Facepalm / Webcomics

Facepalming in webcomics.

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• Books Don't Work Here: Two girls on their way to the mall, why is this example here? Link“He's (the author) putting us on a bus the week before he's moving and getting a new job. It's gonna be a long bus ride.” That would do it.
• The Order of the Stick
  • Belkar and Elan engender many facepalms from other characters, usually Roy. A list of all occurences can be found in the forum: "The Great Roy Greenhilt & Everybody Else Facepalm Count"

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  • Apparently, being a skeleton drawn in stick figure isn't enough to make Xykon immune... though technically it's more of a "skull-phalanx" there.
• Frequent in Girl Genius.
  • A beautiful one in this strip.
  • An even better one at the end of this comic.
  • Two-handed face-palm for Gil on this page.
  • Agatha, of course, gets to do this too.
  • Mama Gkika slap a hand to her forehead when Agatha clears the way to the observation tower, with a weapon that also destroys the observation tower.
  • Agatha's gesture starts as a Hand Behind Head, but morphs into a facepalm when talking to the Heterodyne monster train:
    Agatha: It hate schedules and it's a glutton — and they gave it to the monks.
  • The Master of Paris must have established some sort of record with a double-facepalm that lasts a good 15 minutes.
  • While being in England's main area of study Agatha asks what this new 'golden age' the sparks were talking about is. The explanation she's given makes the sparks look so delusional that she pulls one at the end here

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• Mr. Mighty of Everyday Heroes does this at his own stupidity. (See Homer Simpson example below.) Apparently, it's hereditary.

• Happens many a time in Dominic Deegan. Most of the time it's in response to an Incredibly Lame Pun.

• Hark! A Vagrant: Karl Heinrich Ulrichs slaps a hand over his face while he's trying to argue for gay rights, when he compares it to people needing to speak up against witch hunts in the (then) near past only for a lady to say that "Ok, except everyone knows witches don't exist." Ulrichs is a real historical figure, who was advocating for gay rights before the word homosexual was coined and ended up exiled for his activism.
• MegaTokyo: Kobayashi-kun did this after he realized he'd just sent Yuki away alone... when she'd been suggesting she could bring him along if he held on to her "really, really tight." Way to go, kid who's had a crush on Yuki for years....
• Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic:

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  • Gren, thanks to her uncle Vesch breeding midget direwolves.
  • Strip 206: "Hostile Takeover"
    Arachne: (thinking while facepalming) We're not getting out of this port alive.
  • Captain Fang makes Arachne a repeat offender.
  • Most epic example with King Eric.
  • Goldie is a Cloudcuckoolander as much as Captain Fang, but talks coherently enough to share her entertaining thoughts. Making a goblin who wants to eat her facepalm is the new record.
• Homestuck
  • Quite a bit of FACEPALM x2 COMBO.
  • Also FACEPALM x1 COMBO.
  • That's nothing. Here is a FACEPALM x0 COMBO.
  • *H3R TYR4NNY F4C3 P4LMS 1N 4 R34LLY D1GN1F13D 4ND 1NT1M1D4T1NGLY JUD1C14L M4NN3R*
  • A (somewhat spoiler-y) FACEPALM X2 from Terezi.
  • In "[S] Flip", a scratched game disc results in several glitches, including a FACEPALM x3 COMBO.
  • Dirk smacks his forehead upon seeing his Trickster Mode friends.
  • Another panel has Karkat lay his head on his computer desk and pound it on the back with his fist.

• El Goonish Shive
  • The teacher knows Tedd all too well.
  • Susan's facepalm reflex was developed with the help of her mom, and years of her acquaintance with Tedd only refined it. And now "Little Nase" working as semi-autonomous body extension allows her to stare in disbelief and do fairy-facepalm at the same time!
  • Sarah and Elliot are Tedd's old friends, could you tell?
  • Grace seems to have natural talents for causing this reaction. Sarah already worked with Tedd, so this was not a clean experiment. Mr. Raven, though, was facepalmed fair and square.
  • Tedd and Susan getting into another slap fight triggers one for Sarah.
• Jean in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! realizes she's fallen so far down the rabbit hole that she'll believe almost any preposterous thing Bob tells her.
• DM of the Rings: Frodo, on meeting Gimli.
  Frodo: Oh no. Who let The Roleplayer into the group?

• The Alien Loves Predator storyline "Ma's visit" gives two in short succession, including breakage of the Fourth Wall and an Incredibly Lame Pun.

• Sarine's relationship with Jon in Errant Story is largely a single, incredibly extended, highly expressive facepalm, but she does get to turn the tables and induce a classic one of her own in Jon's sister Sara.
• When Trope-tan facepalms in The Way of the Metagamer, this is quite naturally with a "Facepalm!" Unsound Effect.
• Underdogs
  • Pretty much the constant state of Jacobson whenever Eric/Theo are involved.
  • Eric during the first time dealing with Theo in Issue 2
• Spinnerette
  • Sahira goes beyond Unsound Effect territory by turning "facepalm" into an actual expletive:
    Sahira: Facepalm! I think Mecha Maid is a lesbian who wants to have sexual intercourse with you.
  • And then... of course, it was bound to happen, Spinnerette having six arms: Facepalm ×6!◊
• Most everybody in Least I Could Do has done the "pinching the bridge of the nose" variant at one time or another. Usually it's because of something Rayne just said or did.

• Alex Rayne of Wright as Rayne facepalms when he sees his "Starchild" costume.
• In Trope Overdosed The Webcomic, Alice does one complete with Unsound Effect when Bob tries Turn Undead.

• Schlock Mercenary
  • Captain Tagon is doing this (and that says something) at Schlock's overeager interpretation of his commands.
  • Major Murtaugh over Lt. Para Ventura. You aren't deep enough in until your enemy wants to have words with your commander about the training quality.

• Cess in Eerie Cuties, seeing how Laura accidentally incinerated her clothes. Again.

• In Drowtales, this seems to run in the Val'Sarghress family.
• Rusty and Co.
  • Mimic, being a Chest Monster, has neither face nor palm. That doesn't stop him, though. Then again, when you're teaming up with a ditz paladin who can be fooled by a tentacle puppet....
  • Watching another vampire defeated by a trick inspires this.

• Daniel as he berates Dwayne for his obsession with the female body, in Mooncrest 24.

• In Bob and George, Megaman does it after his epiphany.

• In Roommates... let's just say that it happens a lot... Even a triple one isn't an impossibility. (One of the characters just told his friends that he agreed to a Friends with Benefits relationship without knowing what it is... all his friends facepalm.)

• In The 10 Doctors, a Doctor Who fan webcomic, the 3rd Doctor has one at the sight of what his seventh incarnation calls a "mid-life crisis", namely the rather garish-looking 6th Doctor.
• Dragon Ball Multiverse: Cell when his Cell Junior risks disqualification after punching his opponent without touching the ring.
  • King Piccolo does this in response to Frieza asking who invited Broly to a villains' meeting in a minicomic.
• The Phoenix Requiem:
  • Anya when Jonas tells her parents about shades.
  • Anya reacts to Jonas being silly.
  • Jonas does a double facepalm when he realizes that his powers are discovered.
• Daniel from Chiasmata reacts this way after Sam expresses the desire to go investigate some mysterious casket they find. Especially since they had already seen some evidence that the whole place was an Eldritch Location, and the room and coffin were covered in what essentially translates as "Stay dead forever, please" (though to be fair, they had no way of knowing the last thing).
• Ménage à 3:
  • Zii demonstrates a resounding example, inspired by her own carelessness.
  • Gary's tactlessness inspires an even better example from Tracy here.
  • Gary also manages to inspire the less common nose-pinch version of the gesture from Peggy in panel 3 of this strip. As he is acting as the primary idiot of an Idiot Plot at this point, some readers declared that she spoke wordlessly for them there.
• Sluggy Freelance: In 15/03/27, Torg made even the author facepalm in writing with his behaviour. Gwynn had just started liking/tolerating him, but then seen an image on his phone childishly mocking her and got angry. Torg's wondering at the change^note it's not like she's going to tell him, she has to do her own part in making things difficult by being a gender stereotype and then seems on the verge of figuring out the reason — but what he actually came up with is that it must be her time of the month.
  Author's commentary: *facepalm* The top of Torg's resume skill-list should be pushing Gwynn's buttons.
• GastroPhobia:
  • When Filby does this, it's with appropriate unsound effect: FACEPALM
  • The goddess Athena has an epic one from Ares likening his portfolio with hers.

• Zebra Girl: During the Lotus-Eater Machine sequence, Sam does one, after Sandra ignores his warnings and lets her curiosity gets the better of her.
• In 8-Bit Theater, White Mage bashes her head against a tree in response to some particularly impressive idiocy from everyone else.
• Guilded Age: When a band of "adventurer's-rights enforcers" sets up their own nation on Gastonian soil, Syr'nj and Field Marshal Ardaic react in the only possible way.
• In Laws And Sausages, Greg Weiner explains that James Madison campaigned for the separation of powers so that the legislative, executive and judicial branches would balance out each other's power. However, party politics weakens this system because people in the different branches can be on the same "side". "And who, you ask, is the father of the modern party system? (puts both hands on face) One hint — his name rhymes with Schmadison."
• Paranatural: Lucifer tells Hijack that he needs better control of his emotions.
  Hijack: I have a sister who can control emotions. She's scary, like a big millipede.
  Lucifer: [pinching the bridge of his beak] LiSTEN
• Deep Rise: Four characters, eight hands each, for a whopping 32x facepalm combo when they discover someone accidentally invented a living dildo from anime toy parts.

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