAndGoodIsBad: Leopold has this view in general; several times Gary does something that makes Leopold feel better, or calmer, which then makes him feel angry & upset, whereas when Gary points out that Leopold’s lab rat doesnt make a good friend because he could just run off and never return, Leopold (with a smile) states that fact makes him like him ''more''.
** Another one: If Leopold sees cute kittens or puppies, he wants to eat them, but when a stray cat attacks him while he’s out for a stroll, he takes it home and asks Gary if he can keep it.

** at one point Leopold accidentally turns himself into something he finds repulsive: a ''human'' (well, what he would look like if he wasn’t a genetic mutation anyways).
-->'''Leopold''': Don’t look at me. I’m hideous.
* BedsheetGhost: Owen, much to his chagrin. He’s even catches fire a few times like an actual bedsheet.
* BlackComedy: The bulk of it is provided by Leopold in the form of his murders, the horrific experiments on people, his deadly “pranks” etc. The rest comes from various other monsters, and [[CreepyChild Beatrice]].
* BrainBleach: Leopold is quite dismayed when he finds out his memory eraser cannot make him forget the details of [[TooMuchInformation Gary’s underwear problems.]]
-->'''Leopold''': (''To Owen'') IT’S NOT POWERFUL ENOUGH!
* BullyingADragon: A '''lot''' of people think it’s a good idea to pick on the resident vampire and his demonic-looking henchman. Their survival depends on who they go after.
** Gary is more than powerful enough to kill every human he meets with ease, but doesn’t because he has changed his ways. That being said, he isn’t afraid to remind people of what he is and what he could do if he was really pushed to his limits.

* ComicallyMissingThePoint: Pretty much every character has a turn miss-understanding what the others mean at some point, such as Leopold’s dad congratulating him on the fantastic job he did on the head in a jar (the head being Travis) when Travis asks him if he has anything to say to Leopold about Travis’ predicament.
* CreepyChild: Around two or three “creepy little girls” in Gary’s neighborhood, one is a ghost, another named Beatrice lives next door and has a crush on Leopold. At one point the latter sends Leopold a video “love note”.

* DidntThinkThisThrough: Twice Beatrice has tried to give the local, murderous zombie baby a playmate so he isn’t lonely, and twice realized that it was a terrible idea. The first time was giving him a puppy, which she, Gary, and Owen barely save in time (then have to save ''again'' from Leopold), the second time she left the zombie baby at a day care. The screams coming from the inflatable bounce house when the group get there imply that [[ScreamDiscretionShot they were]] ''[[ScreamDiscretionShot just]]'' [[ScreamDiscretionShot a little too late.]]

* EvenBadMenLoveTheirMamas: [[PlayedWith To an extent?]] ''[[PlayedWith Maybe?]]'' One of the things Leopold makes clear[[note]]via an attempted deep-frying and car “accident”[[/note]], is that he wishes his kind, caring parents would die. Despite this, he doesn’t actually do much to try to kill them directly, and he’s literally [[SuperPersistentPredator chased]]/[[CruelAndUnusualDeath torn apart/tortured/experimented on]] and/or [[ImAHumanitarian eaten]] other humans for . . . just existing, honestly.
** He seems ''almost'' pleasantly surprised by his mother’s virology knowledge, and thanks her for saving his life after he contracts a deadly virus he was experimenting on in his lab. He clarifies that he still hates her, but she just playfully tickles his stomach as if he was just a grumpy toddler, which brings out what seems to be a rare, genuine, ''non-malicious'' smile from him as he laughs and tells her to cut it out.

* EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: Gary’s Uncle Zombie who is his uncle who is a zombie, The Fifty Foot Woman is a Fifty Foot tall woman, the creepy little girls, the list goes on.
** Beatrice informs the group of her name when she notices that they keep calling her “the creepy little girl next door”.
* FantasticRacism: Leopold makes his general hate for humans very clear. At one point he fires Beatrice as a lab helper because he can’t get over his resentment for humans (she threatens to sue on the grounds of “species discrimination”), and when his mother saves his life, he thanks her, but informs her he will continue to treat her badly because he resents the fact his own parents are humans.

** One of Leopold’s favorite phone apps is a mini-flamethrower.
* FriendlySkeleton: On the occasion Gary is reduced to a skeleton but retains his mobility, he’s still just as friendly.

* GoodIsNotNice: Gary is a good vampire, and doesn’t want to kill or hurt anyone, but either his age, violent past, or inability to stop many of Leopolds murderous outbursts has lead to him being quite apathetic at times. A good example is when he took a sandwich down to one of Leopolds prisoners because he figured the poor man was hungry, but the thought of feeding him by hand (the man’s own hands were restrained by chains) made it too weird for Gary so he just walked off with it.

* HeadPet: Lab Rat’s favorite place to be is on top of Leopold’s head. Occasionally he will sit on Travis’ jar instead.
* HiddenDepths: When Leopold accidentally ingests a lethal virus that will kill him in 24 hours, his mother makes him a chicken soup “infused with the synthesized enzymes necessary to impede viral propagation” to cure him. When he asks how she knows so much about virology, she just tells him to save his energy.
* ImAHumanitarian: It’s played around with; Leopold refers to himself as a monster, and eats humans, but according to his biological ''human'' parents, he is a genetic mutation.

* IntergenerationalFriendship: Beatrice and Gary get along quite well despite being a little girl who can’t be older than 10 and a 700+ year old vampire. Gary and most of the other characters he is friends with also count, as almost none of them come close to being over seven centuries old.

-->'''Gary''': Sir, I’m a vampire. If you rob me, I’ll just laugh maniacally, drain all the blood from your body and then feed you to my flesh-hungry henchman.
* NonHumansLackAttributes: Played straight with every monster without clothes except for Leopold. He is ''technically'' a heavily genetically mutated human who runs around buck-naked in every scene he’s in, yet his privates are always private. Possibly justified due to the "genetically mutated" part.

* NonIdleRich: Gary, whenever he lands a part-time job. He also eventually joins his neighborhood’s crime watch, although as Leopold points out, they are likely taking advantage of the fact he’s awake at night.

** Travis’ head is ''way'' more detailed & realistic than the rest of his housemates.
** Leopold’s parents look like they are from a generic 1950’s drawing of a happy family, and have the personality to match. When Leopold goes through a BalefulPolymorph, he temporarily turns into a human drawn in the same style as them.
* OurGhostsAreDifferent: There’s CreepyChild ghosts, [[BedsheetGhost Bedsheet ghosts]], {{Poltergeist}}s, etc.

* Really700YearsOld: Gary is a 700 year old vampire (well, around 703 or so when the series starts anyways) who was turned into one at 24 and doesn’t appear to have aged a day past that.

* ReformedButRejected: Downplayed with Gary, as he tries to live a peaceful life, and not everyone he meets wants to kill him for being a vampire, but a good number of them do, and a (part-time) vampire hunter tracks him down from Romania to attempt kill him for what he did in the past, despite Gary’s change of heart.

* SelfMadeOrphan: Almost. Leopold ''tries'' to batter and deep fry his parents for thanksgiving one year, but Gary catches wind of his plan and puts a stop to it. Leopold subsequently hates that year’s thanksgiving dinner with Gary & his family because he wishes he was about to eat their severed heads instead.
* {{Sexiled}}: Leopold’s way of signaling he has a lady friend in his room is a noose hung from the doorknob. Going by Gary and Owen’s deeply confused looks (and a comment from Leopold), his housemates keep forgetting what it means.
* ShrinkRay: Among Leopold’s many gadgets is a shrink ray. When he holds a yard sale to get rid of his excess lab equipment, he uses it to capture shoplifters.
* SnarkyInanimateObject: The picture of a skull on one of Leopold’s coffee mugs occasionally silently reacts to what Leopold and the others say and do.
* TheSoulless: Gary used to be this literally and metaphorically, but by the time the comic starts, he’s already gone through a MyGodWhatHaveIDone phase, and so tries to be the nicest soulless corpse he can be.

* TakeOverTheWorld: World domination is one of Leopold’s goals, although it seems to be more of a side project given he spends most of his time out of the lab drinking at The Hammered Henchman, hunting down people to eat, going on dates, or having a beer with Satan, and time in the lab torturing Travis.

* ToiletPaperTrail: Leopold mistakes mummy wrappings stuck to Gary’s shoe for toilet paper.
* UndeadChild: The Zombie Baby who wandered into Gary’s neighborhood is, well . . . a [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin zombie baby.]]

** Owen is sometimes reduced to a pile of ashes and a pair of glasses, but as a ghost, he’s already dead, so it doesn’t stick.
** Travis is sometimes reduced to a skull, but since Leopold seems to enjoy keeping him in a tortured existence as a living head trapped in a jar of formaldahyde, it’s unlikely he would let Travis die to avoid a MercyKill.

** Leopold’s parents drive off a cliff (he cut the brakes in their car), but when we next see them, they’re fine. Given that Leopold is their kid, and says he grew up near a nuclear waste dump, along with their NonstandardCharacterDesign, they’re not exactly that “normal” to begin with.
** possibly Leopold’s lab rat (the one often seen riding on his head), although it’s not clear if it’s the same lab rat, or one of the many rats in his lab.
* UrbanFantasy: All sorts of monsters are known & accepted parts of modern society, there’s a bar whose target clientele are evil henchmen, Gary was able to buy a house in the suburbs but has to deal with angry mobs & vampire hunters as well as unhappy neighbors, and zombie attacks are so common that there’s at least one “pest control” company that specializes in killing zombies, among other things.

* WeWantOurJerkBack: Played with. Leopold laments the fact Gary reformed, and wishes he would go back to being an evil ruthless vampire. When Gary’s possessed by a violent, blood-thirsty demon, Leopold tells Owen that in that state, he doesn’t hate Gary. He’s also obviously thrilled to see Gary go AxCrazy because of it, but eventually uses his shop-vac to get rid of the demon for Gary without even being asked to, when Gary laments how expensive an exorcism would be, and afterwards just tells Gary to buy him a beer sometime as payment.

* WouldntHurtAChild: Gary’s neighbors don’t seem to be able to bring themselves to kill The Zombie Baby for their safety (and they ''really'' should if they want to increase their already slim chances of survival in that neighborhood), since the one time they apparently got him, all they did was chain him to a tree so he couldn’t hurt anyone. It also seems to extend to indirectly killing him, since the “Zom-Begone” company is only a phone call away if they they really wanted the little guy exterminated.
* WouldHitAGirl: Despite the male-female “Killed by Leopold” ratio being almost [[ComedicSociopathy comically one sided towards the former]], he can get just as excited to [[SlapstickKnowsNoGender messily kill & devour ladies as he does the men.]]