Afraid of Monsters
is a fantasy/humour webcomic by Kat Ozkosar about one young Allen Alechem, a lad whose main concerns are his upcoming physics exam, not hurting himself, and generally being frightened by more or less everything. Cue his surprise (and abject terror) when his looker of an aunt, Grace, brings him to stay at a new... school! One... populated entirely by monsters!
Oh, and did we mention that he's also a monster? Grace didn't, apparently.
Well, at least he won't have to worry about that physics exam, anymore.
(Not at all related to the video game, Afraid of Monsters.)
This comic provides examples of:
- All There in the Manual: The comic has a cast listing, which reveals the character's name and species, and ask blog, which reveals more details about the world.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Most of the characters have extremely bold coloration not limited by your standard palette of natural tones (and are surprisingly color coordinated, with their skin, hair and eyes matching their clothing to a fair degree.)
- Benevolent Monsters: Monsters are just as varied in personality and morality as humans, but the majority of the main cast falls under this category.
- Big Friendly Dog: Wilde. They're a big, shapeshifting, vaguely canine monster and a generally friendly person.
- Break the Cutie: When the full implications of Allen's situation hit him - his parents' deaths, Fedosia stalking him as a child, his ignorance of his powers, Grace lying to him all his life - it hits him hard, and he does not take it well.
- Cast of Snowflakes: Thirty some-odd characters, most of them different species with wildly varying looks and coloration.
- Exotic Eye Designs: Wilde, the beast, has one eye that has a squiggly pupil. Trudy, the gremlin, has pupils resemble barcodes.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: Angels have this in abundance, in classic biblical style.
- Matthew, resident angel student, has a pair of tails that double as eye stalks. Allen... is not terribly fond of them.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Angels, demons, vampires, harpies, sirens, ghouls, ghosts, dragons and telekinetics among others.
- Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Viramina Harper Vanvansing, The Third, or just Vira for short. A natural-born vampire and one of the sweetest, kindest, and friendliest people you could hope to meet.
- Hellish Horse: Percy Perkins, RA, is a nightmare: a flaming, skeletal horse. Even in human form, his eyes have a fiery glow to them.
- Holy Halo: Matthew has one of these, being an angel and all. It's one of the more modern 'floating ring above the head' types.
- Lizard Folk: Theodore resembles a green human with green hair. Also, his "skin" may or may not be scales. Despite the character sheet listing his species as "Reptilian", he seems to be a very chill dude, rather than someone trying to subvert human government.
- No Ending: Neither the pre-reboot or reboot comic actually conclude the story.
- Our Angels Are Different / Our Demons Are Different: Angels and Demons are both members of the same species: Cruxians. We have yet to see a demon. Matthew, the angel we see, is a Winged Humanoid with a halo and tail with a Third Eye on it. Although according to Matthew, some angels don't have the Third Eye. Angels also may or may not cry blood.
- Our Dragons Are Different: So far, we have been introduced to three types of dragons: spindle, wyvern and pukis. They have the ability to assume human forms. In their human form, their hair usually has horn-like spikes.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Just to start, most ghosts have "X"-shaped symbols in their eyes.
- Our Mermaids Are Different: They're dark-eyed humanoids with fishy features like fins, tails, and sharp teeth. They can breathe underwater, of course, and apparently have a "thing" for humans.
- Psychic Powers: Telekinetics are a species of monster, and as their name suggests, they're a race of psychics.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Henry Hallow is cold and aloof whereas Tib Tigris is energetic and friendly.
- Single Specimen Species: A weird example. Many species appear and are said to have multiple members. However, we only see one member. There are a handful of exceptions such as the Reptilians and Boogeymen.
- Sirens Are Mermaids: Averted. Mermaids are fish-like humanoids and sirens are feathered humanoids with wing arms.
- Speech Bubbles: All of the characters have speech bubbles that are colored in some way to resemble the character speaking (though not necessarily the same way, Katzen and Sarah have speech bubbles that resemble their general coloration, for instance, while Ingot's is specifically colored like their eyes.)
- Shout-Out: Tigris references The Fly and Carrie while talking to Allen.
- Later on, Nurse Dexter mentions how she wants to prevent a "head-burst scifi horror scene [sic]".
- After meeting the exorcists, Allen says "they look like they murdered their parents for a corn field".
- The Undead: There are several types of undead creatures:
- There are at least two types of ghosts: phantoms and poltergeists. They both have phasing powers. The difference isn't really explained. To confuse things further, Christine (one of the poltergeists) seems constantly discharge electricity, but Simon (the other poltergeist) doesn't.
- It's possible that it's a sort of Elemental Baggage carried over from how the poltergeist died.
- Ghouls are animated corpses. They look and act like (albeit oddly colored) humans. Ghouls seem to more along the lines of a Revenant Zombie.
- There are at least two types of ghosts: phantoms and poltergeists. They both have phasing powers. The difference isn't really explained. To confuse things further, Christine (one of the poltergeists) seems constantly discharge electricity, but Simon (the other poltergeist) doesn't.
