Anyone Can Die/Web Comics

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• Schlock Mercenary has its fair share of this, frequently killing off supporting cast members. Although anything short of a headshot can be healed thanks to Applied Phlebotinum, and major characters were brought back through Time Travel.
  • Being the demolitions tech for the Toughs is pretty much a one-way ticket out of the strip... To wit: The strip has killed, since the beginning, six major characters just among the Toughs, including two who could easily be billed as main characters, and so many supporting Toughs it's hard to count. And these are just the ones who aven't come back.
    • To be fair, however, that's spread out over twelve years. You can certainly start reading any given arc and assume that no Toughs will have died by the end of it (not even any redshirts). Except during a Schlocktoberfest, when someone dies, but not necessarily in an irreversible way (there's now an In-Universe 5 step scale from "clinical death" to "utterly gone").
• The pre-It's Walky Roomies featured the (then) shocking death of Ruth. Her death marked a Cerebus Syndrome moment in the strip's history (The strip started the transition to It's Walky in the immediate aftermath) and served to show that the gang's wacky hijinks were no longer consequence-free. It also set the "No warning" tone for many of the deaths to come (Dina's in particular).
• Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic has main characters die quite often, and with little drama. It helps that there are quite a few main characters in each arc. Only one of them, Glon, has ever been brought back.
• Although set in a world with functional resurrection magic, The Order of the Stick has featured a number of shocking deaths, particularly Lord Shojo, Miko Miyazaki, Therkla and Roy Greenhilt, himself, who is the main protagonist of the comic. Only the last of those has been reversed, and doing so was the goal of an arc.
  • It uses the interesting loophole in all D&D resurrection spells: the dead person's spirit has to be willing to return. Two of those listed examples would, for various reasons, rather stay dead than face their lives again.
    • And the other one wasn't exactly well-liked.
• Despite being a fancomic and using characters from TV Shows, Powerpuff Girls Doujinshi doesn't skimp on this. Deedee is shown killed during a flashback, taking a laser blast for Dexter. Mandark, in his attempt to kill Dexter, lets himself be blown up during his base self detonation. Blossom is temporally drowned while being held captive but brought back to life. During the side story, Atomic Betty's crew (Sparky and X-5) are killed after stumbling upon one of the big bad's bases. Betty nearly killed herself if not for Amazo finding her.
• Wrongside: Beginning has not been hesitant to kill characters off. And has even parodied it in a joke strip.
• Goblins. Many characters die as soon as you start getting attached to them.
• Hitmen for Destiny killed off a character who was explained to be extremely important quite early on. Recently another major character was unexpectedly killed off. Both of these characters were very popular among the fanbase. It looks like nobody is safe at this point.
• Juathuur has lot of death in it, and no way shown to resurrect people. The trope is established with Bivv's death and comes into full force with the Battle of Erab Adur.
• Sluggy Freelance. Monica's death was especially shocking for its sheer randomness, stabbed in the back by Oasis as she arrived; Zoë's death, and the weeks spent convincing the audience it was real, was a shock, but at least that was in an action scene. At one point in the strip's early days, the entire Cast Herd of Zoë's college friends were killed off in a horror film parody, and later, the sequel killed off one of the main characters' housemates during a victim montage.
• Breakfast of the Gods: Let's just say the first death occurs on page 3 of the first book.
• Homestuck as of January 2011. All deaths prior to this were throwaways; Dave's doomed timeline duplicates, dreamselves, real selves that are just replaced by dream selves (like Sollux, but he had two so it didn't matter), John, Vriska, and Aradia's ascensions to God Tier, random mooks and carapaces, and probably more. Then Eridan flipped and killed Kanaya and Feferi. Vriska killed Tavros. Gamzee killed Equius and Nepeta. Kanaya Came Back Strong as a Rainbow Drinker and sawed Eridan in half. As per more recent developments, Vriska is dead, either having received a Just death or one from the result of Spades Slick bashing up Doc Scratch's clock. Gamzee is probably now mortally wounded. Dave and Rose's realselves are dead and replaced by their dreamselves, and one or both of them is/are going on a suicide mission to deliver the bomb to the Green Sun. God knows what Lord English or The Scratch will do but it will definitely have repurcussions. Hussie sure loves us!
  • As the End of Act 5 flash and the intermission after it, all of the Exiles are dead except for Peregrine Medicant (and possibly Wayward Vagabond, who would still be mortally wounded.) Liv Tyler was possibly destroyed in the creation of the Green Sun, the last two remaining agents of Jack Noir are dead (one of them by Jack's own hand,) all of the Midnight Crew and remaining Felt members died when Spades Slick shot Snowman and ended the universe, Jade died (a second time,) only to fuse with her sprite to achieve God Tier, Sollux is heavily implied to be sacrificing himself to fly the trolls' meteor to the Green Sun to get them out of the universe before the Scratch resets them, and Doc Scratch sacrifices himself to summon Lord English.
  • And now^[when?] as for the end of Act 6 Act 1, Jake's dreamself is dead, and...something has happened to Jane. Hussie himself Lampshaded the webcomic's veering into Kill'Em All territory:

Reader: So, uh...what about all those other kids? Robohussie: Huh? Who? Oh, yeah. Those people. Aren't they all dead? Reader: No, not quite. Robohussie: Oh god, you're right! There are still a few characters I haven't killed yet. I almost forgot about them.

• • In the end of Act 6 Intermission 2, Hussie ended up being killed himself. Presumably, by the end of Homestuck, every single character will be dead.
• Game Destroyers has killed off or otherwise incapacitated a number of main characters to date, namely Bojangles, Ace, Cedris, and the Nintendo Otaku. Only a small handful of main characters will likely never be considered when it's time to kill someone off.
• Counting Not just anyone but everyone in the town of Thirston. Including a bird in a bird bath.
• Something*Positive. The author, Randy Milholland, has made it quite clear that nobody - beloved or despised - is immune from the Grim Reaper. The responses when he invokes this trope tend to vary; in one case, someone told Randy to his face that the death of a certain character didn't actually happen. And if you tell him he can't, for whatever reason, kill off a character, Randy will kill said character anyway out of spite, even if they weren't supposed to die.
• Seen in Dead of Summer, being that it's a Zombie Apocalypse story.

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