Webcomic / Life and Death

First meeting between the two: God: "Steve?";Death: "Yeah, my parents were modern thinkers."

Life And Death is a webcomic by Jonathan Oliver about the personifications of Life (Bobby) & Death (Steve). The comic can be found here here

It is also unrelated to the 1988 medical video game.

The link at the top will now direct you to the comic's Smack Jeeves page the new Drunkduck site.

Tropes present in this work:

• Anthropomorphic Personification: Almost every major character.
• Art Evolution: At first. It gets better in the first couple hundred strips, but then the improvement in the quality stops. Which is really too bad.
• Asshole Victim: here
  • Steve himself qualifies.
• Batter Up!: One of Steve's favourite weapons is a cricket bat.
• Big Brother Instinct: He has a fair tolerance for people badmouthing him (with exception to "dress" cracks and related crimes), but one sincerely ill word of his sister and he will be at your fraggin' throat, as seen here. Yikes.
• Black Comedy: It's Steve. What did you expect?
• Box-and-Stick Trap: The Boss guesses that Chaos was able to find Steve in the vast Sands of Time using a six pack of beer and a crate (actually it was twenty six-packs laced with enough drugs to put an elephant to sleep).
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Happens occasionally.
• Can't Argue with Elves: Torn to shreds by the Boss in the most deadpan manner possible. (But not to Screw You, Elves! levels)
• Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: Chaos' shirt is never the same color from panel to panel.
• Characterization Marches On: In comic #313, Steve takes a very blase attitude toward magic. Fast forward a few hundred comics, and you get Steve's fleshed-out backstory, and some very compelling reasons for why he doesn't like using magic.
  • The type of magic he's doing in this strip is way less dangerous than the type of magic that he's scared of. As of comic #1092, he's summoning a black hole on the moon, and he's justifiably scared...
• Comedic Sociopathy: Steve takes his job as Death very seriously and a lot of the people he takes die in some pretty weird ways. However, he doesn't usually go out of his way to be a jerk unless his target is stupid, undead, or the Phoenix bird.
• Cool Mask: Bobby's mask. Arguably Steve's hood as well.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Steve.
• Day in the Life: A lot of strips focus on Sally, who's filling in as Death while Steve is away, going about the normal routine of being a reaper. Both Steve and Sally take a very...active role in making sure the person that's supposed to die does so.
• Evil Tastes Good: Apparently the living soul of a mage tastes like strawberries

• Fantastic Racism: The elves REALLY don't like the dark elves, Steve and his family included.
• Flaming Hair: Chaos.
• Four-Fingered Hands: Most of the characters have four fingers, except for Chaos who only has three. He is, of course, totally aware of that.
  (after Fate asks Chaos not to interfere with his recording.)
  Chaos: ... oh, alright. Forgive me if I don't "pinky swear" it, but I don't seem to have any.
• Gargle Blaster: This comic. And Steve still drinks it. His begging the snowman to do the same on the basis of him not wanting to be the only one in the emergency room is not far-fetched.
• Giant Enemy Crab: First seen here then it got worse.
• Godly Sidestep: When Death asks which religion is right, God whispers in his ear. Death is surprised, meaning it's something unusual.
• The Grim Reaper: The entire premise.
• Hurricane of Puns: Bobby and Steve have an ongoing contest based on this, to the point where it's become infectious; Lucy, the personification of Time, has taken to riding a magic carpet (Time Flies).
  • The "office infirmary" is in Lucies office too (time heals all wounds).
  • There are also stand-alone one-panel comics devoted entirely to these. Highlights include:
    • Bobby's custom made spice which he calls Variety.
  • Lampshaded frequently◊
• Kill It with Fire: Generally not Steve's first choice, but can and will if necessary. Or if it would be funny.
• King of All Cosmos: The Boss, duh.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Participated in the Crossover Wars as well as several Halloween Cameo Capers.
• No Mouth: When obscured, even by just shadows, Steve's mouth, not to mention the rest of his face, literally ceases to exist in any physical dimension. However, the spell that facilitates this does so by way of "make it so nobody but me can touch my face" so he can still speak, eat, etc.
• Noodle Incident: Apparently, Chaos isn't very trustworthy in the Boss' eyes due to "that time in Thailand."
• Once Killed a Man with a Noodle Implement: Azrael once killed Cthulhu with a gopher and a damp sponge.
• Out of Focus: Bobby. For a comic called Life and Death, the Personification of Life is hardly in it.
• Rummage Fail: Weaponized, of all things, by Sally here.
• Running Gag: Several. The "wizard hat" and the pink elephants are used fairly frequently (usually together), Steve's inability to catch the phoenix, and Chaos' obsession with the platypus, or the fact that his shirt changes in every panel.
• Shout-Out: Jenny Everywhere makes a cameo during the Crossover Wars.
• Some Call Me "Tim": Sally's full name is Salyana Elathna'fury
  • Steve's brother is N'mosada but everyone calls him Nemo.
• Stable Time Loop: At first it seems there is one with Future Steve. But then it turns out that this is not how things were supposed to turn out, so Fate created the loop and every iteration nudged Steve towards the right decision a bit more. The results can be seen in the comic.
• This Means War!: Chaos pulls a very chilling one, a stark contrast compared to his usual carefree self.
• Trickster Mentor: Chaos
• You Are Already Dead: Steve pulls this on Shadowheart. Being death makes it fairly easy to do.
• You Keep Using That Word: Mentioned by Steve here, where he's called a wizard quite often by everyone on the goblin pirate ship.
• Zombie Apocalypse: As part of the 2008 Halloween Cameo Caper

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