Webcomic / Beyond the Canopy

"Maybe all I need is one little push..."

Life for Glenn in the Canopy Woods is a constant struggle between yearning for adventure and getting away from his insufferable grandpa. One day, however, Glenn sees a hyena, an owl and a nasty-looking gentleman heading into the one place he is forbidden to go: the Forest's Navel. After fighting a skeleton army and accidentally acquiring the Remnant (a stick), Glenn gets dragged along into one heck of a wild ride.

Beginning in early 2009 by Jonathan Griffiths (better known as greliz on deviantART), Beyond the Canopy can be found here. Needs way more love on here as well.

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This series contains examples of:

• Action Girl: Glade.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: NO ONE scares the Chef Chickens of the Chez Cluck-Off!
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  Greliz: Property damages! Assaulting the clientele! And worst of all, you're scaring the chickens!!
• Artifact of Death: The Remnant is implied to be this.
• Author Avatar: Greliz.
• Bag of Holding: Greliz's Brown Bag Mask also seems to serve as this. He's seen pulling stuff out of it on multiple occasions.
• Banana in the Tailpipe: More of a chair leg in an exhaust tube, but this is how Glenn beats Pedro in their first encounter.
• Bar Brawl: Glenn against Thistle, before Pedro takes over.
• The Beastmaster: Rawhide with his mutant zombie dogs.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Clyde the frankendog rebels against Rawhide because Elmsly treats him with love and kindness, whereas Rawhide has only threats.
• Big Bad: Baron von Boneburn.
• Big Eater: Stump.
• Butt-Monkey: Glenn. So much.
• Black Cloak: Both Shambles and The Baron.
• Brick Joke: "Remind me to update the skeleton chart."
• Brown Note: Glenn does not know how to use a whistle.
• Bubble Gun: The Caped Crustacean can fire "rubber bubbles" out of his claws. In addition to being used to stop an opponent's charge, they can make for temporary floating platforms.
• Dem Bones: The Baron's standard mooks. They're actually intelligent and have individual personalities.
• Dramatic Thunder: "Lightning is nature's strobe light!"
• Dynamic Entry: Glade makes her entrance in a flashback via a flying kick to a bully's face.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Pedro is genuinely upset when Tiny Tin is trashed.
• Exact Eavesdropping
• Expo Label: Greliz has his name written across the top of the bag he wears over his head. A chicken is seen with a bottle of "It's Wine!"
• Expressive Accessory: Patchverk's crown changes to match his facial expression.
• Expressive Mask: Played straight with Greliz (who combines it with Disembodied Eyebrows), averted with the Caped Crustacean (who turns out to be Greliz in disguise). Also applies to the various skeletal minions of the bad guys.
• Eye Scream: Shambles, courtesy of Glenn.
• The Faceless: Greliz.
• Faking the Dead: Part of a con being run by Greliz.
• Fat and Skinny: Stump and Elmsly.
• Feed It a Bomb: An unnamed Cascadian soldier kills a bloomgem pod monster this way, using a magic fire fish in place of a conventional bomb.
• Flaming Hair: Baron von Boneburn has this going on.
• Forbidden Zone: The Forest's Navel.
• Four-Fingered Hands: Present on everyone. Seems to be a stylistic choice on the part of the author.
• Fun with Acronyms: P-TUNIA: Plant-Type Undead Named In Acronym.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Pedro. It comes from being the created son of an inventor. Now if only he wasn't such a Jerkass about it...
• Gambit Pileup: The big tournament is shaping up to be this.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: The seven sovereigns, consisting of three males (Redwood, Kyrimus, and Patchverk), three females (Dewdrop, Excella, and Aurora), and one gender-neutral character (Glamrock).
• Gravity Master: Corazana, the Heavy Heart.
• Grievous Bottley Harm:
  • How the chickens knock out Glade.
  • Also the preferred method of combat of the minor Sprigg character, Poncy well before his actual name was revealed).
• Groin Attack: When Thistle mocks his grandfather, young Glenn responds by punching him right in the acorns. Years later, Glenn tries the same move against the same guy, only this time Thistle's wearing an armored codpiece.
• Head Pet: Glenn acquires a crab on his head during the match against the Caped Crustacean, and hangs onto it for a bit afterwards.
• Heroic Build: Parodied. Greliz's poster advertising the big fight depicts Glenn with the physique of a comicbook superhero.
  Elmsly: Muscles don't work like that.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Glenn attributes most of his fighting and fleeing skills to the fact that his grandfather spent a lot of time throwing things at him.
• Humanoid Abomination: Shambles. That zipper seam running up his "mask" is his mouth.
• Invulnerable Knuckles: Glade averts it here.
• Jerkass: Pedro
• Jobber: The Caped Crustacean deliberately lost his fight in order to set up Glenn as a competent fighter.
• Lame Comeback: Glenn, frequently. A notable example:
  Pedro: Well, sorry to burst your bag, but I've been busy.
  Glenn: You should get busy STUFFING YOUR MOUTH! Full of STRAW! ...c-cuz he's a scarecrow and...um...nevermind.
• Large and in Charge: Chief Redwood, who is also Glade's father. He's freaking HUGE, especially by Sprigg standards (most of the Spriggs we've seen have been fairly short).
• Large Ham: The Caped Crustacean. As he remarked later, he might have been a Jobber, but he refused to be anything less than ostentatious.
• Mad Doctor: Doctor Kurtis. His first appearance is him pulling surgical equipment out of a hole in his skull, and describing the augmentation surgery he'll be giving-to a mook who's in for a chipped tooth.
• Making a Splash: Shows up in a flashback as a standard attack of Cascadian soldiers. Which may or may not be appropriate, given that Cascadia is basically a big desert.
• Masculine, Feminine, Androgyne Trio: The seven sovereigns consist of three males (Redwood, Kyrimus, and Patchverk), three females (Dewdrop, Excella, and Aurora), and Glamrock, who is visually inspired by Glam Rock performers (who were known for their androgyny) and is referred to with they/them pronouns.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Timid, passive Glenn and tough, aggressive Glade.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Spider-crabs.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Greliz slaps a guy with a fish.
• Mundane Utility: The Remnant — Artifact of Doom, used to fire giant energy blasts, pummel things in Bar Brawls, and make floating glowy text.
• Nightmare Fetishist:
  • Elmsly. He's excited about going to visit a swamp full of poisonous wildlife, and he wishes he could have studied the spider crabs that Glenn fought.
  • Later, he called a pack of mutant zombie dogs adorable. To be fair, some of them were fairly adorable for Frankensteinian zombie dogs.
• Non Sequitur, *Thud*: "but mom, ashley is teaching me how to dance"
• One-Way Visor: P-T.U.N.I.A.
• Organic Technology: Baron Von Boneburn's goons use horribly organic-looking guns that look like they've been cobbled together from spare body parts. Evidently they fire their bullets by breathing/spitting them.
• Perpetual Smiler: The Caped Crustacean, though it's actually a mask.
• Plant Aliens: Not aliens per se, but the Spriggs are implied to be part plant, since they all have some sort of leaf or flower growing from their hair. Young ones are even referred to as sprouts, and they use lots of plant metaphors.
• Plague Doctor: Vogel certainly dresses the part; bird mask, snorkel jacket, and fedora. However, he dresses like that because he's a germaphobe.
• Playing Card Motifs: The Suit Knights.
• Playing with Fire: Firebrand's specialty.
• Punny Name: Honestly, it would be easier to list the characters that didn't have this!
• Raised by Wolves: Elmsly and his sister Parsley were raised by Giant Shrub Sloths.
• Red Pill, Blue Pill: When Glenn first hears that the villains are going to the Forest's Navel, he has a brief flashback of granpa telling him to never go there.
  Grandpa: Glenn, someday you'll realize even simple curiosity can have its consequences. It'd do you a world of good to listen more often.
  [flashback ends]
  Glenn: Listening is overrated.
• Shapeshifter Weapon: The Baron can freely stretch his liquid-y left arm. Demonstrated on Shambles here.
• Shout-Out:
  • In this strip, Glenn grabs a chicken and uses it to glide.
  • Pedro's dad, an inventor who lives in a Clock Tower, has a Medusa Head figurine.
  • According to Elmsly and Stump, skeletons can't grow afros.
  • Greliz's office has figurines of what look like Mother Brain, a creeper, and what might be a Gengar.
  • A couple of the zombie dogs running around look suspiciously like Rowlf and a Herdier.
  • Another one closely resembles Bec Noir.
  • The background here has a poster of Grubba.
  • The author likes tossing in cameos of characters from other webcomics every now and then.
• Slasher Smile: Rawhide gives us a nice one here. Though as to why a skeleton has a tongue, well, it's best to just roll with it.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Averted. The Baron sends an elite tracking team after Glenn immediately after learning he has the Remnant.
• Speech Bubbles: The author uses different styles of speech bubbles for normal people, The Undead, Shambles, and plant creatures.
• Stating the Simple Solution: While fighting Pedro, a living scarecrow, Glenn uses magic to punch him a lot. Glade points out, "This'd be over a lot quicker if he'd just magic up some fire."
  "Glade, stop using logic, it makes for bad pacing."
• Super-Powered Robot Meter Maid: Tiny Tin, Pedro's giant battle robot, was originally designed to be his maid.
• Telescoping Robot: Tiny Tin can fold itself into a sphere small enough to carry in one hand.
• Theme Naming: All the Spriggs have some plant-related name (with the exception of Glenn).
  • A "glen" is a deep valley with water running along it, and usually have lush plantlife. Glenn might be a reference to that (like Glade).
  • Glenn is also a kind of mango, so there's that too, although not as likely as coming from glen.
• There Was a Door: Well, there is a window in the room, it's just not high enough for Chief Redwood. So he makes a new one.
• Those Two Guys: Hoot and Holler. Elmsly and Stump.

• Tsundere: Glade has shades of it from time to time. The cast page even notes that she "can be a bit headstrong and bossy, and may also punch people a lot, but it's just her way of showing she cares!"
  Glenn: A-and I don't remember much after that cuz Glade gave me a concussion. The end.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Jojo can change his size and proportions, though shifting his proportions too much can sometimes backfire on him.
• White Mask of Doom: Shambles, though that's actually his face.

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