Watch the skies!
The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot (1995) began as Frank Miller's and Geof Darrow's much more family friendly collaboration after the energetically demented Hard Boiled. The Comic was a big over the top tribute to Silver Age comics, Godzilla and Astro Boy. The story is about a giant, primordial monster unleashed upon Tokyo which the military is unable to defeat; subsequently the government is forced to send the newly developed and inexperienced Rusty the Boy Robot in to try and neutralize the threat. Unfortunately he is also overwhelmed by the monster and the government calls on the aid of their American allies who send in Big Guy, a bigass humanoid robot, with two fists and a whole lot of guns. The comic was adapted into a cartoon that ran from 1999 to 2000.
Tropes from the comic:
- American Robot: Big Guy is a deliberate example of this.
- And I Must Scream: Anyone contaminated or infected from the monster's saliva, is quickly turned into one of its "children", their consciousnesses are imprisoned within new immortal dinosaur-like bodies and their minds enslaved to the monster's will.
- Also, what the demon monster vows to do to the pilot of Big Guy after he rebukes him as his god, by imprisoning him within an agonizing malformed shell of his own robotic suit for all eternity. Averted, after he severs his own infected arm and vanquishes the malevolent abomination.
- Assimilation Plot: The dinosaur-like monster seeks to do this with mankind, either through devouring them, or transforming them into its own 'offspring'.
- Astro Clone: Rusty references Astro. He's a young Robot Kid inspired by Astro, albeit with a red color scheme.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Pretty much the whole plot of this two issue comic; a big monster is rampaging throughout Tokyo, and Big Guy has to stop him.
- Badass Boast: Frequently done by the monster to strike fear into those who dare oppose him. It often works.
- Body Horror: The villain's drool transforms people into reptilian monstrosities.
- Crossover: With Madman, the main characters also make an appearance in a hallucination in Sin City.
- The Corruption: The monster's salivary fluids work on a biological and molecular-level. Transforming whatever living or non-living thing it comes into contact with, into an extension of itself.
- Defiant to the End: The demon monster. Even after being hurled into the ocean, about to be vaporized by an atomic blast, it roars defiantly.
- Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: The pilot of Big Guy fakes his own forfeit to the giant implacable monster. The monster in turn informs the human he and the rest of mankind are fortunate he's a forgiving god, who proceeds to absorb him. The pilot then, smacks the demon right in the chops, sending him flying through several buildings.
- Eldritch Abomination: Apparently the dinosaur-like creatures were all actually examples of this.
- The Evils of Free Will: What the demon monster forces mankind to believe, and abandon hope and the illusion of individuality.
- Expanded Universe: The giant dinosaur-like monster has no name in the comic, yet is referred to as "Taoking" and on official merchandise, even re-imagined and depicted having survived the warhead
. - Expy: The monster to Godzilla, Rusty to Astro Boy and Big Guy to Iron Man and Gigantor.
- Godhood Seeker: What the giant monster desires most, to rule over humanity, forever.
- Gone Horribly Right: The monstrous giant proclaims it has always existed, shapeless, formless, long before humans, since the very beginning. Then humans finally gave it a massive and powerful host body it waited an eternity for .
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Big Guy curses like this.
- Handicapped Badass: Despite losing an arm in the battle, the Big Guy is still able to subdue and defeat mankind's would-be god.
- Homage: Craig McCracken's The Powerpuff Girls features a Shout-Out episode with the girls trying, and failing, to stop a parody of the same giant dinosaur-like monster.
- I Am Legion: The demonic monster speaks with a thousand voices.
- Kaiju: The monstrous antagonist "Taoking" — so named in supplementary materials.
- Large Ham:
- The monster: "Sweating, squealing, simpering, screaming rodents! You are doomed!"
- Big Guy himself; "I brought you some candy!"
- Made of Explodium: The Monster and his minions.
- My Country, Right or Wrong: The American plot of Big Guy is obviously quite patriotic.
- Narm Charm: Intentionally invoked.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: The monster cannot be destroyed through conventional weaponry. Its regeneration abilities are too great. Even blowing up its head does nothing. Only a direct-hit from a nuclear warhead will atomize the demon, preventing its return.
- Self-Parody: What the comic surprisingly delivers in the end pages presented in the form of "non-existent future issues" where Big Guy goes up against the invading Moon Pig, Captain Chernobyl going into critical meltdown, and Dr.Zor a giant dinosaur hilariously wanting to win a child custody case over his son, a human baby.
- Scenery Porn: A given with Darrow's highly detailed CyberPunk style cityscapes.
- Scenery Gorn: Also a given since there's a giant monster rampaging that cityscape.
- Slave to PR:
- Big Guy is actually a piloted mecha, but for publicity reasons the populace (and Rusty) is led to believe he's a giant robot.
- The monster though, is not so easily deceived.
- Swallowed Whole: Many unlucky people in the monster's path, though its all part of its evil grand plan anyway.
- Square-Cube Law: Never mind the giant city-destroying monster, Big Guy should not have been able to lasso the fiend and hurl him into the ocean with a commuter train. Even if such a feat were possible, one of the couplings would have snapped from being overloaded by the giant's weight.
- Take That!: Rusty is an Astro Boy expy, being a Robot Kid developed in Japan. Rusty is also totally worthless; crushed like a bug while whining to himself about how much he sucks, while Big Guy defeats the monster all by himself. Put another way, the Japanese robot is a puny weakling that accomplishes nothing, while the American robot is big, tough, powerful hunk of metal that singly-handedly defeats what the entire Japanese military failed to even dent.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: The pilot of Big Guy refuses to outright kill any of the humans turned into attacking monsters who are quite pissed after he blew up "their dad's" head. He employs non-lethal force against them, with great difficulty, though immortal doesn't mean they cannot die, the transformation has messed up the location of all of their vital organs, one wrong hit would have killed them.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Though the giant dinosaur monster is directly vanquished, its "children" still live on, and through them, their cells, so too does it. Meaning Big Guy hasn't properly ended this threat to the human race. Cue celebrations and parades until the next threat arrives. Seems to be adverted now with the recolored book, which shows the demon's children combining together to attack the heroes.
