"It's interesting that after 2.7 billion years of evolution, the trait that best secures one's genetic line is 'being delicious'."
Caption, Comic #27
"No Black Plume" is a webcomic started in July 2011 by Matthew "Curly" Jeffers (writer) and Aubrey Zepeda (artist). The comics are very short, usually single-panel, and usually deal with absurd topics and situations, as well as science, literature, and social trends. There is no storyline or recurring characters, and most of the tropes are mocked or played for laughs. The comic is hosted on Blogger and updates Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
In addition to the comic, each update comes with a "Something Cool", where Curly and Aubrey alternate discussing something they enjoy and expounding the reader to check it out.
No Black Plume provides examples of these tropes:
- A-Cup Angst: A woman worries that her breasts are too small and her husband still accepts her, bet she dumps him anyway.
- Alliterative Name: The star of one comic is named Lil' Lolita.
- Are We There Yet?: The "fighting in the back seat" variety, featuring a logician's children arguing by saying "P" and its inverse back and forth note .
- Artistic License – History: The history of "Hangman", depicting an actual hanged person (while in reality, earlier versions lacked the hanged person entirely). Played for laughs.
- Artistic License – Statistics:
Averted. There is a scale for cosplay which is presented in an actual statistical way, with values for appropriateness and awesomeness. According to Word of God, statistics is Curly's favorite branch of mathematics. - Art Shift: For its six-part "Science Will Ruin Your Life" series, the comic switched to a black-and-white, Film Noir-inspired style.
- Black Comedy: A lot of dark humor is present in the comic, including:
- Blatant Lies: Each comic comes with the authors' fake "credentials" that are different every time.
- Comedic Sociopathy: Someone running over pedestrians to pass their driving test is played as humorous.
- Cosplay: Played for laughs: a scale of cosplay is presented with varying levels of awesomeness and appropriateness.
- Depending on the Writer: Curly and Aubrey alternate writing the credentials that accompany each comic. Curly's tend to be shorter and simpler; Aubrey's are longer and more madcap.
- Eagleland: Flavor 2: America is represented as a society where people are very picky with food and some don't receive food at all.
- Elegant Gothic Lolita: Played with: Lil' Lolita is dressed in the traditional Gothic Lolita attire, but doesn't act too elegantly, rejecting a girl's request to find her puppy and telling her to go away.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: A bit of a parodic case. Humanity, as seen in the comic with The Monolith, is reduced from achieving greatness to making snuggies for dogs.
- Headphones Equal Isolation: Double subverted: A guy listening to music promises his friend that he has his full attention, but the friend inadvertently leads him to sing along to "Stairway to Heaven", with the guy going back on his statement and saying that his friend may not have his full attention.
- Hipster: The hipster attitude is applied to relationships, complete with a guy with the stereotypical hipster glasses, beard, mustache and all saying the following:Hipster: I have a new sexual partner. You've probably never heard of her.
- I'm Your Worst Nightmare: Mocked: the line is said word-for-word by a monster, but the fact that he's covered in something brown (maybe chocolate) and the face he makes isn't that threatening makes him look far from what he claims to be.
- Inkblot Test: Mocked. A patient views a Rorschach test and states "I don't get how these are supposed to help."
- Inside a Computer System: Played for laughs: someone claims that he's going to go inside a computer, when in reality he's just fixing its inner workings.
- Ironic Hell: A four-part series of comics on it show a devil giving ironic punishments: for a clown, an eternity at children's birthday parties, for a PBS employee, his death in lava funded by donations from "viewers like you", and so forth.
- Lonely Rich Kid: Sammy the rich kid is implied to be lonely since his status is joked about a lot according to the caption and only a few other people showed up to his birthday party.
- Moral Guardians: Averted and mocked: two people representing science and religion approve of their own explanations for phenomena, when in reality they would object to those explanations from the opposing side.
- Neologism: Played for laughs: The word "fxgndxrq" is made up on the spot. Its definition? "It's a word. Who dares to say otherwise?"
- Noodle Incident: Comics will sometimes appear In Medias Res, between Noodle Incidents.
- Science Is Bad: Averted here (religion accepts scientific beliefs) and played for laughs here (the cloning of dinosaurs and invention of jetpacks leads to armageddon via dinosaurs on jetpacks).
- Played for laughs again in the six-part "Science Will Ruin Your Life" arc, with one of its themes being an extensive knowledge on science causing people to view things more cynically, even more mundane stuff like watching movies.
- Shameless Self-Promoter: Curly. He has openly asked to do guest comics, addressed to "EVERY WEBCOMIC EVER", and introduces the comic by saying, "You should check it out, click on the ads a few times."
- Shout-Out: Tons of 'em. It's the whole point of the Something Cool posts, which shine the spotlight on a specific work or group.
- Steampunk: Played for laughs: a steampunk costume is presented as moderately appropriate, but not very awesome.
- Stylistic Suck: The comics tend to be hastily-drawn to maintain a cartoony appearance. Exaggerated here (an agreement between science and religion that is perhaps even cruder than the regular comics, mainly due to the differing art style) and here (mild NSFW: a crudely-drawn parody of The Twilight Saga with poor grammar).
- Take a Third Option: To a guy attempting to pass his driver's exam, there are three options: passing, failing, or his way, which is running over pedestrians without care.
- Take That!: Against The Twilight Saga, in a comic that mocks the series' romance and presents the characters as bastardized versions of themselves.
- The "Fun" in "Funeral": Comic #25, where a person in a Spider-Man costume gives a funeral service. On the graph, it is presented as inappropriate for the situation, but with the highest potential for awesome.
- The Monolith: Played for laughs. A gray 2001-style Monolith appears, but then something goes wrong, and humanity takes a turn for the worse.
- Touché: Said nearly verbatim in Comic #3 as "Touche, hipsters".
- Underdogs Always Win: Averted and parodied: a sports headline reads "More experienced team defeats underdogs in total accordance with odds".
- Understatement: A caption reads "I wouldn't describe speaking under pressure as my strong point". Said pressure is someone holding the speaker at gunpoint.
- Unicorn: One appears in the form of Princess Celestia, but there is a reason why they haven't been documented: their vaporizing Eye Beams make sure that people will not find out the truth.
