The Challenges of Zona
is a webcomic by J.E. Draft, begun in 2005. It is a sequel to an earlier work, The Three Challenges of Zona. Despite the title, the viewpoint character is a second-rate busker called Mentl, who finds a Great Big Book of Everything and is transported to a fantasy world where he discovers both the love of the title character and the ability to cast magic through his music. He then becomes convinced that Zona only loves him because he inadvertantly enchanted her, goes back home, and Zona is left to carry on alone while Mentl, at least for a time, gets drunk and wallows in misery back on earth. After which the viewpoint splits into many.
This webcomic contains examples of:
- Alas, Poor Villain: Maldik. In the most recent chapters, it's revealed that his parents, King Kendrik and moreso Queen Yanora, made his life hell, by Yanora's own admission "for no good reason," completely destroying his self-esteem, hopes, dreams, and joys, making him grow into a bitter ball of impotent rage, and now he's so far into his Gambit Roulette allying with the Urtts and the Church of Thrasu that even with Yanora's help, he can't figure out a way to extricate himself from the shitstorm that's coming.
- Aristocrats Are Evil: Averted with the Erogenians, with the exception, so far, of Jerk Jock Pontagar, and then his father. The Kivalians are a more mixed bag. Prince Maldik is The Caligula, Queen Yanora is a
Magnificent Bitch, but Count Tethik is definitely one of the good guys. King Gudik also turns out a very decent and reasonable fellow once he appears in the story at long last. - Battle Couple:
- Zona and Mentl, once the latter learns to control his powers sufficiently (which is pretty quick). They even have a classic "back to back fighting" shot in the very first battle they fight in together.
- Ipola and Zonn in their youth.
- Badass Biker: Mentl inherits a motorcycle from his father, who in his younger days was also this. Then, he is shown to expertly drive it while he and Zona are battling a whole posse of demonic mercenaries, also riding bikes, in one of the more pitched battles in the comic. Also Zona, upon seeing a biker for the first time, informs Mentl of her desire to have a bike of her own, and then tries to steal one from the vanquished enemies — but fails because it promptly dissipates.
- Berserk Button: Don't touch Ginsha. Just don't. No, really. Well, we warned him...
- Trying to bully Mentl or endangering Zona in front of him is also a bad idea.
- After Mentl beats a hasty exit to Earth, Zona takes it very badly whenever someone implies she was enchanted. She promptly punches her former lover Rannik for comparing her state to that of a drunkard parted from liquor.
- Best Her to Bed Her: Yatta-Ta thinks Zona is this. Boy is he wrong! Thankfully, he gets better.
- Big Eater: Zona. First she wows Mentl with her habits when they're in Normos, and then surprises a waitress in Burbank with a huge order.
- Black Speech: The language of Urtts (also spoken in some measure by certain heroes, like Tula) is as unpleasant sounding as one might expect. Whenever it is used (or Urtt characters are shown speaking presumably in their own language, though the actual text is in English for the reader's convenience), the speech balloons get jagged edges and a particular off-green colour to further the impression of nastiness.
- Break the Cutie: Done inadvertantly to Ginsha by Mentl. Of course, he did so in self-defense, and the "Cutie" only applied to her in a very loose sense of the word.
- Bullying a Dragon: Even A Gentle Giant like Keltan has his limits.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Just so the reader is always sure of who is the POV character at a given point in time, Mentl's narration is coloured yellow (as text or speech balloon's background), Zona's is light blue, Tula's is green. Even certain incidental narrators like Keltan sometimes get their own colour (in his case, pink).
- Disappeared Dad:
- Zonn for Zona, gone since she was two years old. All the while, as she explains later, she was brought up on the stories of his feats (and later was expected to be as strong), despite resenting him for leaving the family. Since she could not have known his motives - nor his present occupations - their first meeting did start off the wrong foot before she started listening...
- It's becoming a little bit of a pattern for Zonn, it seems, because halfway through the comic it was revealed that he has a son from an affair he's had some time before falling in love with Ipola, and the said son also has a dim view of his biological sire. Whether they ever meet — or even reconcile — is still unclear.
- Dying Declaration of Love:
- When Yatta-ta is shot by Urtt archers, he confesses — in what he thinks are his final moments — the love for Zona, who was fighting nearby. It is turned embarrassing for both parties when a priest promptly saves the man's life, but Zona is able to defuse the situation with some words that are both apposite and kind.
- Bonus points for a declaration of love already from afterlife — when Boric comes to Tula as the latter is traversing Otherwhen. He says goodbye and his last words are the confession of his feelings.
- Expy: Brother Laemul very much resembles Cadfael from the eponymous series of books, being an elderly herbalist monk with an "interesting" past, a distaste for authority and a great sense of humour, and an expert in many things you would not expect of a stereotypical friar.
- Fanservice: My Gods, the fan service, both male and female.
- Fish out of Water: Mentl, although he's adapted fairly quickly and fairly well. Tula and Zona did have some hiccups when visiting Earth in search for Mentl, but they also did fine. Helped by the fact that somehow, everyone speaks English so there is no real language barrier.
- Functional Magic: Theurgy, Mentl's music magic (which is mostly unique to him, although Tula does use it once with the help of the Book) and Item Magic. Hinted that Vito uses Rules Magic but we haven't actually seen him in operation.
- Genius Ditz: Yatta-ta, while a buffoon initially has proven to be an excellent swordsman.
- Gentle Giant: Keltan and Liri, especially Liri when it comes to the "gentle" part of the trope.
- God of Evil: The god of fire, Shuach, who is worshipped by the Urtts, preaches that Love Is a Weakness and that the strong must rule the weak without mercy, encourages misogyny, rape and Human Sacrifice, and teaches that he is the sole true god (or at least the only one worthy of worship). He has lately taken to hiring demonic mercenaries to do his dirty work, especially on Earth.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Ginsha is half Urtt. Many members of the Snake Clan have varying degrees of Urtt blood.
- Heroic BSoD:
- Mentl has one after he becomes convinced that Zona only loves him because he inadvertently enchanted her.
- Zona as well following that event.
- Mentl again when the heroes find that Zero has been murdered.
- Hopeless Suitor:
- Zona has many, many of these, of which Barry the biker from the "Wooden Nickel" is probably the most hilarious. As one of her former lovers, Rannik, puts it: "Any man would be a fool not to fall in love with you, Zona".
- Maldik is this for Tula, who said that he's had "the creepiest crush" on her in their later teenage years, when she was staying to study in Normos. However, she explicitly states that if such was the price of stopping the alliance from fracture and preventing war, she would go on to sleep with him, or even marry him. When she comes to Kivalia and has an honest talk trying to pump him for information and possibly to make him reconsider his course, she is deliberately wearing revealing attire to influence him.
- In Love with Your Carnage: A rare non-villainous example: right at the start of the story, Zona saves Mentl from a few Urtts that were about to barbecue him, and he comments about being enthralled by seeing her skewer the lizards left and right, which is followed very soon by attraction. He himself lampshades this as being creepy and uncharacteristic for him.
- Instant Expert:
- When Zona asks Mentl what her special kind of intelligence is, in his opinion, he says it's the ability to do anything she has seen someone else do, very quickly. This is demonstrated later (or earlier, since that conversation is taking place in the future) when Zona is shown to skilfully drive motor vehicles and use firearms after briefly seeing Mentl do it.
- Tula is also this in a sense - she can drive cars just as well (though maybe having a spirit passenger in Vito helped) but it also took her all of an hour to figure out how to operate an iPhone perfectly, and she was shown to learn Earth's languages needed to decipher the Book with astounding speed.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Why Mentl goes back to our world.
- Large Ham: Yatta-ta comes across as a medieval fantasy cross between Errol Flynn and BRIAN BLESSED.
- Made of Iron: Zona is seen habitually brushing off damage that should have been crippling or fatal, like being hit with a giant's club to the stomach, or taking several 9mm rounds from an Uzi to the shoulder and being able to fight just fine after that (not to mention that Mentl is seen just applying Band-Aids to the spot afterwards; mind you, he has probably extracted the bullets with magic before doing that, because there are no exit wounds seen on her). She is even explicitly called a "meat shield" later by Vito. Admittedly she has magic bracers that block some of the attacks against her, but even those that do connect are seen dealing much less damage than they are supposed to.
- Misplaced Wildlife: The otherworldly setting has a lot of standard animals like cats and horses... and then, some critters clearly resembling the fauna of prehistoric Earth (from dinosaur-like reptiles - including a T-Rex like thing called "Gontharg" - to a creature appearing very much like a well-known Permian synapsid Dimetrodon). However, per the
Word of God found in a comment here, the "misplacement" was justified, as these are the remnants of experiments by ancient Erogenian wizards who created these animals, revived them from fossils or brought them over from other dimensions. Most of them died out after the fall of that civilization (Shuach-worshipping, need we add). A few survived and sort of became invasive species that adapted and out-competed the local species in their niche.- "This has been the Author’s Grand Rationalization for including monsters with models that were easily obtainable and can be used in both Poser3d and Daz Studio", the author also notes. Doesn't stop the critters from being a cool touch, and some of them, like the abovementioned Gonthargs, are included in the local (mostly Erogenian) speech or folklore (e.g. "son of a Gontharg" being an invective).
- Zona's joke about cooking a dinosaur (which she had just killed for attacking Mentl and herself) because it Tastes Like Chicken anyway is Hilarious in Hindsight since, as modern science postulates, birds are the actual living descendants of dinosaurs...
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The ruling family of Kivalia bears an awfully strong resemblance to the Plantagenets. Maldik (Prince John), Yanora (Eleanor of Acquitaine) and Gudik (Richard the Lion Hearted) who has gone on a crusade and only appears around the 1100th page.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
- Tula is known to everyone as being nice, calm and reasonable. So when she crosses her lover, smashes her phone against the wall and even tries to take a swing at Zona (with predictably disastrous results), you can tell she is going crazy with exhaustion, worry and exposure to distracting energies like cell signals. Shortly thereafter, things go to hell completely.
- Also for Tula, whenever her mannerisms and speech patterns change abruptly (up to addressing her sister "Hey, Blondie!"), it's a telltale sign that Vito is controlling her.
- Our Giants Are Bigger: Giants are a rare mutation among humans who grow much faster than normal humans and never stop growing. They face persecution and bullying because they tend to be born only in times of hardship and are, by Kivalians at least, considered harbingers of evil. Other writings indicate that to the contrary they're born in order to combat evil. All three giants so far encountered are of the gentle variety.
- Prince Charmless:
- Maldik. However, he has shown shades of realizing he's an abhorrent little tool. Whether or not he'll act on that insight is left to be seen.
- Pontagar, who has shown himself as a Jerk Jock in his first appearance (and earned himself a beating first from Zona, then from Mentl for this). Unlike Maldik, however, he was merely obnoxious, not evil, until going through some belated Character Development and firmly becoming one of the good guys.
- The Power of Rock: Mentl tends to channel his powers through impromptu spells, which are actually the lyrics of favorite rock songs. He accidentally cast a love charm over every lady in a ballroom by singing The Troggs' "Love Is All Around Me", and threw fireballs at attacking creatures with a chorus of Jerry Lee Lewis's "Great Balls of Fire". Also, a future version of Mentl, joined by his and Zona's future teenage daughter used The Beatles' "Get Back" as a time-travel spell.
- Power Trio: Mentl with his powers barely under control is definitely the Id and Tula is the meditative Super Ego. Zona might seem an odd choice for the Ego but except when she's in the middle of battle qualifies. Pontagar, Carshik and Brantik may also form a similar group in which case Pontagar is definitely the Id.
- Product Placement: Seems nigh inevitable in the Earth episodes of the adventure, but becomes hilariously averted - as seen in a few blink-and-you-will-miss-it frames - by altering the recognisable product names: for example, Mentl's bike is "Hayley Danielson", and the beer brands seen in the "Wooden Nickel" roadhouse include "Festor's" and "Heikeken". However, the iconic guitar brands — [Fender] Stratocaster and Gibson (presumably a Les Paul model) — are used completely straight, because Rock is serious business in this comic.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: King Gudik, when he appears, at long last, in the story, takes relatively little effort from Tethik, Yanora and Ipola to be persuaded to give up on his crusade, make amends with the Draconians and join forces with them against the Urtts. He appears a reasonable enough fellow overall, though not much love is lost between him and his mother.
- Religion is Magic: Tula gets her powers from the Moon and Earth goddesses, while Gorshash gets his from Shuach.
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: The Big Bad's Mooks are a race of Always Chaotic Evil Lizard Folk called the Urtt. In a bit of Artistic License – Biology though, they can crossbreed with humans (better not to think that this is almost always a result of rape), even though such children more often than not end up stillborn. Given the backstory of Urtts as the creations of ancient Erogenians, their reptilian-ness might be only outward, after all. Urtts are also shown to have dinosaur sidekicks (see Misplaced Wildlife above), using them as attack beasts.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: Tula and Zona are both princesses of Erogenia, while Pontagar is an Erogenian prince. Queen Yanora does more to run her kingdom than her son, the nominal ruler, who to be fair, is busy running a war. Ipola and the other lords and ladies of Erogenian tribes of course also count.
- She Cleans Up Nicely: When on a diplomatic visit in Kivalia early on, Zona is put in a fabulous green dress, and many people (starting with Mentl) comment on how she is stunning in it. However, she hates wearing "itchy and suffocating" formal gown, and is seen deliberately tousling her newly coiffeured hair back into a crow's nest after the festivities are over. Later, she is seen in a number of womanly outfits, and is no longer apprehensive about it.
- Stealth Pun: 'Morcai' is a variation on 'Mordecai', which means 'little man'... and he is obviously on the short side (this may have been unintentional).
- Straight Gay: Count Tethik. At first glance he seems like a typical example of what you'd expect from a Kivalian nobleman (albeit with maybe a stronger moral fiber); then Mentl inadvertently casts a love charm... And Tethik's just as affected by it as the ladies present. He's seen later on with other male partners.
- Tempting Fate: After the festivities at the Moon Tribe village, Mentl proclaims in his mind that "It's the coolest place ever, and I do not ever want to go home". Come the morning though... he has his confidence shattered by Karna's words, and is thrown into a Heroic BSoD followed by flight back to Earth. Him retelling the story of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to Zona and Tula shortly before they arrive to the Moon Tribe might also be this, or simply Foreshadowing.
- Tomboy with a Girly Streak: It would have been easy to interpret Zona as "just" a strong and single-minded barbarian warrior, but she is quickly shown to have a sensitive side. Some time after Mentl is gone, she is also seen pondering on the nature of war and she comes to the conclusion that she does not love fighting in itself, only as a way of (possibly) attaining peace. And in a dream before that battle, she imagines herself as a Princess Classic — down to the attire, including the conical hat with a veil — and even a Damsel in Distress, outright denying being a Warrior Princess, and claiming that she wants to be rescued.
- Training Montage: In a more recent arc, Zona and Tula travel to Earth to reunite with Mentl. At one point he reveals that his mother's death (evidently at the hands of evil demon mercenaries) prompted him to take several levels in badass, training himself not only in magic but in krav maga, driving and firearms.
- Verbal Tic:
- Morcai cannot utter a sentence without adding "yeh?" at the end of it.
- Vito has taken a habit of calling Mentl "boychik" (although other characters were seen doing this as well). It's even how Mentl and Zona discover that Tula is possessed by Vito in the later phase of their adventures on Earth.
- World of Muscle Men / World of Buxom: At least the Erogenians are. It is explained in-universe by Kor Lachnis, Shuach's priest surviving from ancient times, that the ancestors of Erogenians have engaged in genetic engineering (though by the means of magic) that resulted not only in the creation of Urtts, ogres and other creatures, but also in the "improvement of their own seed", making them stronger, longer living, resistant to disease... and yes, their women being consistently beautiful (and in most cases, also very capable of fighting).
- Yiddish as a Second Language: Mentl and his family are explicitly Jewish, and are shown observing at least some of the traditions. Zona appears to have picked up some vocabulary from him during their first stint together (like the popular exclamations "Oy vey" and "Oy gevalt", which sound hilarious coming from a blonde Amazon hailing from another world), and later tells his grandmother that Mentl is teaching her Yddish. Most of the time, Yddish inserts are not translated in the comic, though most have fairly obvious meaning.
