Crapsack World/Web Comics
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- Ugly Hill takes place in a world where everyone is literally a monster, and quite a few of them are monsters in the figurative sense. The main characters include Eli Kilgore, a likable but shiftless Unlucky Everydude; Snug, Eli's even-more-shiftless and much-less-likeable friend; and Hastings, Eli's overbearing workaholic brother with high blood pressure and a string of failed marriages.
- In 8-Bit Theater, the characters are all stupid and/or evil, kingdoms are completely obliterated on a daily basis, and even the man who controls the universe will wipe out cities in the process of tormenting Black Mage.
- On the plus side, every single problem in the above list can be solved through vigorous usage of animal husbandry.
- For another good description of that webcomic's world, see this post from the website's forum.
- Word of God also said that if any faction wins, the villains win.
- Something*Positive is set in a world where every person generally petty, greedy, self-centered, stupid and/or passive-aggressively oblivious.
- The Oceans Unmoving sci-fi storyline of Sluggy Freelance featured a universe so bleak that individuals on their own could hardly survive. Not to mention that the leader of the pirates is Bun-Bun the rabbit, a sadistic psychopathic knife-wielding Villain Protagonist and Jerkass. Any world where Bun-Bun thrives must be a sad desolate hate-filled place.
- If you think that's bad, there's 4U City. A dystopia founded by Hereti Corp in an alternate universe, where people are constantly drugged to keep them happy, and anyone deemed even slightly threatening to the order, is "judged" (i.e. sent to a pocket dimension). But wait, there's more! The person responsible for all this turns out to be Doctor Shlock AND Riff, who used an AI to run the city and periodically push a Reset Button, while they work on repairing the fabric of reality that was damaged in a destructive war. But that's still not all. The AI is going rogue and threatens to take over the entire city with machines. The AI also happens to be running the city's defences - should it be disabled, the whole place is overrun by a huge army of mutants gathering outside the city walls. It's a surprise Riff prime managed to fix everything single-handed.
- Flatwood. The light has long gone from the world, and bad things happen to good people. Oh, and you're dead. (Webcomic strongly based on Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and biblical lore, with Body Horror monsters. Graphic Nightmare Fuel.)
- Suicide for Hire. A couple of goth friends, Hunter Ravenwood (The fox and hedonist) and Arcturus Winrock (The mouse, and only one with morals), sick of the moronic world they live in, and the idiotic populace that inhabits it, decide to open up a business, in which they assist the moronic teen populace with their demise in creative and gruesome ways, and profit from this "business". In this world, guns are sold by indifferent clerks, shanking hobos is a sport, Pizza deliverymen sell Black Market weapons, and a rash of teen deaths is unheralded and unreported by the news. Watch out for the Happy Gun Dance!
- Gone With the Blastwave, where an Endless War is fought for no discernible reason, with its effects having reduced a city of huge size to ruins. Also, the militaries are apparently mostly filled-with incompetents and actually receiving support, or even knowing where you are in the damned city, is seen as a miracle.
- Pharaoh City in Lightbringer was under sole control of Slavers gang - powerful criminal organization that could kidnap anyone from anywhere and sold him on an auction to any pervert, pimp or madman who has enough cash. Even police couldn't do anything about it - Slavers were so powerful their lesser rank members could walk down the street with kidnapped gil chained like a dog and everybody was too scared to do anything about it. Then Lighbringer come and took them down.
- The world of Twokinds is a currently immutable example where racism is prevalent across the land, the guys standing against the Evil Empire are an Evil Empire themselves, slavery is an acceptable institution, the "gods" are playing a game with the nations, the only people who could affect a change in the war are isolationists and have recently lost most of their major civilian and military leaders, and one of the protagonists is starting to have aspects of his murderous alter-ego become more and more prevalent. The one bright spot here is that this is not the state of the entire planet, just the state of one of the regions on it, the reader really doesn't know what the rest of the world is like . . . so far.
- Oh, and did we mention that the local slave trader is the nicest guy in the setting? Granted, he is pretty affable and does treat his charges as a second family instead of replaceable property like most do, but still...
- He still uses spells that force his slaves to do anything he tells them too (and it's very heavy hinted he has sex with all his female slaves, as one of his slave who got some Gender Bender was terrified at the thought of his master finding out). Of course it doesn't seem like the writer had this in mind...
- Oh, and did we mention that the local slave trader is the nicest guy in the setting? Granted, he is pretty affable and does treat his charges as a second family instead of replaceable property like most do, but still...
- Cry Havoc exists in a pretty bleak world. Humanity has been fighting constant low intensity wars for the last six centuries, and are quickly approaching the point that humanities survival is a low probability. Colonialism has ravaged most if not all of the old world, and the new world is hinted at being worse off. And on top of all that, a monstrous race of werewolves has been brought back from extinction. (an extinction that required a decades long war, and the loss of over two thirds of Europe's population to enact)
- Concession: Joel randomly shoots up the crowd in the lobby and his boss's only comment is "How long are you going to keep this up? It's making a mess." They kidnap and torture the health inspector and are never punished. Kate keeps a harem of small children and nobody arrests her, and shady corporations seem to run everything.
- Alternia is basically what happens when you have Bee People without a Hive Mind. A Teenage Wasteland because all adults are off-world in wars of conquests, a legal system where merely saying the world "defense" is an offense, negative healthcare (the weak and crippled are simply culled), and a weird reproductive cycle enforced on pain of death. And all of it intentionally made by Lord English, working through Doc Scratch and the Handmaid.
- Don't forget the zombies. And the Eldritch Abomination that must be fed daily.
- It Gets Worse after the trolls beat Sgrub. They're living on an asteroid in a laboratory in the middle of the universe, everyone on their planet has died, there's a planet-destroying monster trying to find them, some of the trolls have gone batshit insane and started to kill other ones, and they have to talk to humans.
- Then there's the Alpha session, which is under the tyranny of Crocker Corp.
- Demon Eater. It's literally a dog-eat-dog world, for there is nothing else to eat.
- Weapon Brown. A post-apocalyptic wasteland populated mutants and cannibals, where the last dregs of civilization (if you can call it that) are ruled by a tyrannical syndicate and the only way to live free is to be a cold-blooded killer for hire. Food reserves are running so low that the syndicate has seriously considered cannibalism as a way of keeping the public supplied with enough food to prevent a total collapse of order. Oh and the entire cast are reimagined versions of syndicated comic strip characters, which somehow makes the place even creepier.
- And there are places in the world of Weapon Brown that are even worse than that: "Shoulda done a tour in the Wastes, kid. After watching a man and a woman come to blows over which of them will get to eat their baby, nothing much surprises you."
- John Kossler, author of The Word Weary, states in the comments section of this issue that the philosophy of his comic is "when it rains, it pours and also you get struck by lightning and one of the paramedics who revives you steals your shoes."
- In The Snail Factory nearly everyone is physically monstrous and at least somewhat psychologically deranged. It ranges from selfishly or ignorantly apathetic, to sadistic and murderous. The workplace itself is also hazardous on many levels and the employees are regularly repressed by extremely harsh (and often incompetent) managerial policies.
- In Sinfest,