Life of Riley (Web Comic)

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Life of Riley... a phrase used to indicate a carefree life. I never once thought it applied more to someone than Dan.

An old webcomic, now defunct, written by Aaron Sacharow and Dan Jaaren of ClanBOB fame. It depicts the adventures of Dan Jaaren, as he attempts to live his life in the midst of supernatural events and extraordinary circumstances. Fortunately, this is not difficult, because Dan is (a) a conduit, more powerful than any earthly being, channeling the power of the gods, and (b) a moron.

The archive of the comic can be found here, without any modifications of old strips.

Tropes used in Life of Riley (Web Comic) include:

• All There in the Manual: A lot of characters are never properly introduced into the story, especially when all the Bobs show up. Since they are all actual members of the Clan BOB community, the comic sort of assumes you already know who they are.
• Ambiguously Brown: More ambiguous than usual with Cowkitty. Due to the art style, it's not clear if she has dark skin, or simply light brown fur.
• Arrogant Kung Fu Guy: Evil Dan has shades of this, despite not being any kind of martial artist.
• Badass: Gore. Among his list of accomplishments are sing beating and breaking the horns off of Jarris, suplexing Jezebel, and killing eleven of the fourteen vampires (all of whom were apparently older than him) who came to kill him (one got away, and two were finished off by Jasmine).
• Batman Gambit: Naoko used one to get Naisa to kill her, as well as the entire organizations which was using her to find Source's Tear.
• Battle Aura: Going Stage 2 or Stage 3. Especially notable in the Duel of the Dans, in which Dan's aura is blue and Evil Dan's is red.
• Beat Still My Heart: Gore does this to HIMSELF to impress a girl. It doesn't work out very well.
• Big Bad: Jezebel. Later, Lillith.
• Bilingual Bonus: If you know French.
• Bloody Hillarious/Gallows Humor: Early comics featuring Gore (appropriately) often involved things like missing body parts and dead bodies being left on the couch.
• Brick Joke: In a filler gag strip, Aaron admonishes Jone for breaking house rule # 467: "No area effect spells in the house." A whole story arc later, this comes up again.
• Butt Monkey: For a guy with incredible cosmic power, Dan sure gets jerked around a lot.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Oh so much. What started as a gag-a-day strip evolved into an epic arc culminating in the potential death of God.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Jone seemed to fill no role in the early comics except to be Gore's crazy ex-girlfriend. Later, she turned out to be vitally connected to a major plot point.
• Chris Carter Effect: Partially due to the comic being orphaned, a lot of plot points were never resolved or explained. Indeed, the last twenty or so comics give a lot of answes that actually just result in a lot more questions. Chief among them:
  • Why is Gore so strong, and who is this mysterious individual he and Tess speak of? Is that the vampire that created him? And why does he look so different than all of the other vampires?
  • What is the nature of Evil Dan's powers? It's said to be somehow different from Good Dan's, and near the end it's sort of implied that he's actually channeling source energy from Seth, but nothing is clearly established. For that matter, whatever happened to Evil Dan and Electric Pixie?
  • How did Dan come back to life? Lillith suggests that he may be the new Christ, but we don't get a definitive answer before the comic was abruptly dropped.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Chloe, Dan's girlfriend in the earlier strips, just sort of disappeared without explanation. Occasionally, it would come up on the forums, and Dan would tersley reply that she simply "moved out," with no further explanation.
  • Actually was directly addressed much later on.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Jone, especially while Gore was still seeing Naisa.
• Cluster F-Bomb: In this strip.
• Cue the Sun: Gore's reward for helping to stop Jezebel's invasion is that he is now able to go out in the sunlight without harm. He realizes this only when he wakes up on a beach as the sun is rising.
• Cute Monster Girl: Jone.
• Deadpan Snarker: Electric Pixie. Evil Dan is excellent Snark Bait.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Evil Dan shows us how it's done.

Evil Dan: I, DAN, shall utterly CRUSH, BREAK, HUMILIATE, and DEFEAT...ummm...OTHER Dan...UNTIL HE DIES DEAD!!!!

• Distracted by the Sexy: In an effort to force Dan to go Stage 3, the goddesses develop a battle strategy that hinges on Manda flashing him. It works.
• Divide by Zero: The Duel of the Dans has a distinctly adverse affect on reality itself. To a lesser degree, this happens any time either of them goes past Stage 1, usually resulting in a Gender Bender for everyone in the surrounding area.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Jezebel extracts the power sealed within Naisa by, apparently, making out with her. Both Dahn and Jone get pretty squicked out.
• Driving Question: For a while, it was "What is the nature of Evil Dan's power?"
• Mr. Fanservice: In-universe, Gore is apparently this.
• Evil Twin: Played for laughs with Evil Dan, opposite of Good Dan. Both of them are morons.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Happens a lot, although mostly to original characters (as opposed to those who are real life members of Clan BOB.
• Expy: Evil Dan has more than a little in common with Tatewaki Kuno.
• Eye Scream: Aaron looses an eye to a mushroom samurai in an early gag strip. Later, Gore gives him one of his eyes. Being a vampire, Gore can regenerate.
• Gender Bender: Whenever either Dan changes "Stages," it happens to those around them.
• Genius Ditz: This trope is more or less the reason why Dan can go Stage 2.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Jone is half human, half succubus.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: When the goddesses divert some of Jezebel's energy into Jone, she immediately uses the sudden power burst to start brutalizing her dear old mum.
• Horny Devils: Subverted. Subverted. Both Jone and her mother Jezebel are succubi, but neither is ever shown to seduce anyone at all.
  • It is implied, however, that Jezebel seduced Dahn before she regained her memory. It was to bring her over to her side, however, not to drain her energy or anything.
• Humans Are Special: Jezebel realizes this when Dan goes Stage 3, and promptly abandons her entire invasion attempt.
• Hypocritical Humor: Shortly after an earlier comic had delivered a rather long-winded Take That against Vampire: The Masquerade, a vampire character is shown using the Theft of Vitae Thaumaturgy power. Dan actually pops into the comic momentarily to point out the use of the power and calls himself out on it, saying "I've got a lot of gall, don't I?"
• Infinite Canvas: There's really no set size to the comics at all. Some are as short as one panel, while other can involve scrolling down a lot to read in their entirety.
• Invisible to Normals: Gore has an interesting variation. While not invisible, per se, normal people can't see that he's chalk white with pointy ears.
• Jive Turkey: Evil Dan, after attaining Stage 3.
• La Résistance: The Bobs become this when Jezebel invades, mobilizing with surprising speed and manpower.

Mikmoo: The Bobs make the Illuminati and Masons look like Brownie Scouts.

• Leaning on the Fourth Wall

Electric Pixie: MASTER ninja THEME song! Evil Dan: Like anyone is going to get that reference.

• Lighter and Softer: The Duel of the Dans is a story arc of complete zany nonsense, compared to the much more dramatic stories that made up most of the comic.
• Lemony Narrator: The narrator of Duel of the Dans is definitely this.
• Loads and Loads of Characters: Granted, many only appear briefly, but Dan seemed to go out of his way to include members of Clan BOB anywhere he could fit them in the comic.
• Lord Error-Prone: Evil Dan uses lots of big words and likes to brag about his superior intellect, but pretty much everyone (INCLUDING Electric Pixie) regards him as a an idiot on par with Good Dan.
• Memory Gambit: Dahn had her memory erased as part of a plan to infiltrate and sabotage Jezebel's plans.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Naisa killing Naoko and ruining Dahn's plan to find Source's Tear.
• One-Hour Work Week: Pretty normal for a web comic, but none of the characters jobs are even MENTIONED, though needing money for rent comes up several times.
• One Steve Limit: Averted. Not only is there Good Dan and Evil Dan (aka, Blue Dan and Goatee Dan), we later meet a character named Daniel Escalante.
• Orphaned Series: When it was orphaned, it almost broke up ClanBOB permanently, because the site it and all the other clanBOB material was hosted on was lost along with it.
  • Despite this the forum community continues, and still includes folks who appeared in the comic. Webcomics still play a role in the community, as they founded Planet BOB.
• Our Angels Are Different: Starseeds.
• Our Demons Are Different: At least some of them, like Jone.
• Panty Thief: Cowkitty's sidekick, Bunny Steve. Given that Dan has admitted to being heavily influenced by Rumiko Takahashi, it's likely Steve is an Expy of Happosai.
• Parental Abandonment: According to this strip, Gore's dad (Al Gore), refused to acknowledge his existence, at least until it was convenient for him.
• Petting Zoo People: Two of the goddesses, Cowkitty and Jynk, are this.
• Power Dyes Your Hair: Stage 2 and Stage 3 apparently do this.
• Power Perversion Potential: Aaron and Steph at the end of this comic.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Dan and Evil Dan. Their Battle Auras display this prominently when they fight.
• Running Gag: Dan blowing bubbles in the milk as a filler comic.
  • Also, innocent bystanders having their genders spontaneously reversed whenever one of the Dans enters Stage 2.
  • "You're NOT Japanese!"
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Naisa, against Dahn's captors. She violently murders hordes of people just to get to Naoko. And keep in mind, she's a starseed.

Naisa: Indiscriminate slaughter is a good warm up for a session of delicious protracted torture.

• Self-Deprecation: Dan is an interesting case. On the one hand, he's the main character who weilds incredible cosmic power, but on the other hand, he's an idiot who constantly gets dumped on.
• Self-Insert Fic: the majority of the cast were based on real life folks who Dan and Aaron knew. One of the entire story arcs involved them gathering all the BOBs (real people from the community) to stop The Legions of Hell.
• Serious Business: The first story arc revolves around the fate of the world being decided...by a paintball war. Later, the two Dans settle their differences with a Dance Dance Revolution duel.
• Shirtless Scene: Why, hello there, Gore.
• Shout-Out: The character Mentat is named for the Mentats of Dune. Another comic involved Dan making webshooters, suffice to say they were numerous.
• Start of Darkness: It's implied by narration that Naisa is starting to turn to the Dark Side, with the pivotal point being when she killed Naoko and everyone who worked in the underground facility.
• Take That: In the vampire story arc, Danny Escalante makes fun of Vampire: The Masquerade, as well as the people who play it.

Danny: I mean, when I READ some of the shit they say we believe, I wonder how they keep straight faces reciting it night after night. And all those rules and traditions? Come on people, we're fucking vampires!

• The American Civil War: Randomly referenced in a joke story arc before the comic succumbed to Cerebus Syndrome.
• The Dragon: Jarris.
• The Legions of Hell
• Two Gamers on a Couch: Started off with this basic formula, but quickly gave way to Cerebus Syndrome after the first major story arc.
• What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: Three words: Death Death Revolution.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Naisa's Roaring Rampage of Revenge. She slaughters hordes of people, including Naoko, who was merely a helpless tool in the organization's plan. Seriously, Naisa? You didn't think twice about killing a quadrapalegic hooked up to a bunch of machines!?
• Unfazed Everyman: Aaron and William both play this role.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The last time we see them, Evil Dan was hospitalized from his fight with Good Dan, and Electric Pixie had had her gender flipped and never reverted. What happened to them afterwords is never mentioned.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Jone becomes this during the Jezebel invasion story arc. Although she herself has become a powerless mortal, her disipated energy is what allows her mother to manifest in the third dimension.
• Xanatos Gambit: Jezebel uses this after the goddesses sealed away a portion of her power in Naisa's collar. By accepting Dan's challenge, she bides her time so that she can regain enough power to finish her assault on earth, regardless of the outcome of the paintbrawl. It doesn't work, however, since Dan effectively takes a third option by going Stage 3, scaring Jezebel into retreat.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Dan has blue hair, but it's only his bangs, which might imply it's dyed. Chloe's purple hair, back before she mysteriously stopped appearing, may be a better example.