Hitmen for Destiny

Half sprawling fantasy adventure, half doorslamming farce, Hitmen For Destiny is a webcomic by Øyvind Thorsby. The setting is a city in Norway in 2009. Fusk and Vorte are assassins working for a mysterious organisation called Destiny. Their job is to covertly ensure that various prophecies come true. Their current job is to protect a woman called Anette Iversland, who has stumbled upon a magical sword that gives her unnatural strength, a lust for killing, and psychic dreams showing strange and fantastical monsters that she must kill.

And so begins a series of wild adventures involving portal monsters, miniature worlds, shapeshifting, Demonic Possession, Bizarre Alien Biology, and lots and lots of Zany Schemes.


 * Anyone Can Die: Lampshaded when Maythorn shouts "YOU CANNOT DIE!" as an important character dies.
 * Because Destiny Says So
 * Berserk Button: Lostclock hates the belief in ghosts, and will often spend hours telling you why.
 * Bizarre Alien Biology: So, so much - and almost always explained in exquisite detail by Lostclock.
 * Big Guy, Little Guy: Fusk (big) and Vorte (small).
 * Combat Clairvoyance: The feeyoufee sees by reading the minds of others. If the targets close their eyes, the monster has trouble finding them.
 * Convection, Schmonvection: Jumping over lava pools, anyone?
 * Eye Spy: One of Vorte's powers.
 * Hollywood Evolution: Averted. Thorsby really understands evolution, and the evolutionary histories of his monsters are really well thought out. But they're still hilarious.
 * Hypno Ray
 * Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Third Prophecy episodes are named "In which...", Fourth Prophecy episodes are named "The ____ of _____", Fifth Prophecy episodes are named "____ and ____", Sixth Prophecy episodes are named "[Adjective] [Noun]", and Seventh Prophecy episodes are just single nouns or "__ hours/minutes".
 * Invisibility: an invisibility spell whimsically backfires. Twice
 * It Got Worse: Any given story arc is one long string of the characters trying to keep up with frantic mashing of the 'make it worse' button.
 * Literal Cliff Hanger: When the castle turned invisible, a character caught a ledge and couldn't pull himself up. He sees how much danger he's in when the castle re-appears.
 * Lovecraftian Superpower: Vorte can release "deadly headspikes" from his head and let one of his eyes roam free on bat wings; Kubrick can suck enemies into his glowing navel, which utterly destroys them; the Servant of Dagon can sprout tentacles from the body of whoever it's currently possessing (which remain, fully controllable, after it leaves).
 * Mexican Standoff: Between Fusk and Bianca. The twist is that one of the guns has blanks, but neither of them know which. What follows is a lot of Gunpoint Banter as each tries to out-game-theory the other.
 * Most Definitely Not a Villain: Jymre is probably the worst shapeshifter of all time. He doesn't bother to try to act like the people he's impersonating, and when questioned, he panics severely.
 * Mr. Exposition: Professor Lostclock Dripkettle.
 * Portal Cut: how one invincible foe is defeated.
 * Portal Network: the living portals.
 * Required Secondary Powers: Averted - when you're invisible, you're also blind.
 * Ring of Power: Brynhild's ring of invulnerability.
 * Sanity Slippage: Anette begins to suffer this as a consequence of the sword's influence.
 * Screw Destiny: People mentioned in prophecies sometimes try and fight fate. Sometimes it works. Most of the time, it doesn't.
 * Shout-Out: Whenever Fusk and Vorte are in the restaurant, there's usually a few characters from other comics or cartoons at the adjacent tables.
 * Shapeshifter Default Form: Jymre's default form is a weird looking alien.
 * Snowball Lie: So, so many.
 * Spies in a Van
 * Taken for Granite: Trantoros, which can turn themselves into rocks for extended periods of time, but can't move during that period. A few strips later, they're used as projectiles and as a perpetual motion machine.
 * Those Two Bad Guys: Fusk and Vorte.
 * Torture First, Ask Questions Later: The troll is told to torture the two prisoners until they talk. Said troll doesn't speak English.
 * When All You Have Is a Hammer: Anette solves all monster-related problems by applying copious amounts of sword.
 * Also, Caspar Gropius has the ability to make manifest anyone's worst fear once per person, but always just summons a giant spider instead.
 * Year Inside, Hour Outside: the miniature worlds.
 * Zany Scheme: Fusk, Vorte and Jymre screw things up so often that they need to pull these once or twice a storyline. Used to triumphant effect in "Passion, lies and fungus".