Angel Moxie

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On the night before her first day of junior high, Alex O'Connor has a dream in which a mysterious entity hands her a wand and proclaims that she will save the world from evil. Alex wakes up the very next morning with the rod in her hand and not a clue of what to do with it. By the time the day is over, she's killed her first monster and gained a talking cat as a mentor. Welcome to magical girl duty, Alex.

Angel Moxie is a black and white Yonkoma Webcomic Affectionate Parody of Magical Girls by Dan Hess, creator of Rebus, Realms Of Ishikaze, and Weesh. It mixes a sharp sense of humor with a fairly cut and dried magical girl plotline. What results is an overall charming teenage superhero romp that hits some surprising emotional depths along the way.

The series ran from 2002 to 2006. Upon completion of the storyline, the series began rerunning with a new strip from the archives, though no new material has been written since.

You can read the archives here.

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Angel Moxie provides examples of:

• Affectionate Parody
• Affably Evil: Tsutsumu is this to a T.
• Alliterative Name: Riley Rosenbaum
• All Your Powers Combined: Played straight then deconstructed when it gets Alex killed.
• Animesque: The series mixes obvious Japanese references with American culture. And then there's the art.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: "There's plenty to save the world from--zealots, corruption, bigotry, disease, sitcoms..."
• Art Evolution: As the series progressed, the looser, scribbley art became much more refined, though it still kept its fairly simple art style. The format also started as very tiny panels in a horizontal format as the artist originally planned to stream the comic on cell phones. As this technology was too costly at the time of the comic's run, the author changed the format and slowly reverted the older comics to follow the Yonkoma format with larger art.
• Author Appeal: An in-universe example, wherein Ms. Konk's creator, who is male, refuses Alex's and Riley's request that he build a really hot guy robot rather than a really hot girl robot.
• Badass Longcoat: Riley and Tristan get individual ones when powered up.
• Bare Your Midriff: Riley's ultimate power costume.
• Beauty Brains and Brawn:
  • Riley - Brains
  • Tristan - Brawn
  • Alex - Beauty
• Berserk Button: As it turns out, Tsutsumu has an extreme temper if provoked enough, leaving an opening for the girls to exploit.
  • Calling Vashi an old lady is not the wisest thing to do in combat.
• Big Bad: Yzin, who Vashi spends most of the series trying to revive.
• Bland-Name Product: The MacDonald's knock off MacMucky's in this strip.
• Blush Sticker
• Book Dumb: Alex
• Boy Band: N'Tune. In reality, servants of Shugari that hypnotize their followers.
• Brainy Brunette: Riley
• Catgirl: Miya, a being of the higher authority that takes the mortal form of a cat. And yes, she's a girl. In the end of the series, you briefly see her mortal, humanoid form, in which she has cat ears and a tail.
• Cats Are Mean: Miya invokes this here.
• Celestial Bureaucracy: Heaven turns out to work like this. And the receptionist is a squirrel.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Tsutsumu
• Dark Magical Girl: Tristan at the start of the series, though this is resolved before Alex even realizes they're on opposite sides.
  • Shugari is a spin on this. While not sad, lonely, and dark (she's actually quite bubbly and sociable) she's also an evil baddie.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu??: Literally. Shortly after freeing the evil Vashi, Tristan punches her out of the window of her tower fortress.
• Died Happily Ever After: Happens to Mr. Kyokasho, who dies to take out one of Shugari's monsters. He visits the heartbroken Riley in a dream to make sure she knows he's okay, and does the same for the earthbound Miya. Later, towards the end of the series, Miya as well, who bids her farewells before she passes on. The epilogue shows her reuniting with Mr. Kyokasho and them rekindling their old relationship.
• Doppelganger Dating: Alex realizes that Kevin has a lot in common with Riley.
• The Dragon: Vashi
• Evil Is Not a Toy: With much Lampshade Hanging.
• Evil Mentor: Tsutsumu, one of the demon lords, takes the girls in after they have a falling out with Miya. They turn around and defeat him with the skills and professionalism they've learned.
• Exposed to The Elements: "Isn't there a winter costume or something?!"
• Eyes Always Shut: Grant Kyokasho. He opens them only once after he's absorbed an insane amount of magical power, which he proceeds to use to blow up one of Shugari's monsters to save the girls.
• Faceless Eyes: In the beginning, before Tristan breaks all of the barriers to release her power, Vashi appears as just a glowing, floating pair of eyes.
• Foreshadowing: When the second seal is broken, non-magical entities are effected by time slowing down. Though Miya doesn't know why Riley also isn't slowing down, it hints that she has powers of her own.
• Gender Blender Name: Alex, Riley and Tristan.
• Genki Girl: Shugari.
• Genre Savvy: The source of many Lampshade Hangings.
• Graceful Loser: Tsutsumu becomes the epitome of this when he leaves a Video Will that not only congratulates them on their victory and tells them that he, as their Evil Mentor, is proud over their skills, but also leaves them his business: a multi-billion dollar worldwide company.
• Hair-Raising Hare: "This is my servant, Cottontail. Cute, furry,......and evil."
• Heroic BSOD: Riley, after Grant Kyokasho's Heroic Sacrifice, kills Shugari and breaks down into tears. It doesn't last too long, but it counts.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Grant does this early on to defeat Shugari's demon minion. Later, at the end of the story, Alex does this to defeat Yzin, and Miya does this to save Alex.
• Hot for Teacher: Riley's crush on Mr. Kyokasho
• I Think You Broke Him: This strip.
• Jumped At the Call: While the responsibility of saving the world makes her hesitate in the beginning, Alex promptly Jumps at the Call after her first Transformation Sequence. Possibly because of the discovery that she had the power of Flight.
• Junior High
• Killed Off for Real: Grant Kyokasho blows up his mortal self in a Heroic Sacrifice. Fortunately, the higher-ups were so impressed with his bravery that they decide not to force him to reincarnate and he keeps his job in the Celestial Bureaucracy. Also Yzin kills Alex during the final battle. Immediately followed by a Back From the Dead, avoiding a Downer Ending. Even though the resurrection was facilitated by Miya giving up her mortal life for Alex. It's still a happy ending as Miya is reunited with Grant.
• Mass Hypnosis: The N'Tune Boys concert.
• Meaningful Name: Alex, Riley, and Tristan all have gender neutral/masculine name. They are three (girl) incarnates of three boy heroes.
  • Also Miya's last name "Gato", which is Spanish for "cat". She takes the form of a feline on earth to mentor the girls.
    • Don't forget her first name either. "Miya" when spoken sounds like "meow" and "neko" is Japanese for "cat."
  • Shugari's name sounds a lot like "sugary". The name she uses while posing as a student is Candi Shugari.
  • Grant Kyokasho spends his time on Earth disguised as a teacher. His surname is Japanese for "textbook".
• Meganekko: Riley
• Mini Dress of Power: Alex
• Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher: Mrs. Merriweather
  • Then there's the whole really an evil demon thing.
• Mundane Utility: "How to use disappearing magic", by Alex.
• Nerd/Geek: Deconstructed in two strips.
• Nerds Love Tough Schoolwork: Riley actually cheers when being told the class was stepping up the calculus lessons.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Miya gets an epic one at one point when she summons a demonic army to challenge the girls and hammer home the importance of training... nearly getting the power trio killed in the process. Leads to a major What the Hell, Hero? with ramifications lasting the rest of the strip.
• Nonuniform Uniform
• Noodle Incident: http://www.venisproductions.com/angelmoxie/archives/1/5/153.html
• The Noseless: About every character.
• Opera Gloves: Alex wears them during her date.
• Parental Abandonment: Alex's parents are mentioned but never seen, we see Riley's father but not her mother, and Tristan's mother but not her stepfather.
• Parental Obliviousness: Riley's father has this to a severe degree, to the point that the girls can openly discuss a battle plan in front of him and he assumes they are discussing a surprise party.
• Pink Means Feminine -- Alex's costume.
• Power Gives You Wings -- Alex's magical girl form.
• Power Trio
  • Alex, the Magician -- Superego
  • Riley, the Scholar -- Ego
  • Tristan, the Warrior -- Id
• Punny Name: Shugari has a rather sugary personality.
• Purple Is Powerful: Tristan's outfit.
• Rage Against the Mentor: After the defeat of Shugari, Miya gets obsessed with training the girls harder and harder, to the point that Alex snaps at her. Miya gets angry enough at her that she summons an army of demons to attack the girls, nearly killing Tristan and hurting Kevin, an innocent and powerless friend, Alex completely turns against her. This leads to an arc where Miya leaves the strip until near the very end of the Tsutsumu arc.
• Rash Equilibrium: In this and the two following strips.)
• Redheaded Hero: Alex.
• Robot Girl: Ms. Konk. Her creator makes some drastic changes to her, revamping the scary old lady robot to a bubbly, ditz, with a body like a supermodel.
• Sealed Evil in A Can: All the villains start out like this but Tristan unleashes Vashi and she releases the rest of them. It's later revealed that One Minion escaped being sealed by the heroes predecessors and was working on freeing Vashi all along.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Tristan
• Sidekick Glass Ceiling
• The Slacker: Tristan's approach to school.
• The Snark Knight: Tristan
• The Smart Guy: Riley
• Taking You With Me: In the final battle Yzin does this. He fails. Sorta.
• Training From Hell
• Transformation Sequence: With Lampshade Hanging.
• Transformation Is a Free Action: Also Lampshaded
• Troubled Fetal Position: "Study paralysis." And then not...
• Updated Rerelease: The whole series was re-published with a different panel arrangement and new caption font, though the storyline remains the same.
• Waif Fu: Tristan
• Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World: The comic's Tagline is even "It's magic monsters & Junior High". Alex freaks out about exams and has middling to poor grades. It doesn't do every aspect of the trope, as dating isn't much of a problem for her.
• We Can Rule Together: Tsutsumu proposes this to the girls.
• Webcomic Time: Lampshaded.
• Winged Humanoid: Alex, in magical girl form.
• Wrecked Weapon: Parodied. When Riley try to figure out how the wand work she accidentally breaks it, but it instantly rebuilds itself. Also the Evil Minions have the bad habit of destroying Riley's laser guns, but she's good at building new ones. The trope is also used dead serious near the end of the comic, when Yzin damages the wand beyond repair.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: Grant accidentally fakes his birthdate as 1971, but the date of his teaching degree as 1983. Luckily, the only ones who notice are the heroines.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Tristan's green hair. Also, Shugari's hair is bright pink.
• Zettai Ryouiki: Tristan, exercising her right to accessorize.