Webcomic / Alcatraz High

”No Harry, you can’t stay dead.”

Alcatraz High (or alternately Alcatraz High School) is a webcomic written and illustrated by Suren Oganessian also known as Masked Bard and Surenity. Set in the small town of Martinez in the San Francisco Bay Area between the years 2000 to 2004, Alcatraz High chronicles the High School years of one Harry Heidelberg and his classmates, as they attend a dystopian prison-like campus. Harry is a normal teen, save for one thing; he has a rare medical condition that makes his head easily detached, however due to extraterrestrial intervention as well as the expert surgical skills of his father, he can return from the dead when his head is reattached. This causes a headache for the Death deities in the afterlife, who have to reset reality and erase everyone’s memory of his death. Predictably, this medical condition just makes him a target for bullying at school, especially by Bully Billy and his mysterious Lackey.

Able to bounce from surreal fantasy to science fiction and to realistic slice-of-life, the comic is difficult to categorize. It is ongoing and can be read here.

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Alcatraz High provides examples of:

• Absurdly Divided School: As school leadership signs explain, the student body is divided into clubs in order to make them easier to govern and less likely to unite against their oppressors; this also happens de facto through cliques.
• A Day in the Limelight: Billy, Tim & Miles, the Metalhead clique, and Psycho Mike have all had short comics dedicated to their backstories or misadventures.
• Adults Are Useless: In defense of the teachers, their perceptions of reality are being altered by the Gods, but they are still blind to Harry being bullied, and probably still would be even if supernatural elements weren’t at play.
• All Myths Are True: In this universe every pagan God that has ever been worshipped is real in the Spirit Realm, although they preside only over the culture that believed in them, even if that culture has since converted to a monotheistic religion. Gods with similar jobs work together and form a hierarchy, for instance, due to seniority Anubis is manager of the Death Gods. All versions of the afterlife exist as well, and people are sent to the one they believe in. Harry is German but an agnostic, so he is assigned the Grim Reaper, a more secular European Death God.
• Alpha Bitch: Britney, head of the Freshman cheerleading squad and of the popular kids clique, proudly describes herself as the type of bully who gives people something they’ll be telling their therapist about in twenty years. Rosamie, her second in command, often takes this role when Britney isn’t around.
• At Arm's Length: Billy does this to Tim when he angrily tries to attack Billy for making fun of him.
• Armor-Piercing Question: In Episode 4, after Connor warns Harry and Mike that the popular kids are going to beat Mike up at his house, he leaves to rejoin the popular kids in the cafeteria. Mike calls him out, asking him why he finds being at the top of a social hierarchy that won't matter after graduation more important than the number of kids that have suffered at the hands of said hierarchy, which leaves Connor at loss for words.
• Back from the Dead: Harry dies but comes back to life when his head is reattached.
• Barbaric Bully: Billy relishes in physical bullying, giving Harry a swirly in the first episode which leaves him decapitated.
• Big Guy, Little Guy: Mike is quite a bit taller than Harry. Tim & Miles have less of a height difference between them, but it is still apparent.
• Broken Tears: Harry hides in the bathroom and cries after being rejected by both Connor, and Tim & Miles, due mainly to his medical condition and resulting unpopularity.
• Bullied into Depression: Mike very much was bullied into depression, to the point of attempting suicide in middle school. Harry mostly averts it, though not exactly unaffected by the bullying, he maintains his optimism.
• Celestial Bureaucracy: The afterlife is run almost like a call center, and when Harry’s unique situation presents a challenge to the Grim Reaper, he has to escalate the case up to his manager, the God Anubis, and stay on hold for a long time. Anubis has his own office, his own secretary in the God Wepwawet, and wears a suit and tie. Those who die are brought to whatever they expected the afterlife to be like for them.
• Cerebus Rollercoaster: Lampshaded by Wepwawet, when he notes that the story has gone from the amusing antics of awkward teens to a horrific murder by bullying in a short timeframe. It applies to the comic as a whole too.
• Chess with Death: The Grim Reaper offers to play a game of chess with Harry to pass the time while they wait on hold, although he stipulates that it is just a friendly game and he doesn’t win his soul back if he wins the game. Harry loses anyway.
• Crapsack World: Takes place in an exaggeration of our world, with inspiration from They Live!.
• Dark and Troubled Past: As shown in the short “The Principal’s Office”, nearly all the main characters have some kind of trauma in their past.
• Dean Bitterman: Ms. Eggrot exemplifies this trope, handling most of the disciplinary actions, while Mr. Bok is a straight example of Evil Principal, who rarely if ever interacts with the students.
• Deliberate VHS Quality: The effects of a VHS tape with tracking lines is mimicked on the TV screen with which Anubis, Wepwawet and Harry watch the events leading up to Harry’s death.
• Don't Fear the Reaper: The Grim Reaper is rather affable despite being scary looking, although he gets annoyed by Harry making him do extra work and miss his lunch break.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Mike is shown to be pale even under his makeup.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Lackey appears to be one, able to warp reality around him, appear at random, and goes largely unnoticed by adults.
• Excessive Evil Eyeshadow: Part of Mike’s gothic corpse makeup.
• Evil Principal: The mysterious Mr. Bok, who has glowing eyes, a long tongue, and keeps a portrait of a strange entity named Azhdahak on his wall. He is dedicated to churning out obedient workers with crippling student loan debt.
• Gargle Blaster: What beer mixed with the Water of Lethe creates. Harry is forced to drink this so that he doesn’t remember the afterlife after he is resurrected.
• Goth: Psycho Mike is of the creepy loner type at the beginning of Freshman year; he’s actually taking on this stereotype purposely in order to scare off bullies.
• Goths Have It Hard: Mike endured some heavy bullying in Middle School after being skipped from 5th grade to 7th, which led to him taking on a goth persona, something feared during and after 1999. It is implied he doesn’t have the best home life. Ms. Starchild gives him an unofficial diagnosis of severe dysthymia (aka chronic depression) in her notes.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Almost every villain has someone even worse as a higher up. Principal Bok is behind much of the scheming to dispose of or at least reform the students he calls “broken cogs” and scam the students into going into debt for useless college degrees, but even he answers to the Super Intendant, who likely answers to someone else even higher.
• The Grim Reaper: Here the Grim Reaper is a European Death God whose native name is Gevatter Tod in German. He complains that because of Christianity he has never really been worshipped as a proper God, though.
• Gross-Up Close-Up: Whenever Petunia sees Harry, it zooms in on the stitches around Harry’s neck.
• Herr Doktor: Dr. Heidelberg, Harry’s father, who speaks with a German accent, follows this stereotype.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Tim & Miles, although Miles has been confirmed to be asexual himself.
• Hippie Teacher: Ms. Starchild, the school guidance counselor and one of the only members of the faculty that still genuinely cares about the students, despite having been there for twenty years and seen the worst of the worst. She still wears tie dye and has dreadlocks.
• Infernal Background: Used occasionally, such as when Mike is trying to teach Harry how to intimidate bullies.
• The Mall: Harry’s mother drops Harry and Mike off at the Diablo Valley Mall when they first start to hang out, which is littered with consumerism and already celebrating Christmas in September.
• Metalhead: Alcatraz High’s freshman metalhead clique includes Jesse, Marcus, and Jeremiah at the beginning of the year. They get A Day in the Limelight in the short “Gatekeeping Poser”, when Jesse gives Marcus’ new friend Cody a hard time for being a fan of Limp Bizkit, only for the other metalheads to discover Jesse’s embarrassing secret love for 1990s pop rock while peeking at his CD collection while he was gone.
• Messy Hair: Miles seems unconcerned with his messy appearance. Tim’s mother tells him to brush his hair, and seems to be the only one who encourages him to do so. Tim’s hair is often messy when he isn’t wearing his trademark hat.
  • Mike’s hair may seem messy, but he’s specifically going for a Robert Smith look.
• Middle School Is Miserable: We especially see this in Mike’s case, but it’s implied that every character is at least somewhat traumatized by Middle School.
  • We get to see this firsthand in the short “Gatekeeping Poser”, when the metalhead Jesse has a flashback to being beaten up and thrown in a trash can on the first day of 6th grade in Middle School for approaching a group of 8th graders while dressed like Kurt Cobain and admitting to liking the Goo Goo Dolls. Mt. Diablo Middle School (the same school Mike went to) even proudly advertised itself as a “trauma factory”.
• No Dead Body Poops: Horrifically averted by Harry, and made worse by the fact that he is to be resurrected.
• Not So Stoic: Mike breaks his façade and has a fit of rage and despair after ratting on the popular kids, believing himself to be screwed for the next four years.
• Of Corpse He's Alive: Billy replaces Harry’s head with a volleyball and draws a face on it, planning to bring him to all his classes for the rest of the day. Even he is amazed when it works, not knowing it is due to Perception Filter.
• Origins Episode: The three-page special “Why Billy Wears Green” features Billy’s Start of Darkness.
• Perception Filter: The Egyptian Gods Sia and Hu create one for Harry, as knowledge of life after death and that resurrection is possible is forbidden knowledge to mortals. Billy’s Lackey has powers like this of his own, and no one really questions why he looks strange and has no name.
• Period Piece: Takes place from 2000-2004, with occasional flashbacks to the 1990s. VHS, Game Boys and baggy jeans are still in use, and there are no smartphones.
• Police Brutality: The campus police do not go easy on Billy or the popular jock Brad when called in to deal with Britney having alcohol on campus. They’re sure to say “Stop resisting!” before their violent acts as justification.
• Polka Dork: Harry’s favorite genre, other than Kraftwerk. And another reason he gets bullied. Billy specifically mocks him for it when they’re in therapy.
• Potty Emergency: At the beginning of Episode 2, Harry had been holding his bladder the whole day because he was afraid to use the public bathroom, and possibly be confronted by Billy again. But it gets to be too much by his English class.
• Potty Failure: Harry’s corpse defecates itself during his English class on the first day. And of course since everyone’s memory and perception has been altered, they remember Harry being alive when it happened.
• Platonic Cave: As Harry is coming to, he awakens in Plato’s Cave, briefly seeing the true nature of reality, before becoming immersed in reality once again and instantly forgetting what he had seen.
• Public Domain Canon Welding: The Grim Reaper’s intern Zinnia is from a Land of Oz Pseudo Canonical Fic the author wrote, and felt safe enough to include because Oz is public domain, making it a copyright-safe crossover.
• Previously on…: There is a gag page at the start of Episode 3 claiming that in the previous episode Miles found out he was pregnant and Tim was the father, and portrayed Mike’s fight with Britney as a Dragon Ball Z parody.
  • Episode 4’s page featured a Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure parody, with Mike dressed as an 80s goth and Anubis as Rufus.
• Real-Place Background: Many of the backgrounds are either actual locations around Martinez, California, or failing at that, a location from the artist’s current home in Florida.
• Sucky School: Alcatraz High is a prison-like campus lined with barbed wire fences, where any teacher who wasn’t outright evil to begin with had their spirit broken a long time ago.
• Swirlie: Billy’s favorite bullying method. However this time he accidentally decapitates Harry in the process, and a plumber has to get Harry’s head out if the drain.
• Tiny Schoolboy: Tim, who is often mistaken for being a small child despite being 14 years old. Harry is only slightly taller.
• Unmanly Secret: Jesse is horrified when the other Metalheads look through his CD collection and find out he listens to The Goo Goo Dolls and Linkin Park, enough to cause a mental breakdown as he remembers traumatic bullying from Middle School.
• Weirdness Censor: Alcatraz High has this as a whole, due to Harry’s problems in the afterlife.
• Weirdness Magnet: Harry attracts all manner of supernatural attention to the school with his infamy in the Spirit Realm.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Billy uses this to frame Harry for having a knife after being caught brandishing it at Harry. He succeeds in muddying the waters enough for Harry to nearly be expelled for it, until the school therapist Ms. Starchild saves him.
  • It is later revealed by Mr. Bok that it’s well-known bullies use this tactic all the time, but teachers and faculty deliberately go along with it because they want to punish people who stand up for themselves to create future obedient workers.