Nip and Tuck
Nip And Tuck is another one of Ralph Hayes Jr's webcomics (Goblin Hollow and Tales of the Questor among his others).
The main focus is on Nip and Tuck Todd, two fox brothers of the somewhat loopy Malarky County, located somewhere (judging by the cast's accents) in the southern USA. Throughout the series, the brothers get mixed up in various hijinx, including babysitting a pair of rival budding evil geniuses, accidentally entering Tuck's girlfriend into a porno photoshoot, helping a rookie journalist try to prove the existence of the local lake monster to the world, training a junior boxer to fight the town bully, and even MST-ing Nip's movies.
Tropes in the comic:
- All Just a Dream
- All-Natural Snake Oil
- Asleep for Days: The effect of the medicine.
- Author Tract: Taken to great lengths with various strawman attacks on environmentalism, feminism and liberalism in general right from the first couple of pages. (see Straw Character section below)
- And despite Nip and Tuck largely beingy irresponsible gun-loving pyromaniacs, Southerners are DEFINITELY NOT as portrayed in the media.
- Beautiful All Along: Played straight with Thelma here... with help from Tuck.
- A bit with Zelda Porcupine as well.
- Thelma is debatable. On the one hand, Tuck did ask her to the dance only after she gussied up, but on the other, Tuck admits that he had feelings for Thelma from the very beginning and had no idea how to deal with those emotions. Whether this is good storytelling or an Ass Pull is left up to the reader. [edit expansion]
- Beneath Notice
- Big Damn Heroes
- Brain Bleach
- Bullet Time
- Butt Monkey: Gilly Gopher.
- Cats Have Nine Lives
- Chessmaster: Nip Todd and Eugene Possum are these.
- Contrived Coincidence
- Cool People Rebel Against Authority: Subverted by "Rebel Cry".
- Creepy Child: Tagger on occasion.
- Curious As a Monkey
- Department of Child Disservices: Tagger's family when they hear about their son had aced the aptitude test... Oh, the torture.
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Tuck: Well, I s'pose you're learning all sorts o' new things...
—Tagger: Yeah. I learned tofu gives you th' scoots.
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- Determinator: Bandit during a boxing match against a pig a lot bigger than him. He gets beaten to a pulp and still refuses to drop for a while.
- Believe it or not, Straw Liberal Gilly Gopher is also one. While others would have realized long ago that Malarkey County isn't too kind to Know Nothing Know It Alls, he just keeps on trying to convince his neighbors he has the right idea.
- Dramatic Wind
- Due to The Dead
- The Empire
- Everyone Loves Blondes
- Cute Kitten
- Fan Girl
- Fan Service: And Fan Disservice, in the same comic here, and implied here.
- Flash Back
- A Friend in Need
- Frivolous Lawsuit
- Funny Foreigner: Both Mikhail and Schlep.
- Funetik Aksent: Skip this comic if you have no patience for these.
- Furry Comic
- Glory Hound
- Gonk: THIS guy.
- Good People Have Good Sex: Ma and Pa Todd. Much to Tuck's displeasure.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck: Subverted on maybe one or two occasions, both times, surprisingly, by Nip Todd.
- Green-Skinned Space Babe
- Hand or Object Underwear: Found in the very first strip when Nip knocks his own and his brother's dress clothing in the river right after throwing their old clothes in.
- Hostage Situation
- I Gave My Word
- Imagine the Audience Naked: Subverted when Zelda Porcupine is having to face Nip as her interviewee... And getting an eyeful of Nip (complete with Bishie Sparkle) at the Pool Scene...!
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Zelda's friend and assistant, Charlotte: "You put his clothes back on right this minute, young lady!---" |
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- For Zelda, this was a true Mr. Fanservice moment.
- Inelegant Blubbering: Tuck after seeing Thelma in a bikini.
- In the Blood
- I See Them, Too
- Jerkass: Gus Gunthrie and his cronies, as well as any of the characters on occasion.
- Micheal Moby, before and after his stint in Malarkey County.
- Karma Houdini: "Sweet Momma" Smith in the "Model Search / Finding Thelma" story arc.
- Subverted in the case of Gus Gunthrie, the town bully.
- La Résistance: the heroes in the movie "Man on the Border" and "Rebel Cry".
- Last Request
- Last Stand
- Leave No Survivors
- Little Stowaway
- Love Triangle: There was one between Zelda, Gilly, and Nip.
- Luminescent Blush: Nip when he is told something... rather explicit.
- And let's not forget Thelma... right here!
- Magical Girl
- Missing Mom
- Monologuing
- Motor Mouth: Thelma turns into this when she gets selected for the Top 20 in the beauty contest. Third panel in.
- My Eyes Are Up Here: Why Hortence opted for the wig.
- Non-Mammalian Hair: Subverted with Hortence the lizard, who wears a wig.
- Non-Mammal Mammaries: Played straight for the most part, but averted for Hortence the lizard.
- No OSHA Compliance
- Not Quite Dead
- Not So Different: There was a period of comic strips early in the series' run, titled Redneck Rebuttal, that pointed out that many redneck stereotypes can also be applied to numerous Democrat Party members.
- or to various yuppies, city slickers, Hollywood elites....
- The "family tree not branching" joke was applied to European Royalty. The Hapsburgs come to mind...
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Nip, despite acting like a moron with no sense of self preservation, ends up outsmarting quite a few people. Although, in a way, this isn't completely his fault, as outsiders often assume he is an idiot based on his accent and looks.
- Odd-Shaped Panel
- Pet the Dog
- The Promise
- Rage Against the Author: Not rage so much as confusion, but Bandit Ringtail's owner was somewhat let down by the way that his comic commission ended (no closure, didn't adhere to his script).
- Reason You Suck Speech: When Zelda says something Micheal Moby didn't like hearing, he starts yelling at her in a nasty name-calling tirade, which seriously pisses off Zelda, causing her to call Moby out on his so-called status quo. It is delivered BEAUTIFULLY.
- Reality Ensues
- Reality Is Unrealistic: The solemn importance of trying to avoid this.
- Rebus Bubble
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: The title characters, Nip and Tuck. While they're twin brothers, Nip is the rambunctious, loud one and Tuck is the cool, cynical one.
- Right Behind Me: Comic 811.
- It was even lampshaded on the same page.
- And then lampshaded the lampshading.
- It was even lampshaded on the same page.
- Royal Blood
- Royal Brat
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale
- Shout-Out: To Looney Tunes in comic 172.
- Rocky Horror Picture Show is invoked when Hortence tries to wear lingerie at her sleepover.
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Hortence: I look like I should be singing Sweet Transvestite! |
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- Again: Looney Tunes, when Bandit is searching for a wi-fi signal, he makes a stop at the 'Dew Drop Inn' (from the short Three Little Bops). First panel.
- Word of God, the "Dew Drop Inn" is actually a common name for low-caliber motels and hotels... it was not intended as a reference to the Loony Tunes, but it was a reference to the movie "One Crazy Summer"--- and the Charlie Daniels Band song "Uneasy Rider."
- Again: Looney Tunes, when Bandit is searching for a wi-fi signal, he makes a stop at the 'Dew Drop Inn' (from the short Three Little Bops). First panel.
- Show Within a Show
- Shrinking Violet: Zelda at first, to an almost painful degree. She gets better.
- Sickeningly Sweethearts: Thelma and Tuck become this trope occasionally.
- Snipe Hunt
- Something About a Rose
- Southern-Fried Genius: While Nip is not entirely an idiot, in early strips he is quite reckless; on the other hand, Tuck is definitely displaying this trope.
- Speechbubbles Interruption
- Splash of Color
- Squee
- Straw Feminist: Hortense, although she's otherwise depicted sympathetically.
- Straw Liberal: Gilly, the Todds' next door neighbour.
- Techno Babble
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill
- Through His Stomach
- Trickster: Eugene and Tagger. What's worse is that they're bitter rivals.
- Too Dumb to Live: Nip does things such as make ball lightning in a microwave and tries stunts out of the Jackass movies. He ends up graduating from stuntman school so he can make these moments into a career.
- Turn the Other Fist: Tuck gets in a Turn the Other Foot KICK here.... with some rather painful consequences.
- Victorious Childhood Friend: Thelma, to Tuck.
- Visible Silence
- Wall of Blather
- Watching Troy Burn
- We Need a Distraction / Wild Goose Chase: Upon hearing that Gus' buddies were gonna give Bandit a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown for him after the fight, Nip goes to the The Rusty Bucket... and crashing the place with a 4x4 ATV. The thugs give chase (and get chased in returned!), before they manage to catch Nip. Unfortunately for them, Nip called the Indy Wrestling Foundation Ladies Division long BEFORE he went there... as backup.
- What Is Evil?
- What the Hell, Hero?: After Bandit's savage beating by Guss in a boxing match, his idol, Sierra, comes to visit him in the hospital wing. She pulls on his nose briefly, then gives him a scathing speech about how stupid the situation was, saying that not only did Bandit get into a fight unnecessarily, he also let his temper get the best of him and nearly got himself killed challenging a guy twice his height and weight to defend the honor of someone he'd never met in person. While Bandit cringes away from this, the scene turns out to be kind of sweet since Sierra then kisses him on the cheek for the thought.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Malarky County is somewhere in the Deep South.
- Actually in a skit following the Straw Liberal's rant and unsuccessful attempts to save face Texas is mentioned.
- Odd, since Hortence makes mention that it's cold nine months out of a year, and several strips (Especially during the Bandit arc) showed a pretty strong winter.
- Some areas of Appalachia can have a lot of snow.
- And if you're a lizard, Spring and Autumn are probably on the uncomfortable side of cool...
- Wretched Hive: The Rusty Bucket, hangout of Gus Gunthrie and his equally nasty friends.
- Malarkey County was thought of this in the early strips, no thanks to the Strawman News Media.