Webcomic / The Dreadful

A webcomic written and drawn by Matt Speroni of How I Killed Your Master fame, The Dreadful (link is to first page, as some pages are NSFW) is a fantasy story in a Wild West setting. It stars Kit, a cute half-demon ("Devikin") gunslinger who wields the eponymous weapon, a magical pistol. It also has a fairly strong supporting cast, that is becoming more developed as the comic goes on. These include Boozloaf, a minotaur preacher; Erin, a winged sniper; Liz, a sharpshooter who once ran with the same gang Kit did, and Poe, Kit's less violent twin sister.

The story begins with our heroine shot in the back and left to bleed out in an alley. Someone called Judge Catherine finds her lying there and whisks her away. She recovers after two days in the hospital and is taken to meet with a detective agency. They task her to hunt down and kill the leader of her old gang, Jeanne Noelle. Given that Jeanne was more than likely the one who ordered her shot, Kit has no problem with this. But the job may not be as simple as it first appears...

Appears to be on hiatus/abandoned.

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This webcomic provides examples of:

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: The Feather Sword chops through the monkey-like villains like they are made of tissue paper.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: You can't tell in the comic itself because it's Deliberately Monochrome, but supplemental material shows that Devikin have unusually pink skin, and whatever Jeanne is, she has green skin.
• Anachronism Stew: The setting is nominally Wild West / Weird West and the standard sidearm is a single-action revolver, but then you have things like Burke's drum-fed grenade launcher, meta-references to .jpgs, and that one robot (who in flashbacks is treated mundanely).
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Chapter 4 leaves Kit and focuses on Erin, a Winged Humanoid who is carrying out Jeanne's contract on Liz.
• Art Evolution: Kit gets lips on page 62, and the overall style moves from Animesque to more realistic. Unusually, it's a deliberate and immediate shift rather than a gradual change. There are also more subtle changes as the comic goes on, especially to character designs. Kit in particular is noticeably more muscular in later comics.
  • More recently, another major change seems to have taken place. The current designs are a bit of a hybrid between the two previous styles, with less exaggerated lips and more animesque expressions. Liz also lost the circles under her eyes. The exact point where it happened is hard to tell due to the shifting focus of characters during Chapter 8.
• Art Shift: A bit more noticeable and intentional, during the flashback to Kit and Poe's childhood, the character designs was significantly more like the original art style. This is most likely due to the same reason that the art style was originally changed starting in #62: it makes the characters look younger.
• Attack Backfire: Combat Tentacles aren't so useful if they're stuck in a tree.
• Author Appeal: Speroni has mentioned that he's keen on athletic women [1], and plenty of them show up in the comic.
• Axe-Crazy: Burke, who was planning to kill Liz and feed her to a steadily increasing chain of predators.
• Bad Boss: Burke again, who shoots a henchman for making a bad joke.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Strongly averted. Kit looks like hell (no pun intended) after her first zombie fight.
• Big Brother Instinct: Kit to her sister Poe. Her primary motivation aside from revenge on Jeanne is to find Poe.
• Body Horror: That... thing that takes over Burke's corpse. Euuugh.
  • Its offspring don't disappoint, either.
• Boobsand Butt Pose: Sabueso's old partner Catraven does this immediately after slicing up a bunch of goons.
  • Sabueso himself combines this with Riker Pose in the present. Kit promptly makes fun of him.
• Bullying a Dragon: The show-off gunman - who had just seen Kit disarm multiple opponents (and is still holding her gun) - who tries to intimidate Kit with his gun-twirling skills and bravado. It turns into a literal case of Too Dumb to Live.
• Bus Crash: After being briefly introduced early on, "Muttonchops" and the centaur agent initially sent to accompany Kit reappear several dozen strips later as heads on pikes.
• Call-Back: "I always get a kick out of your sense of chivalry, Kit." Said by Jeanne first when Kit balks at shooting an unarmed, hooded hostage, then later when Kit refuses to shoot Jeanne in the back.
• Chandler's Law: What will it take to get Lucas to tell Poe what she needs to know to advance the plot instead of trying to score with her? Zombie Attack!
• Changing The Uncomfortable Subject:
  Liz: "Where'd that beam go, anyway?"
  Kit: "Let's not dwell on questions about how The Dreadful works."
• Chekhov's Gun: The silver bullets Kit took from the gun-juggling idiot come in handy against one of the... things.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Burke, again.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  Kit: You never thought about just shooting it?!
  Art: But I don't know a spell that shoots bullets!
  Kit: *Beat Panel* Hate Wizards so goddamn much...
• Didn't See That Coming: Kit's on her way to take down Jeanne, and by the time she gets there, she'll be able to use the Dreadful again. Perfect plan, right? Then she gets summoned by inept necromancers. Upon rescuing their would-be sacrifices, she learns she is even further away from her destination. Oh, and now she doesn't have a horse.
• Disappeared Dad: Kit and Poe's father left them when they were little, which Kit is bitter about. Kit has always assumed he's been dead, but Poe received a letter from him letting her know he was in prison, but concealed it from Kit because she was afraid she'd try to kill him. Kit finds out when a knight tells her, and she doesn't look too happy about it.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Despite being Kit's self proclaimed rival and declaring that she's an absolute monster, El Sabueso looks none too pleased with how the Jacks are treating her.

• Fantastic Racism: Devikin aren't particularly liked, and aren't given many opportunities in civilized society.
• Fantastic Slurs: "Pinky" seems to be one for Devikin like Kit and Poe.
  • "Blueberry" is apparently an even worse one.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Devils, centaurs, minotaurs, elves, dwarves, wizards, bird-people, fairies, zombies, cyclops, mystical ninja, ghosts, intelligent magical horses, necromancers, superheros, and robots.
• Finger Gun: Jeanne has a functional one.
• Forgot to Feed the Monster: here.
  Liz: Wow, I forgot I had this fairy in a bottle thing.
  • Astonishingly enough, this becomes a plot point when Ith, the starved fairy, resurrects Erin by possessing her.
• Great Offscreen War: Referenced in one comic.
• Hand Cannon: The title appears to refer to one of these. Burke also has one that fires grenades.
  • The eponymous pistol is actually closer to a Wave Motion Handgun.
• Hat Damage: Well, it is a western.
• Horned Humanoid: Seems to be standard for devikin.
• Hot as Hell: Enforced Trope. Devikin have no predilection towards prostitution, but thanks to Fantastic Racism, it's one of the few jobs they can find.
• Hot-Blooded Sideburns: Muttonchops.
• Hurricane of Puns: Kit and Boozloaf enjoy slinging these back and forth.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Parodied in this guest strip.
• Imagine Spot: Liz imagines herself blowing Kit's brains out in response to the aforementioned Hurricane of Puns.
• I Meant to Do That. While Jeanne is delivering a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Kit.
  Kit: I'm just lullin' ya into a false sense o' security.
  Jeanne: You're doing an excellent job. [SMASH]
• Immune to Bullets: Burke takes one between the eyes and it only annoys him.
  • All devikin are as long as they aren't silver (though Kit is tough even by those standards). It can still knock them out for a while, particularly if you get them in the head.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: A posse shows up at Kit's hideout. Their arrogant leader threatens and insults Kit while flipping his gun around Revolver Ocelot-style. It looks like an epic gunfight is about to ensue, but Kit simply shoots the hammer of his gun mid-flip, causing it to shoot him in the head.
• Insistent Terminology:
  • Kit's not a pinky. She's a devikin.
  • El Sabueso doesn't see the future, he tracks the future. Though sometimes even he forgets.
• Instant Chucks: Bananachucks!
• In the Back: The first scene involves Kit being shot from behind.
• In Medias Res: See In the Back.
• Juggling Loaded Guns: Literally, here. What really pushes this into Too Dumb to Live territory is the fact that he's pressing Kit's Berserk Button while his pistol is in the air.
  • Kit does it later, with a gun loaded with the bullets she took off the above idiot. At least she waits until after she's killed her enemy.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Burke.
  "I'm the best around! Nothin's ever gonna keep me —" *gets hit by the Dreadful*
• Lame Pun Reaction: What Liz thinks of them In-Universe.
  Liz: Did Kit just puke lightning?
  Boozloaf: What a shock!
  Liz: Not now.
  Boozloaf: I'm sorry, it was just set up so perfectly.
• Large Ham
  Burke: No one interfere. This is my soup. And fortune... IS MY SPOON!!! The eggs I lay HATCH PAIN!!! I am a bolt of lightning in a lightning bolt factory!!
  • El Sabueso gives him a run for his money.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: Trying to get drunk on magical reagents can make you vomit lightning, with unpleasant results.
• Mundane Fantastic: Zombies with apparently vampiric tendencies? Not something you see every day, but common enough to calmly make fun of while you fight to the death. Ghosts? Just another witness to interrogate.
• My Eyes Are Up Here: Lucas doesn't follow directions well.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: Kit chases off the man she finds Poe sleeping with.
• Never Bring a Knife to a Fist Fight: Or a gun for that matter.
• No-One Could Have Survived That: Erin says this when Jeanne shoots Kit out of the sky with her Finger Gun. Jeanne knows better.
• Not Me This Time: Liz's response to Kit's line of questioning.
  Liz: I didn't try to kill you. That oughta be obvious seeing how you're still alive.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Lampshaded
  Kit: How big of a dumbass do you think I think you are?
• Orifice Invasion: Spidermonster!Burke's slug offspring(?) do this to Burke's companion's corpses to reanimate them.
• One-Gender Race: Devikin are the offspring of a human male and another devikin. They are always female and always identical to their mother.
• Our Angels Are Different: Angels do exist. Not all of them are kind, and the first angel shown is close to a Humanoid Abomination.
• Our Centaurs Are Different
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Burke seems to be something of an Expy of Yosemite Sam.
• Our Demons Are Different: Devikin are half-demon, always female, and always appear identical to their mother.
• Our Elves Are Different: They have excellent hearing, but the one we've seen thus far was killed too quickly to learn anything else from.
• Our Zombies Are Different: These ones are corpses animated by giant slugs that crawl down their throats. They can use weapons and have a taste for blood, especially devikin blood, which gives them super-strength and Combat Tentacles. The slugs themselves are the offspring of a giant spider-demon-thing, which in turn sprouts from the corpse of someone killed by the Dreadful.
  • The discussion of common zombie killing methods like headshots (which do not work on the zombies we've seen) indicates that more typical zombies exist in the setting.
• Painting the Medium: After Ith revives Erin and they start Sharing a Body, Erin's speech is in the standard font for the comic, while Ith's is in a more "jagged" font.
• Pietà Plagiarism: Here
• Pinkerton Detective: The Jackson Detective Agency, aka "Jacks". Might cause some confusion if they were called the "Pinks," since "Pinky" is also a Fantastic Slur for Devikin.
• Poke in the Third Eye: Chinami Umami is able to tell when El Sabueso is looking through his Shew Stone at her, and talk back. Which leads to an odd sequence of events; Sabueso sees Chinami talking to him through the stone, then Chinami attacks him in the present, then she escapes, then she talks to Sabueso, knowing he's looking at her from the past.
• Power at a Price: Burke's ring was enchanted to make him Immune to Bullets, but at the cost of his sanity.
• Punny Name: The Moomons. Word of God is that these cow-people only superficially resemble Mormons, their religion having nearly been called Cowtholic instead.
• Puppeteer Parasite: Appears to be how the zombies work.
• Riker Pose: El Sabueso does this, complete with Lampshade Hanging.
• The Rival:
  Henchman: She's beat half to death and unarmed Sabueso. Stop shitting around.
  El Sabueso: I do not 'shit around'. Kit here happens to be a big rival of mine. You don't take her seriously, you don't take me seriously. You don't take me seriously, you get turned inside out, comprende?
• Sadistic Choice: In flashback, after a job went bad, Jeanne gave Kit and Poe a choice. Either they kill the unarmed, bound and hooded bookkeeper that they took as a hostage, or Jeanne would do it. And if Jeanne did it, she would get creative about it.
• Shout-Out:
  • To Black Mage of 8-Bit Theater, which is hosted on the same site.
  • The fairy in a bottle, which resurrects and partially possesses Erin is one to The Legend of Zelda.
  • To Dead Space
  Erin: They look like zombies, so I assume the best place to shoot is the head. You agree?
  Ith: That is what I would suggest. Though Dr. Clarke in his essay on "Necromorphosis" suggests the limbs. I think he's a crackpot, personally.
  • Looks like Lucas and Kit are both Five Mantis Fists students.
  • Jeanne performs the Shin Shoryuken. On Kit. Complete with teeth-grinding jaw punch.
• Slut-Shaming: Kit looks down upon the Devikin who resort to prostitution to survive.
• Speed Sex: Sabueso lasts one minute thirty seven seconds. There are several possible reasons for this given the circumstances.
• Stop Being Stereotypical: This is Kit's justification for not letting Poe have sex. She doesn't want to play into the Hot as Hell stigma Devikin are usually subject to.
• Stripperiffic: Catraven, one of El Sabueso's old crime-fighting(?) allies. The only things covering her nipples are utility pouches. There aren't even any straps holding them there.
  • There's also the case of the angel El Sabueso summons, which also turns anyone who looks at her lustfully to stone.
• Summon Bigger Fish: El Sabueso does this when he summons an angel to deal with Kit.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: After accidentally killing a JDA agent, El Sabueso meets up with some of his other contacts, who then ask him if Kit did it.
  El Sabueso: Kit? Y-yes, it was Kit. She... she came up out of nowhere. Poor bastard never knew what hit him.
• Talkative Loon: Burke.
• The Mole: Boozloaf.
• Throw-Away Guns: When Kit steals a JDA agent's gun, she finds that their guns only work for the agent they were issued to. So she throws it at the other agent.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Kit and Poe, respectively.
• Too Dumb to Live: The Dryads, who have already seen that Kit is perfectly willing to sweet talk you until you drop your guard almost immediately buy into Kit's sweet talking, explain how they're animated to her; Faunstones, like soulstones but naturey, in their heads. Kit promptly slams the massive magic suppression cage they had carried her around in over their heads, effectively killing them.
• Unsound Effect: SPIN
• Unwanted Rescue: Just as Kit taps into a supernatural power and gets up for round two against Jeanne, she's abducted by ghosts intending to rescue her.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Kit and Poe were just honest kids trying to make a living before falling in with outlaws.
• Virgin Sacrifice: here
• Wave-Motion Gun: The eponymous gun, clearly.
• The Wild West
  • Weird West
• When Trees Attack: Dryads are highly sophisticated golems, created by implanting a magical crystal in the head of a victim after a cleansing ritual.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Kit is fond of shooting problems before they become problems, and actively encourages others to do the same, like when she told Liz to shoot Sabueso "in the face" as soon as he had a flute on hand. Liz didn't, and so Sabueso summoned an angel, so Kit had to prove how Genre Savvy she is by shooting the angel in the head with The Dreadful in the middle of ranting towards the crowd.
• World of Action Girls: Kit, Liz, and Erin are all skilled gunslingers, and Jeanne has no problem bringing her fists to a gunfight. The only males to demonstrate badassery thus far are Burke and much later El Sabueso.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Played With. Apparently zombie outbreaks are common enough that a small western town can handle one itself.

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