Line #27 Webcomic/CityOfBlank


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbnail_1.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:Don't let [[FaceStealer them]] see your face.]]
3
4	->''"You're got a long journey ahead, Rex . . . and that journey begins in Glory City."''
5	-->-- '''Mikiah Kelman'''
6
7	From the official summary:
8
9	In a world where ghostly Blanks can steal your face–– and your life–– at any moment, a young boy named Rex hunts for his brother's killer. Cursed with the unique power to physically touch Blanks, Rex starts to uncover darker secrets at the city's center and in his own past. Will Rex unmask the killer, or will he become just another faceless victim in the City of Blank?
10
11	A webcomic currently available on [[https://www.webtoons.com/en/sf/city-of-blank/list?title_no=1895 Webtoons.]] Updated every Thursday.
12
13	----
14	!!This webcomic provides examples of:
15
16	* AndIMustScream: When a person's face gets stolen, their face turns into a cohesive slab of flesh, covering their eyes, nose and mouth. This usually kills them. Even if they're saved in time, the face cannot be given back regardless of the Blank being captured or not, so they're stuck like that for life.
17	* ArmorPiercingResponse: Double subverted when Claude and the Bag Girl get into an argument about him knowing sign language and not teaching her despite how useful that would have been to her. When Claude justifies himself by stating he doesn't care about her, the Bag Girl retorts that he might not care about her, but at least everyone else likes her while nobody likes him. Claude is unbothered by the assertion until the Bag Girl follows up with "Not even [[OnlyFriend Jericho]].", which visibly rattles him.
18	* AwesomeButImpractical:
19	** One of the top Blank Hunters wields a combination axe/flamethrower/club. Fully developed blanks are just normal people, [[spoiler: but a newly developed drug lets blanks change their blank space to make their limbs act as weapons]]. While it's true that the only things that can seriously damage the blank space are fire, water, and special weapons with hooked ends to scoop out the blank space, it's hard to see how one could direct the flame well on something like a large battle axe.
20	** There's a treatment that allows Blanks to [[spoiler:make weapons from their blank space]], but it only works on Blanks that aren't fully developed, so they lose the ability once they finish.
21	* BilingualBackfire: In Ep. 139, the Bag Girl insults Claude in sign language by saying that "Beak Face [is] being a dick like always." When she steps out of the room, Claude states that unfortunately for her, Beak Face knows some sign language.
22	* TheBlank: In addition to the identity-less titular Blanks, this is what happens to people whose faces are stolen from a Blank. What's worse, their faces can never be given back, and the victims usually die from suffocation.
23	* BlessedWithSuck: [[HalfHumanHybrid Half-Blanks]] are fully sentient and tangible, but as [[spoiler:Rex]] can attest to, they’re still drawn to unmasked humans like normal Blanks. Even if they detest the very thought of trying to steal someone’s face, their body reacts by itself.
24	* BizarreAlienSenses: The Blanks, despite not having eyes or ears, are able to navigate. It's made easier by their {{Intangibility}} to most people, but it's still unclear how they're able to find unmasked humans so quickly.
25	* CartesianKarma: A lot of the hatred Blanks suffer is because of actions they took before they developed sentience or any understanding of morality.
26	* CaughtWithYourPantsDown: Indirectly. Jericho is aware of everything that happens to Charlie due to the latter's red Blank arm...
27	-->'''Jericho:''' Even down to how you kept yourself company locked alone in that cell '''for months'''.\
28	''[BeatPanel]''\
29	'''Charlie:''' Oh, God.\
30	'''Jericho:''' Oh, God, indeed.
31	* ChekhovsGun: Midway through Season 1, Rex has a short and disastrous stint selling blank space-concealing makeup. When he is caught by a Blank Hunter, he pockets some of the makeup in a panic. [[spoiler:This proves to be very helpful when he is injured in his fight with Charlie Mathers and needs to cover up his blank space.]]
32	* CoincidentalBroadcast: For both establishing Mikiah as a fugitive, and demonstrating face-stealing as a real threat.
33	* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: WordOfGod is that the color of a Blank's Blank Space is dependent on the region said Blank is from; for example, Glory City Blanks are purple, the ones from Rex's hometown up north are green, etc. [[spoiler:Rex and Jericho's Blank Space color, reddish, is apparently rather significant]].
34	* CoverBlowingSuperpower:
35	** Part of why Rex views his ability to touch Blanks as CursedWithAwesome is that it's so unusual that it draws the immediate attention of whoever notices it (though a lot of people in Glory City assume that he's just a Blank Hunter with cutting-edge gear), and Shnee's been trained specifically to detect blanks to avoid this, though it doesn't always work.
36	** If someone has their mask off and a Blank ''doesn't'' try to steal their face, they're a Blank themselves. Thus, to hide, Blanks wear masks in public. Similarly, developing Blanks have incomplete physiologies with patches of Blank space that can allow them to shrug off injuries not caused by fire or water to those spots, but if anyone sees them do that...
37	** [[spoiler:Jericho and Rex can heal serious injuries with Blank Space instead of scar tissue, but whatever happened to the former resulted in him having so much exposed Blank space, including half of his ''face'', that even with a mask and bandages going out in public is risky.]]
38	* CursedWithAwesome: Rex doesn't like his ability to touch Blanks, even if it enables him to fight off Blanks without using special equipment.
39	* DisappointedInYou: In Claude's backstory, his high school principal fed him this line after he pissed away a chance to graduate as valedictorian because of his HairTriggerTemper.
40	* EmbarrassingAlibi: Upon discovering that Rex is living with humans, his Aunt Lauro changes the "He's going to develop a lethal wound and needs a doctor" thing to "He's got chronic diarrhea." Rex wanted asthma as his alibi, and it's pretty much certain that Lauro chose diarrhea because he'd hate that one.
41	* EngineeredHeroics: [[spoiler:Stella pays Charlie and his goons to abduct people, tear off their masks so the Blanks steal their face, and leave them to suffocate to death. She then turns in the Blank to pad her numbers, and splits the profits with Charlie]].
42	* ElephantInTheLivingRoom: At the end of Season 2, [[spoiler:Charlie all but outs Desmond as a Blank to Lyss. She spends most of Season 3 flat-out refusing to discuss it before eventually admitting that if hypothetically one of her best friends turned out to be a Blank, she'd still care about them.]]
43	* EvilDetectingDog: "Evil" is a matter of perspective, but Shnee is trained to detect Blanks for Rex so he doesn't bump into them, though he doesn't always do so in time.
44	* ExpressiveMask: The masks which all the characters wear tend to move along with their facial features, especially their eyes. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]], because ''everyone'' wears a mask, making it hard to convey expressions otherwise.
45	* TheFaceless: Since there are mysterious creatures everywhere that will steal your face if you show it, nearly everyone hides their face behind a mask 24/7.
46	* FaceStealer:
47	** Blanks, which are the reason masks are so common. Upon sensing an unmasked human, they congregate around the hapless victim in hopes of stealing a face.
48	** There are also ''animal'' Blanks, but they're relatively rare, in part because animals don't usually wear masks, so they get their faces stolen before they can multiply. They also don't seem to ever develop their bodies beyond the stolen faces, and definitely don't get the memories, either.
49	* FantasticRacism: Blanks who have successfully stolen faces are reviled by society, since most people don't believe that Blanks can't control their compulsion to steal faces. There's also the fear of mass security breaches from clones of high-ranked people with less stable personalities than their originals, the statistically high death rate of victims of face-stealing due to suffocation from not having a mouth, and [[spoiler:[[EngineeredHeroics the Blank Hunters endorsing murder-by-Blank to make themselves look good by 'avenging' the victims]]]]. [[spoiler: Rex's mother was a rare subversion of the trope, who accepted the Blank who stole her husband's face as her husband still. Same goes for Jay, who replaced his siblings' big brother.]]
50	* FlatWhat: The Bag Girl's reaction to the revelation that Claude knows sign language but never bothered to teach her is to flatly sign the word "What."
51	* FlippingTheBird: Jericho displays his ability to control Charlie's blank space by forcing him to flip Claude off. The Bag Girl promptly joins in of her own volition.
52	* {{Foreshadowing}}:
53	** [[spoiler:There are a few hints of Rex being a [[HalfHumanHybrid half-blank]] besides his ability to touch normal Blanks; like how his face wasn't shown (and even the back of his skull was just a black blob) when he took his brother out of a burning house in the first chapter, etc.]]
54	** Several regarding Lyss' backstory, to the point that it's almost a ForegoneConclusion by the time she directly spills to Rex:
55	*** Her reaction towards a Blank interrupting her dinner goes far beyond normal fear and into outright PTSD symptoms.
56	*** Whenever she aims her revolver, she always aligns the sights with her left eye.
57	*** The Bag Girl only has a right eye, and has the same natural hair color and text color motifs as Lyss.
58	* FreudianExcuse: We don't know exactly what happened, but at some point Lyss suffered a very traumatic experience involving Blanks. Specifically Blanks associated with organized crime. Now she's dead set on getting revenge on the gang's leader. [[spoiler: We later find out that a crime boss blank in the city left her father wheelchair bound and fed half her face to a Blank, all but confirmed to be Bag Girl.]]
59	* HalfHumanHybrid:
60	** If a human and a blank who's developed enough after taking someone's face procreate, it's possible for their children to be human-blank hybrids. Hybrids are corporeal, have sentience and can communicate via sign language, retaining their own ego after stealing a face if they end up doing so, while still gaining their face's memories. Unfortunately, as [[spoiler:Rex]] can attest to, they still feel physically compelled to steal an unmasked face even if they find it morally reprehensible (and it's noted that if they ''don't'' find it abhorrent, since they're tangible, they can just walk up to someone and rip their mask off manually).
61	** Half-Blanks can procreate with humans to produce quarter-blanks. The one directly introduced quarter-Blank, Nia, has all of the advantages of both parts of her physiology and none of the weaknesses - she has her own face that full Blanks can't steal, she has full legal rights as a human, and she can even turn incorporeal at will.
62	* HowWeGotHere: Season 2 begins with [[spoiler:Rex under attack from Stella, who is aware that he is a Blank]]. It then flashes back a month to recount how events got to this point.
63	* TheImmune: Blanks who've stolen a face don't have to worry about their faces being stolen. They still wear masks in order to not give away the fact that they're blanks, as blanks with stolen faces are at best sent to special prisons.
64	* IWantThemAlive:
65	** Blan Co. goes out of their way to kidnap Rex for his memories.
66	** Blank Hunters apparently prioritize capturing live Blanks.
67	* JustFollowingOrders: A prison security guard gives this line to [[spoiler:Nia's mother when explaining that they're just going to have to figure out how to handle an influx of three hundred blank prisoners]]. Unusually, it's honestly justified given that the guard is a {{mook}} with no genuine sway in the matter.
68	* KillItWithFire: Fire ''is'' particularly effective at destroying Blank space, but Lyss is rather ''obsessed'' with the idea of setting Blanks on fire; she nearly failed the written portion of the Blank Hunter exam because she put this down as her answer for ''every'' question regarding social interactions with Blanks for example.
69	* KillItWithWater: Blanks are weak to water. Lyss demonstrates this at the beginning with a fire hose, the wealthy district of Glory City is called the Moat District due to its distinctive moat that keeps Blanks out and allows its residents to prance about without masks, and people can go about maskless in particularly rainy and snowy climates.
70	* LivingMacGuffin: Due to the Blan Co's desire to capture Rex alive, he becomes this to those looking to turn him over to them for profit.
71	* TheMole: [[spoiler:Jay is a Blank operative for "Masque", an underground Blank organization run by Rex's godmother with the purpose of making it as hard as possible for new Blank Hunters to get licensed in Glory City.]]
72	* MsFanservice: Lyss is a mild example, often wearing shorts and short dresses but never things that are ridiculously impractical. She only ever puts on a genuinely revealing outfit when infiltrating a club.
73	* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Blanks can't control their urges to steal faces, [[spoiler:even half-human ones]], so this is a common response amongst Blanks who have successfully do so to normal people.
74	* NotBrainwashed: Played for laughs. Jericho uses his control over Charlie's blank space to flip Claude off. When the Bag Girl flips him off too, Claude assumes she's being controlled as well. She isn't.
75	* NotQuiteDead: [[spoiler:Jericho was supposedly murdered by Mikiah, but later turns out to be alive.]]
76	* SarcasmMode: Claude to a Blank that ratted out his house mates to the Blank hunters.
77	-->'''Claude:''' Hm... Let's take a look at your file, shall we? 'Blank name: Abel Mercer. Face name: Miles Sutter. Sex: Male. Age: 24. In and out of prison as a human for various crimes and misdemeanors, including embezzlement, forgery, and robbery. Face stolen after dropping mask while trying to escape police custody after robbing a liquor store.' You're right. You're '''clearly''' an upstanding citizen that would never sell out his house mates for some quick cash.
78	* ScreamDiscretionShot: After Claude finds out that a Blank ratted out one of Blan Co.'s safehouses to the authorities, he declares that the only thing Blan Co. values more than its money is its secrecy. The Blank in question screams his head off as the screen cuts to black.
79	* SuperPoweredEvilSide: When [[spoiler: Rex]] is near death, a new personality takes hold, made clear by a change in his demeanor and his speech bubbles' coloring and font. When asked about his identity [[spoiler: he says that he's royalty compared to normal blanks. He has the power to control blanks without faces, and the blank space of those with faces. He can even form weapons from his blank space, an ability previously thought only to be possible using drugs.]]
80	* ThereIsAnother: [[spoiler:Jericho can also interact with normal Blanks as if they were solid.]]
81	* TitleDrop: Said by Rex at the end of the first episode. "Looks like we finally made it, huh, Shnee? We made it to Glory City . . . better known as the City of Blank!"
82	* TheToothHurts: Claude notes that the one bone that every Blank, no matter how developed, has is their teeth.[[note]]Except Bag Girl, but she's an oddity all-around.[[/note]] He successfully gets a Blank he's interrogating to confess to him by threatening to pull them out with a pair of pliers.
83	* TrainingFromHell: Ep. 143 sees Rex go through brutal training to get control of [[spoiler:his Scion]].
84	* UndeadTaxExemption: Unless they're lucky and no one notices their victim's face was stolen, developing Blanks need to have identification documents forged. [[spoiler:Rex, being a HalfHumanHybrid, actually has his own legitimate identity thanks to his family setting things up, though for obvious reasons he only got it recently.]]
85	* WeaksauceWeakness:
86	** Blanks melt in water, so bathrooms come equipped with special water curtain showers which allow people to safely wash their faces and bathe.
87	** Fire cauterization prevents Blanks from regenerating.
88	* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: Blanks that successfully steal faces, despite not being sapient until they do and getting the memories of the person whose face they took, are treated as subhuman by most and jailed if caught simply for existing.

Context Webcomic / CityOfBlank