"It's about heroes and villains in their everyday lives. Really, that's it."
— Randy Milholland
Super Stupor
is a Webcomic written and drawn by Randy Milholland of Something*Positive fame. It's about super heroes and villains. They don't stop or cause crime, at least during their screen time. This is a Soap Opera, not an adventure.
The story is widely spread because there are numerous characters. At some point in the past there was a Cosmic Cataclysm, which merged two realities and started a few of the storylines. Some of their stories are serious, some not. It's dark enough to be interesting and funny enough to avoid Narm. In other words, it's pretty damn good.
In addition to the mostly stand-alone strips, Milholland has also produced four print-only story comics detailing the lives and adventures of the characters further.
It ran from 2008 to 2012 with sporadic updates (explained in a 2018 comic as being caused by a time-controlling super jumping everyone forward 6 years out of dismay at the 2012 presidential election).
There are comics in the physical editions that were never posted to the web.
Super Stupor contains examples of:
- Achilles' Heel: Parodied, of course.Grim Reaper: Your enemy learned your one true weakness: Blowing up.
- Bad Santa: The Holiday Special Rapist, who escaped because he was put on chimney-cleaning duty.
- Blessed with Suck: Magic Eye's power of extracting truth from people only works when his penis is inside them, so he can't actually use it except in dire emergencies or if the victim consents. ("You'd be unpleasantly surprised who does.")
- M.E. found out that he had this power in what his partner dubs "the best divorce story ever!"
- Boobs-and-Butt Pose: Parodied by a superheroine with "Green's Disease", which apparently causes all your joints to be ball joints and makes you spasm into poses. ("That pose offends me both as a woman and as someone who knows how spines work.")
- Bullying a Dragon: Anarch thinks the best way to get Cosmic Crusader, one of the most powerful entities in the galaxy, to join him is by killing his girlfriend with a trap powered by his own super powers, thus destroying his worldview. Punchline points out that a Cosmic Crusader that has had his worldview shattered and has forsaken his vow against killing would likely result in him tearing out Anarch's nervous system.
- Cosmic Retcon
- Time Peace's main ability. He primarily uses it to Ret-Gone people.
- Also, allusions to the Cosmic Cataclysm, an event that destroyed multiple alternate universes and rewrote reality in others. For example, Rumble Bee is a survivor originally from a version of Earth that got destroyed, so reality "rewrote" her as having been from this one, complete with new family. She can remember her old life too, though.
- Crazy-Prepared: Punchline, demonstrated in a strip, is shown to have puppets of another superhero, that he can produce (from Hammerspace, probably) and manipulate with his feet just in case his hands are bound.
- Dating Catwoman: The Hero Formerly Known as Good Ol' Boy and Lady Diamondback.
- Deadpan Snarker: Punchline
- Death Is Cheap: The scene where the Grim Reaper complains that Super Heroes come back from the dead so often that collecting them doesn't even count towards his quota is the page image.
- Deconstructor Fleet: Of superhero tropes.
- Deus Sex Machina: Magic Eye can compel anyone to tell the truth... but his penis has to be inside them or it doesn't work.
- Did Not Think This Through: The Anarch's plan to break the Cosmic Crusader and show the futility of his moral code — including his vow to never kill — hinges off essentially tricking the Crusader into activating a machine that will kill his girlfriend in front of him, and believing that this would lead the Crusader to be Driven to Suicide. Except the Anarch is standing right there next to him. As Punchline points out, the most likely result of this would be the Anarch's own grisly death shortly afterwards.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Jewish Rumble Bee has the bad luck to go on a date with someone who claims the Cosmic Retcon that killed her mentor, a "documented event seen by billions," is a Zionist conspiracy.
- The Dog Bites Back
- An underpaid henchman "forgets" to tell the Big Bad that the Kid Hero Sola Flare is also capable of channeling the full power of the sun at will.
- At one point the intended victim trounces the villain and continues to make his life a living hell after he gets off with no jail time.
- An underpaid henchman "forgets" to tell the Big Bad that the Kid Hero Sola Flare is also capable of channeling the full power of the sun at will
- Embarrassing Superpower: One of the supers can make people tell the truth... if his penis is inside them. He is very much aware of the implications of using it on people who don't want to talk and has resolved not to even think about using it unless there's an apocalypse imminent. The story of how he discovered he had this power is deemed the "best divorce story ever!" by another super.
- Emo Teen: Time Peace/Clockstopper/Clockpuncher.
- Evil Lawyer Joke: Why do villains have better coverage by Insurers? Because "like protects like".
- Evil Pays Better: Evil has better insurance.
- Expressive Mask: The eyeslits on all the masks shift position with the supers' eyes and eyelids.
- Exotic Equipment: While Punchline is (or at least once was) a normal human, apparently his penis is 'barbed with justice!' ("Which it turns out they don't make an ointment for.") Note that his costume is sheer enough that this was visible when he got an Raging Stiffie while listening to Anarch's plot against Cosmic Crusader ("Well, it's not every day I see a villain commit suicide by hero.")
- Fights Like a Normal: Punchline, who reportedly has some kind of superpower, but mostly fights crime with toy-based gadgets.
- Friendly Enemy: Boy-Toy and Deathmaw. "Remember when we used to just beat the shit out of each other? I miss those days."
- Fun T-Shirt: A Godzilla Expy is wearing a huge shirt with a "I'm with trampled" text and several arrows pointing down.
- Genre Deconstruction: There's several comics that expose the
Fridge Horror that some of the sillier moments of comic history could mean for anyone actually living through them. There's the effect of continuity reboots, with a new super hero taking the place of the old one on a different Earth. And then there is the jab at the thinly-disguised advertisements were the heroes defeated the villains with real life products aimed at kids, such as a sugar-and-fat filled snack.Boy-Toy: How many times are we gonna do this? You have an obsessive eating disorder cuz of those things. Yet you constantly put me in a position where I have to use them to stop you. It's stupid. And we both know about your diabetes which you AREN'T treating like you promised. Do you think I like having a hand in slowly killing you? - Genre Savvy: Pretty much everyone. Example.
- Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Time Peace.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Mr. Mental shared nudes of his girlfriend, then blames her for giving them to him to start with. Naturally, she retaliates by sending pictures he'd sent to her along to the press.
- Human Popsicle: Killhuna, when his supervillain boss decides to use him as a test subject for his new freeze ray.
- Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: A pair of minions are hired by a Tyrannosaurus-esque supervillain so he can hunt "the most dangerous game", which the minions think is gonna be this trope and he plans to hunt them, but it turns out the most dangerous game is actually "Rocket Tigers" and they are just there to help him with that, since his tiny arms are too small to hold all his guns.
- Intimidating Revenue Service: They can even bully superheroes into working for them.
- Just a Kid: Lampshade Hanging with Sola Flare. "It's like the younger and cuter they are, the worse they're gonna kick your ass."
- Knight in Sour Armor: Punchline. Despite his inappropriate sense of humor and snarky attitude, he is much more serious about his duties to society as a superhero than most "respectable" heroes. Perhaps best showcased when it is revealed he single-handedly watched the city during Thanksgiving Break (while the superheroes who only have powers on that day are going through a breakup).
- Little Miss Badass: In the 9th of April, 2008 comic, it's Lampshaded with Sola Flare, where a henchman says:Heroes don't send kids to do the job unless they're little tanks
and most kids are, for some unknown reason, ten times stronger than adult heroes
It's like the younger and cuter they are, the worse they're gonna kick your ass
If that was a four year old playing with a kitten out there, I'd offer her your dead body just to be on the safe side - Loony Fan: Here, Killhuna is a big enough fan of Terry Pratchett that, when the latter develops Alzheimer's, he decides to hold the world hostage with a doomsday device to force all scientists to find a cure for it.
- Minion with an F in Evil: This minion, who, when to told to "take care" of a captured hero, offers him drinks and a massage.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: The villain referenced in Kid Hero? His minion blatantly omitted Sola Flare's ability to channel the power of the sun at will.M.Y.N.A.H.: If you want the job done right, pay your minions better than minimum wage.
- Parody Product Placement: Deathmaw's Weaksauce Weakness is delicious fruit pies... so much so that he's developed diabetes from eating too many of them.
- Power Perversion Potential: Inverted and deconstructed - Magic Eye can force anyone to tell him the truth... but it only works while his penis is inside the target/victim. He's deeply disturbed since to use that power on an uncooperative target would require him to rape them, but also due to the number of people who would willingly submit to it. Also, his marriage broke up because he discovered this power accidentally.
- Puff of Logic: Apparently several people have hit on the idea of defeating Arch-Angela this way. It works about as well as "several people" should imply.
- Sewer Gator: The comic has Shockodile, a four-ton electricity-generating crocodile that lives in the sewers (but resents the implication that he eats children to live. He does, just not to live). Oh, and he's a hero.
- Sex Magic and Super Sex Organs: Magic Eye has the power to force anyone to tell the truth while his penis is inside them. He very much hates this power, since using it is equivalent to rape (and it would take a cataclysmic event for him to consider using it), and the way he found out about it is considered "the best divorce story ever".
- Shout-Out: To xkcd... XXXKCD.
- Signed Up for the Dental: The reason why former hero Eye-Score turned villain. Super-heroes are often uninsurable because of their risky lifestyle but villains are offered a discount since their activities help encourage the business of the insurance company. Well, that and "Like watches over like".
- Sophisticated as Hell: Archangela
- Take That!
- "Make it fast. I've got a full day of quoting from TVTropes instead of forming my own opinions".
- Furthermore, the rest of that particular strip is a thinly veiled snipe at Joe Quesada's rationale for breaking up Spider-Man's marriage.
- "Make it fast. I've got a full day of quoting from TVTropes instead of forming my own opinions
- Too Many Belts: Referenced in the Boobs-and-Butt Pose strip, as Killhuna initially thinks she has Liefeld Syndrome.Lady Diamondback: No, L.S. shrinks your head and feet and causes sexual arousal around pouches.
- Unhand Them, Villain!: "And nothing unhands you like a garbage disposal." Unusually, it's the hero's girlfriend doing it to the villain.
- Unable to Cry: Short Fuse. Not because she doesn't want to, but because her latest doomsday device is triggered by saline.
- Villains Out Shopping: We rarely cut to the villains (or the heroes) in the process of actual villainy. And when they are actually battling, the battle is often a Funny Background Event while they're discussing something else entirely.
- Villains Want Mercy: When a villain tries to pull Targeted to Hurt the Hero on his nemesis' girlfriend, she breaks him down into doing this.Maven: I don't even wanna beat him anymore! Don't wanna be a villain anymore! I just wanna go home! And maybe wear pants without feces in them!
- What the Hell, Hero?
- From the Grim Reaper, no less, when, after being killed in a showdown that left thousands dead, a hero thinks that the biggest tragedy is that now he'll never solve his dad's dying riddle.
- Also seen in Super Stupor #2, the print comic, when Punchline discovers that the reason his teammate, the Hero Formerly Known as Good Ol' Boy, failed to save a daycare center from being blown up was because he was having sex in a sleazy motel with his arch-enemy, Lady Diamondback.
- From the Grim Reaper, no less
- Wholesome Crossdresser: Rumble Bee's brother is the local superhero of Bay City, Queen Bee. Apparently the move that allows him to wear such skimpy outfits and not get found out is the "Justice Tuck".
- Weaksauce Weakness: Deathmaw is an unstoppable killing machine, but will do anything for his favourite comfort food.
- Will Not Be a Victim: One of the best-known strips involves a hero's girlfriend beating up and unhanding a villain who was attempting to kill her.
- Years Too Early: Lady Diamondback is dismissive when the Snow Owl invades her lair:"I'm a little out of your league, kid. Find a nice starter villain. Y'know, drug dealers, crooked cops.
