Battle Kreaturez
is a scifi webcomic which follows the lives of a team of professional monster tamers attempting to revive their struggling business.
In the parallel world of Dimentiara, ultra-powerful genetically modified organisms known as Kreatures are created as pets, for utility purposes, and for combat. The latter are called Battle Kreatures, and people licensed to keep them use special amulets to mindlink with their Kreatures so that they can participate in officially sanctioned matches overseen by the Kreature Combat Federation. The sport of Kreature Combat is a lucrative industry in Dimentiara, and professional Kreature Tamers face off against each other for glory, status, honour, prize money and the thrill of competition.
Following his disastrous debut match (and a series of humiliating defeats after that,) novice Kreature Tamer Ben Weiss has run into a wall. Unable to climb out of the bottom-tier on his own, he joins an apprenticeship program to seek tutelage. It's run by the Wyldcard team; a former mid-tier Kreature Combat team who have fallen onto hard times. The Kreature Combat circuit is mercilessly competitive, and together Ben and the Wyldcards forge emotional bonds, rebuild their team, hone their skills and claw their way up the ranks against insurmountable odds to not only reclaim their former status but rise beyond it.
Battle Kreaturez sets itself apart from most other works in the Mon genre by featuring a cast which consists of adults. Rather than being an escapist power fantasy it has a down-to-earth tone and tells a story about normal people who just happen to tame monsters. The characters have to deal with adult problems such as finances, bureaucracy and relationships, and need to build and maintain habitats for their monsters to live in. Battle Kreaturez also plainly depicts violence, language and sexual content which is inappropriate for children.
Battle Kreaturez premiered on September 25th 2015 after spending 16 years in development. In May 29th 2021, a web novel, Battle Kreaturez – Comeback, began serialization, with the aim of the project being to create a revised, more cohesive narrative for the comic moving forward. The webcomic’s original eight chapters, now known as Battle Kreaturez – Legacy, have been relegated to an alternate timeline.
This webcomic contains examples of:
- 20 Minutes into the Future: Has the overall look, though it's kept ambiguous how far in the future the story is actually set.
- After the End: Sort of. Dimentiara's humans are the result of an exodus to another world after it became clear the people of Earth were going to destroy themselves. This is all ancient history though.
- All Animals Are Dogs: Noticeably averted. Kreatures behave like a wide range of different animals, despite most of the ones we meet being pets.
- Always Someone Better: Skyler is this towards Ben.
- Attack Its Weak Point: Actually don't. A kreature's nucleus is the only non-regenerating organ in its body. Attacking it is grounds for elimination.
- Badass Adorable: Plenty of kreatures, but most notably koobine, which is essentially a kickball with a cartoony face and antennae. It's also a deadly predator with powerful psychic abilities.
- Battle Couple: Dennis and Kristy qualify, as lovers and Tamers who are on the same team.
- Bioweapon Beast: Kreatures are created in laboratories rather than captured like Pokémon.
- Birds of a Feather: Dennis and Kristy seem like an Odd Couple at first glance but they share similar interests and have the same sense of humour.
- Blood Knight: Battle Kreatures are designed for combat and enjoy it too, to the point where they become miserable if they go for too long without a fight.
- Blood Sport: Sort of. It is a sport and there is indeed lots of blood, but the lives of kreatures and their tamers are most certainly NOT considered cheap, and endangering them is a serious offense.
- Bond Creatures: Battle Kreatures form mindlinks with their Tamers via special amulets that go both ways, essentially becoming a singular entity during the mindlink's duration.
- Cartoon Creature: Some kreatures are explicitly designed with this trope in mind. Others subvert it.
- Combat Referee: An unnamed boy in glasses and a Kreature Combat Federation uniform shows up as a recurring character in this role.
- Com Mons: Various Rank D and C Kreatures, most notably Foddox, Eteep and Jaljal.
- Creating Life Is Awesome: Society in Dimentiara is built around bioengineering and this isn't portrayed as a bad thing.
- Creepy Camel Spider: Kraaster and its meta-form Kraaspine, which are based on Solifugids embellished with traits from scorpions, wolf spiders and harvestmen.
- Critical Staffing Shortage: The Wyldcard team was forced to lay off most of their support staff prior to the start of the series. With Ben and Riidya's assistance, there are only five people left to take care of over 30 Kreatures.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Skyler's Gogon delivers one to Ben's Jagaldie in the first chapter.
- Death World: Dimentiara qualifies as one, being infested with all sorts of feral superpowered monsters.
- Dumped via Text Message: Wade is dumped by Rita this way sometime before the series starts. Wade isn't happy to see her again when she pops back into his life for a favour.
- Eldritch Abomination: Played with. The exact nature of K-matter(the stuff that gives kreatures their power) is poorly understood, and many kreatures utilize it in ways the defy our understanding of biology - and for that matter, the understanding of people whose job it is to mould DNA like playdough.
- Everyone Is Bi: Unless explicitly confirmed otherwise.
- Extraordinary World, Ordinary Problems: the physical and financial toll that actually raising the Kreatures entails is one of the main focal points of the story.
- Fluffy Tamer: More or less a prerequisite for becoming a kreature tamer.
- Flying Car: Ben drives one, and Ben is motivated to work for the Wyldcard team when he crashes it.
- Fourth-Wall Mail Slot: the Cast Qn A feature serves as this.
- Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: Sortof. Genetic engineering is a boon to Dimentiara's society and almost all kreatures are treated as living things who have the right to exist, and who deserve to be happy when fulfilling their purpose. Buuuuuut there are still one or two rampaging hellbeasts created in wartime running around.
- Guns Are Worthless: Against Kreatures, at least. Kreature Tamers are essential because Kreatures are impervious to conventional weapons thanks to their auras, making this trope the cornerstone of the entire premise.
- Healing Factor: Standard for all kreatures. It's such an integral part of them that battle kreatures don't even register pain in the same sense we do, so much as a form of 'strain'.
- Homeworld Evacuation: Dimentiara's humans are the last of their kind, who escaped the destruction of their homeworld through an interdimensional portal.
- Humiliation Conga: Ben loses four matches in a row after his debut match.
- Instant Humiliation: Just Add YouTube!: Ben's debut match against Skyler Martin is a humiliating Curb-Stomp Battle that gets him memed on relentlessly after it's uploaded to Zaitopia's version of YouTube.
- Kaiju: Many of the higher ranked kreatures are essentially this.
- LEGO Genetics: Battle Kreatures are designed in such a way that their genomes can be easily modified via "genetic patches".
- Lowered Recruiting Standards: Wade is reluctant to hire Ben because he'd rather hire a tamer with more experience, but Dennis and Kristy point out they can't afford to be picky.
- Mon: The comic's genre of choice.
- Mons as Characterization: the Kreatures they happen to own are reflective of each character's personality. Ben, for instance, is The Watson and his Signature Mon is a Jagaldie, a rather plain-looking Rank D ComMon.
- Mon Tech: Tamer Amulets serve a variety of functions, primarily for mind linking with Kreatures, and also as rudimentary Capture Balls for temporary storage and transport.
- Official Couple: Dennis and Kristy, Wade and Amy
- Olympus Mons: Rank A Kreatures are portrayed as such, particularly Zictroe, which is stated to be rare and powerful even compared to other Rank A's.
- Polyamory: the Tassin Twins are in an open relationship with Alex and lust after Ben
- Reinforce Field: Every Kreature has one, which grants them Nigh-Invulnerability to almost everything but each other.
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: VERY averted. All of Dennis' kreatures are reptile or amphibian-based, and many other perfectly sympathetic tamers have at least one reptilian kreature.
- Sex with the Ex: How Rita convinces Wade to adopt Mr. Tickles
- Starter Mon: Slash the Jagaldie is Ben's. However, Dennis, Kristy and Wade have been Kreature Tamers for long enough that their starters have since died of old age.
- Takes One to Kill One: the reason Kreature Taming exists in the first place.
- Uptight Loves Wild: Though Kristy is more professional than uptight, the trope is still applicable to Dennis and Kristy from a narrative perspective.
- What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: Aggressively averted. Tamers love their kreatures no matter what they look like, and they can look pretty damn ghastly!
