From Bad to Worse/Web Comics

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • In Erfworld, Parson Gotti is Trapped in Another World in forced servitude as Chief Warlord to Lord Stanley the PlaidTool, who summoned him as a last resort to repel an invading coalition composed of pretty much every other nation in existence. They're outnumbered more than 10 to 1, and Parson attempts a desperate plan to use their dwagons (yes, dwagons, with a "w") to target the enemy's siege engines, hoping to buy a little time. He manages to take out about half of the enemy siege units... but then about half of his dwagons and warlords are lost in the counterattack. Their best spellcaster is rendered catatonic, another is driven mad, and another is killed outright; only two remain unscathed. Stanley, suspecting betrayal, takes their remaining dwagons and one of the casters and goes off to create a new kingdom elsewhere, leaving Parson behind to face the assault.
  • The climax of the webcomic It's Walky mainly consisted of several months of this.
  • Most of Goblins seems to be From Bad to Worse in one form or another.
    • To the point that the few plot twists that aren't From Bad to Worse to the protagonists are revealed from the perspective of someone to which it is.
  • The Order of the Stick seem to spend their time watching things get worse. Blame Cerebus. Holes torn in reality. Roy dying. Shojo dying. The team is split up. Roy's body is used as a bone golem. Haley is even DEEPER in debt to the Thieves' Guild. Vaarsuvius makes a Deal with the Devil, then crosses the Moral Event Horizon within five strips... but comes back enough to feel guilt for killing 60 people accidentally. Rich Burlew is an awesome writer, but seriously -- is the moon going to slam into the planet next?
  • CRFH!!! was strictly a Gag Series until, at the end of a Mushroom Samba, a very real Satan unceremoniously kills Dave and takes his soul to Hell; according to Word of God, fan outcry was all that saved him. Even so, Cerebus Syndrome wasn't generally considered to have set in until "The Adversary," where, while being chased by Satan, Margaret explains to Dave that she's fated to bear the Antichrist; meanwhile Roger being a "werecoyote" is revealed to be slowly driving him insane, like it did to his mother, who now lives in the woods and eats people. And that's right, boys and girls...ItGotWorse.
    • Mike's mother Hazel gets engaged to a Tuxedo and Martini supervillain who, not realizing the connection, kidnaps the male Roomies; this leads to Roger going berserk and tearing a room of his Mooks to pieces, in the first (and angstiest) of many "full-court" fights against them.
    • Tsundere Crazy Survivalist Margaret realizes she's killed someone for the first time (something even the cast page had explicitly pointed out she hadn't done "yet") when the shotgunned body of Roger's mother, who had tried to eat her, turns human in front of her.
    • When Marsha finds out that April is carrying Mike's child, her chronic jealousy leads to a knife fight, that ends with April accidentally killing Mike, on the same day Dave gives Mike's biological father a fatal heart attack in front of Mike's sister -- and Dave's beta love interest -- Blue.
    • Finally, Marsha tries to kill April only to be interrupted by Hazel...who kills Marsha, turns her into a cyborg, and puts April into a coma -- making sure she can still feel pain -- until Mike's son is born.
    • Then there's something of an Anticlimax, after which things get a little better, but they've still got that pesky little Apocalypse to worry about...
  • Jack. Lets see, artificially created without genitalia, had a terrible life, died, stuck in Ironic Hell paying for your sins by personifying your major one and doing the worst job in the universe with no memory of why? Well it could be worse, at least you've got friends, are in a reasonable position of power to protect them, have occasional angelic support, and aren?t fighting both your Super-Powered Evil Side and trying to control a Complete Monster you are sharing a body with after you destroyed his to keep him from ressurecting. What Could Possibly Go Wrong??
    • Everything, of course! The said monster has apparantly found a way to escape his "prison" and another complete monster, who earlier served mainly as a Butt Monkey, Took a Level in Badass and chewed your ear off. Well, at least It cannot get any worse!
  • In Zebra Girl it always gets worse. The comic starts with a young woman getting turned into a demon by accident.
  • Pretty much the entire first book of Cwynhild's Loom consists of things getting worse.
  • Eight Bit Theater mostly consists of things getting worse for everyone. But a special one is the team's plan not only failing to kill Sarda, but also making him even more evil and hate-filled than before.
    • And things just keep getting worse. First they have to fight the strongest sage in the world, then they have to fight the strongest sage in the world who just absorbed all the power of the 4 elements, then they have to fight the strongest sage in the world who just absorbed all the power of the 4 elements, plus all the evil of the 4 fiends and twice the evil of Black Mage, who just dropped their levels down so far Red Mage can't even cast spells any more, and transformed into the incarnation of chaos itself.
    • Then that incarnation goes One-Winged Angel. It just got worse than worse.
  • Concession: both Artie's current life and Joel's childhood. Artie's father died of cancer and his mother killed herself after Artie was diagnosed with the same type of cancer. He seemed to get better, then the cancer spread to his brain. He suffered blackouts which he thought were the result of the tumour, but were actually the work of Joel, who had decided Artie needed to be disposed of before his latent powers became a threat to Joel's own powers. He woke up from one of these blackouts to discover he had had sex with a ten-year-old hypersexual Transsexualism child. He attempted to have a relationship with Kate, only to discover she actually was a paedophile and was in fact sleeping with the same child, among others. She broke up with him, but gave him money for the operation he needed, during which he was attacked by Joel on the spiritual plane. He tried getting help from elsewhere, but broke a major taboo of his new friends' society by impregnating one of them (they're dolphins and are forbidden to interbreed with land-dwelling species), and was apparently involved in the fire which burnt their whole city down. Joel, meanwhile, watched his twin sister murdered by his older brother when they were very young, and their parents assumed Joel had done it. He was put in an asylum, where he was sexually abused by a doctor and released back into the outside world while still unstable. His father then left the entire company to his older brother, leaving Joel with nothing, which started him planning an elaborate Xanatos Gambit to destroy the company.
    • However, it is revealed that Joel's brother didn't do anything (most likely), and most certainly isn't evil, and Joel caused all this suffering for nothing. Wahee. But, at least things are getting better for everyone still alive, and with only four comics to go at the time of this edit, looks like things can't get worse.
  • For a while in Sluggy Freelance it looked like the "bROKEN" Story Arc was going to end with Zoe and Riff Trapped in Another World, and Torg having to find a way to bring them back. Then we see the world Zoe and Riff got sent to and discover Zoe died from her injuries moments after arriving, while Riff (believing Zoe's death to be his fault and that the genocidal dictator of this new dimension is his Alternate Universe self) willingly consigned himself to an eternity of drug-induced amnesia.
  • This is apparently what happened in the most recent arc of Ansem Retort. What happened specifically hasn't been revealed, only one line gives us an idea:

Riku: Shit be fucked!

    • Subverted. They saved the day, got everything to work according to plan, and ended on a high-note by psyching out their friends. Quite characteristically.
  • Homestuck starts with the main character's house being hit by a meteor, and it just goes downhill from there.
    • Much later, Karkat is left gaping in horror after Eridan pulls a Face Heel Turn, knocks out Sollux and murders Feferi and Kanaya before leaving to join Jack Noir. Finally, he is contacted by his missing friend Gamzee, who informs him that he has apparently seen the light and is on his way to kill all the remaining trolls.

Gamzee: WELCOME TO THE DARK CARNIVAL, BROTHER. honk.

    • Oh, and as it turns out, Kanaya is back from the dead, and is now a vampire. And Terezi is without any methods of contacting anyone else, and in the last known area of Kanaya. Oh, and Equius is of no help against Gamzee, since Gamzee has the blood of royalty, and Equius personally believes that he must be indited into such a role. So, yeah. Things aren't good in the world of Homestuck.
    • Guess what? That's right, it's time to make things even worse. Vriska Is backstabbed because her fighting Noir would get everyone but herself killed, and is arguably permadead because of future!Slick's hatred of clocks. Rose leaves Dave behind to deliver the Tumor herself, and is confronted by Diamonds Droog in the process. Bec Noir, in addition to possibly blowing up the universe as the Critical Event, could have been entirely avoided if Karkat was more careful, and Lord English is ALREADY HERE.
    • I'm not even going to preface this with a comment. Jade is blown up by a mountain of shaving cream (she gets better), Noir destroys two universes, which ends up fueling the tumor, all of the exiles save for PM and WV (who is healed later) are murdered, with two beheadings, a classic chest stabbing, and getting uranium ripped out of one's stomach (it was healed), and Doc Scratch has been fooling everyone all along. The tumor doesn't destroy the Green Sun, it creates it.
  • Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Had an incentive chapter called "Disaster Dominoes". The title was rather apt.
  • Freefall has this mostly in background. Some factory troubles were up and running before colonists arrived on Jean - started back when the beachhead team was underway and merrily rolled down the hill from there. And after they fixed the problems, there was a "post scriptum".
  • Schlock Mercenary has its share of crisis-on-top-of-another-crisis "cluster-fluffles". To avoid spoilers, one from prologue (of Book 19):

(Eina-Oafa infosphere, ten million years ago)
purple Oafa: Yaeyoefui, we need your help. We think Eina-Mnelalae[1] has begun secretly forcing people to abandon foil and flesh, and cross over to us. She means to exterminate those who breathe.
(one mindframe crossload later)
Yaeyoefui: I've taken the station from Eina-Mnelalae, but there's a problem. She had very compelling reasons to kill and upload those who remain.
Yaeyoefui: And the problem? She wasn't doing it quickly enough…
(a large cloud of fresh uploads pops in)

    • The Pa'anuri first were a hidden threat that crushed anything with gravitics which wandered into a wrong place. Then it turned out they had a working plan to destroy Milky Way galaxy and a real war started, in which they all were routed or destroyed, if expensively. Then it turned out they got minions and used them to build a Galactic Core Generator in Andromeda (more powerful than what could be done in Milky Way). Then they began to using it for potshots with wormholes. And then they came back with warships (Pa'anuri themselves are the size of a planet).


  1. ↑ the one who have started the Oafan hidden habitat project
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