Webcomic / Jix

Jix is a sci-fi webcomic by Micah McNully about a blue-furred alien princess with multiple personalities named Jix (and Remula, and Lamerix, and "The Ambis") who lives with a human family consisting of Lauren Akana, her husband Paul, and daughter Alice, in New York. Joining them are Jix's brother Romulus (later revealed to actually be her cousin Caligos), and two droids Dyonus and Dyona. Can be found on The Duck or ComicFury.

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Provides examples of:

• Affably Evil: Remula's father is this, believe it or not. He may be an intergalactic tyrant that is more than willing to take revenge on anyone who crosses his path. However, as shown in this strip, he's a surprisingly reasonable individual, is polite, and it's worth mentioning that he only tried to kill Remulus because he believed that Remulus had kidnapped his daughter. Yep, he deeply cares for his family.
• Alien Among Us
• Alien Animals: Foxes share a common ancestor with Ambis and another alien race known as Amblians, thanks to the meddling of the Tarians.
• Almighty Janitor: As shown in the Deliverance Arc, Paul is more than capable of bullying the whole hospital to do what he wants, despite being just a paramedic.
• Alternate Universe: The Colony and Queen arcs take place in an alternate universe where the Ambis conquered earth.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Blue, red, green, black, white, and purple Ambis have all been spotted.
• Amnesiac Dissonance: How Jix emerged.
• Art Evolution: Pretty impressive, especially since Jix got a mouth.
• Attractive Bent Species: Evidently both Jix and Lauren under the effects of the species-swap ray.
• The Bad Guy Wins:
  • Kelelder usurps control of the Ambis Empire, and hands it over to his descendant, Remula's father. Which actually works out fine so far as she and Jix are concerned.
  • While her villainy is debatable, in the final arc Remula does conquer the Earth, rendering humanity subjects of the Empire.
• Body Backup Drive: Dyonus and Dyona have pulled that trick due to being A.I.s, though Dyona had to share Dyonus's body for a while.
• Bounty Hunter: Pratos, also known as Aranis. Mericax is another one.

• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Not uncommon for characters to joke about Micah.
• Bring My Brown Pants: Multiple times. Once Remula had to take a bath after Jix pissed herself.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Slowly and downplayed to the point of near-aversion, because despite the character-driven arcs, mild world building and some of the most surreal aspects of the webcomic being explained (or at least Hand Waved), the webcomic is still pretty comedic and slice-of-life style, and the Fourth Wall Breaking never stops.
  • However, how wacky or "serious" the story can get varies from arc to arc. The prequel "Prelude to Jix" is mildly but visibly more somber and character-driven than most other arcs, with the author even commenting that this particular arc was less funny than most of the other arcs. Also, "The Thief Planet" arc, as noted by the author, is notable darker than most other arcs, but still pretty much comic.
• Complete Immortality: The Planet Thief and everyone he's given immortality to: Aragara, Maricax, Heleatra...
• Contagious A.I.: When Aranis tried to get rid of Dyonus he retaliated by infecting her armor and the house's computers.
• Crossover: Frequently with Micah's other comic Dragon City
  • And once with ''Henchman no. 9'', one of his other comics.
• Cyborg: In Heleatra's introductory arc "Ghost in the Shell" she received a prosthetic body due to a degenerative genetic disorder. Until Remula made a deal with Kelelder to get her a Healing Factor.
• Data Pad: Jix once compared the iPad to her own species' tablet computers.
• Deadly Game: In "The Gauntlet" Lauren is kidnapped by an alien game show where she is hunted and has to get off-world.
• The Dog Is an Alien: Jix and other Ambis are often mistaken for such.
• The Dragon: Kelelder's daughter Aragara essentially filled that role for him.
• The Empire: The Ambis Empire.
• Fourth-Wall Mail Slot: Ask Remula
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Yet another one of Lamerix's inventions.
• Funetik Aksent: Deadratic, Ambis, Heleatra and Maricax speak Ambis common with an accent. Which is apparently from learning the language the old-fashioned way rather than downloading it since Atra speaks English normally.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Lamerix, and Remula in her spare time.
• Gender Bender: One of Lamerix's inventions.
• God-Emperor: Kelelder the Planet Thief has a legion of followers who believe him to be a god, and he admits that for all he knows he is one. And he does briefly become the Ambis Emperor, apparently for the second time, but he reveals that his goal was simply to put a descendant of his on the throne and hands it to Aratrix.
• Groin Attack: "Amblian codpieces are the weakest part of the armor."
• Holographic Disguise: The droids have them integrated and the Ambis have watches that can project 'em.
• Hulking Out: Ambis can usually turn into a "feral mode" at will, size depends on age and skill.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Used to explain where Ambis without clothes hide their guns. And where their extra mass in feral mode comes from.
• Immortal Life Is Cheap: Kelelder's head was blown up at the start of his first battle with Jix, it grew back and he started fighting again, and he has been teleported into the sun twice. Heleatra once demonstrated her immortality by stabbing herself in the stomach, and has been filled with tranquilizer darts, vivisected, and shot in the head with a raygun.
• Interface Spoiler: The First, Previous, Next, and Latest comic buttons have images of Jix's four personalities, which serves to spoil the reveal during the arc that introduces the fourth, The Ambis.
• Interspecies Romance: Between Jix and Wayne, albeit mediated by Lamerix's species exchanger.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Paul is often show as a cynical, nearly humorless young adult that almost never leaves the Sarcasm Mode and serves as the "unidimensional" Deadpan Snarker of the strips. However, according to the author, Paul is very kind and caring to Lauren, even if he doesn't show this often. This strip confirms his status. Later, in the "'Kaijou''" arc, after one of Lametrix's inventions accidentally released a giant monster in New York and nearly killed Lauren and their unborn daughter, Paul was none too pleased with the results and made Lauren promise to gain more control over Jix's personalities, citing that their recent actions are getting way too reckless for their safety.
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Most ranged weapons are slugthrowers. The author claims he doesn't like rayguns.
• Laser Blade: "I can't help but think we're ripping something off."
• Let's Get Dangerous!: In this strip, everyone does this.
• Living Distant Ancestor: Kelelder the Planet Thief is a distant ancestor of Remula's who unwillingly became immortal thanks to an accident with the Collector. And it turns out his secret plan is actually to restore his House to the Imperial throne.
• Low Culture, High Tech: The Ambis got most of their advanced tech from another species who tried to invade their homeworld centuries ago.
• Mad Scientist: Lamerix, she builds stuff like gender or species swap rays and interdimensional teleporters out of boredom.
• Made of Iron: Maricax survived being cooked in his own armor with microwaves and being spaced with ruptured armor. And this was before Kelelder made him immortal.
• The Men in Black
• Multicultural Alien Planet: The Ambis have multiple languages and cultures, but Remula's is the dominant one, to the extent that her native language is called "Ambis Common".
• Multiple Personalities: Jix/Remula/Lamerix/The Ambis
  • Enemy Without: Remula attempted to give herself her own body with a cloning machine, unfortunately it just copied them, both of them.
  • Split-Personality Merge: Jix and Remula gave it a try early on, didn't work out. In a much later arc an Ambis therapist helps Jix merge with Lamerix and Remula with the Ambis, after a time traveler warns him that trying to make them all merge will just lead to Lamerix taking over full-time.
• Negate Your Own Sacrifice: At the end of "Kelelder's Revenge" Dynonus volunteers to stay behind on the ship trapping Earth in a pocket universe and hold down the self-destruct button, then mentions he has a backup body under the bed.
• Neural Implanting: Ambis have language downloaders to explain how they can learn English so easily, and how Lauren learned Ambis common.
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: Up until around comic 790 all female Ambis had six small nipples, but then Lamerix used a breast enhancer to give herself/Jix and Atra human-style breasts because she thought they seemed useful (and the artist wanted to make them look more feminine).
• One-Winged Angel: The Ambis species is able to turn into a "fierce", monstrous form when they want to go into battle. Jix has done this since the beginning of the strip, and as shown in this strip, the Fierce Form greatly varies from Ambis to Ambis, from a slightly hideous aspect to a hulking brute. It's also later explained that how large (and monstrous) an Ambis Fierce form can get depends on the latter's age and experience in the use of it.
  • Clipped-Wing Angel: Atra tried to use her Fierce Form on some US Agents, but they quickly responded by exploiting an obvious weakness in this form: Her larger form is an easy target, and they shoot her down with tranquilizer darts.
• Perception Filter: In "The Fugitive" arc, an Ambis grifter hiding out on Earth uses one to pose as a dog, but Jix sees through it because she's insane and Atra didn't know what a dog was so she saw some Rosimban rat-thing.
• Planet Terra: The Ambis name for Earth is Sol III, or at least that's what it's translated as.
• Rapid Aging: Aragara was subjected to that by her father, she's only a year or two old and already taller than her mother and cousins.
• Robosexual: Dyonus has a rather one-sided crush on Jix.
  • Indeed, Dyonus's affections towards Jix are so strong that even when gender swapped, Dyonus disregards this completely (it actually makes sense if you remember that the Ambis species doesn't have any strong sexual dimorphism and, as noted by Dyonus, he is actually genderless, being a robot).
• Running Gag: Lauren and Paul being mistaken for Asians (they're Hawaiian).
• Samus Is a Girl: Jix initially assumed she was male, having no memories of Ambis anatomy. And Micah admits that he hadn't decided to make her a girl until Caligos' introduction. Jix's fourth personality and Pratos also count, having their genders obscured by their armor.
• Saving Christmas: The "Substitute Santa" arc where Caligos accidentally makes Santa throw his back out and has to fill in.
• Scars are Forever: The scars from various injuries Jix, Caligos, and Aranis have suffered persist. Justified as Ambis consider scars "badges of honor."
• Shout-Out: To several different sci-fi series, mostly Portal and Team Fortress 2.
  • When Jix blows up Kelelder's head she starts to say "They'll have to glue you back together, in he-", but then his head grows back, "Do you have any idea how much that stings?"
  Jix: "I got news from the Ambis that someone or something has targeted earth for destruction".
  Lauren: "They aren't building a hyperspace bypass, are they?"
  • "And we will call it... This land!
  • Dyonus watching Red Dwarf.
  • A small contest to figure out what three things were being referenced here
  • "Area 51." "Area 51." "It's only a model."
  • Paul and Caligos are bronies, and so are Dyonus, Wayne, and Alice.
  • Characters are commonly depicted watching Die Hard.
  • One Christmas arc has Caligos confront an "intruder" on the roof, scaring him into falling off of it. Santa denies that it's exactly like The Santa Clause, because he survived the fall.
• Talking to Themself
• There Can Be Only One: Jix actually quotes Highlander when killing her clone, the original Remula doesn't find it very amusing.

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