Vexxarr

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Spoorflix (in spacesuit), Minionbot, Sid, and Vexxarr in their native habitat: Assigning blame for failures.

"Your logic is your weakness..."

Vexxarr is a comedy Sci-Fi webcomic by Hunter Cressall. The initial setup sounds similar to Invader Zim: An alien Evil Overlord sends his flunky to conquer earth, mostly to get him out of the way. However, it plays out quite differently. For starters, the flunky Vexxarr is quite well aware that he is incompetent, or in his own words: "Let's say I know a thing or two about being volunteered for one-way missions." Secondly, Vexxarr tries an open invasion, with War of the Worlds-esque walkers. It fails miserably, and Vexxarr is captured. Initially, the comic showed Vexxarr living on earth. After a while though, Vexxarr was allowed to leave, and since then the comic has centered on Vexxarr's journey through the galaxy, and trying to find a place that isn't inhabited by something that wants him dead. Or worse.

During his travels, he has picked up several new passengers, as much as Vexxarr would wish otherwise. Currently, Vexxarr's crew includes his robotic lackey Minionbot, his ship AI Carl, a legion of repair drones, Sploorfix and Sid. To give an idea of Vexxarr's typical day: The first three either diss him, play pranks on him, or try to kill him, Sploorfix shifts between Emo-mode and Wide-Eyed Idealist-mode, and Sid is a member of a prey species that is terminally afraid, despite being virtually indestructible. In short, if at any time Vexxarr's incompetence is insufficient to ruin his day, one of his "friends" will do it for him.

Tropes used in Vexxarr include:

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Pretty much all of them, and often lampshaded.

Vexxarr: You managed to subvert your entire core programming by literally obeying its every word. Carl: We're inteligent machines. It's what we do.

• • Vexxarr only feels safe and comfortable around the robots that are actively trying to kill him. If they offer to help, that's when he gets worried.
• Alien Arts Are Appreciated: The Mahakalosians offer to build ships for Earth in exchange for(among other things) original pressings of Adam Ant records and nine tons of oreo cookies.
• Alien Invasion: One by Vexxarr, which failed. A second one is defeated by using technology stolen from Vexxarr.
• Ambiguous Innocence: Sid is so innocent that he actually comes around at cynicism from the other side.
• Anti-Hero: Vexxarr slips between a type IV and a type V. This tends to depend on how insane the situation has currently driven him.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Don't tell an (overly) friendly Schlumpoid that "hospital" and "food factory" mean the same thing...

Sploorfix: I want to see their eyes as they burn.

• Blind Jump: Vexxarr once punched in random coordinates for a jump, which naturally landed them directly in front of the fleet they were trying to avoid. Later Vexxarr also suggests a true Blind Jump (when his ship computer is busy with a megalomaniac rant), and Minion bot points him at the button for that procedure. That button doubles as the Self Destruct button, seeing how it does the same thing.
• Brick Joke: The first trial of using a cybernetic prothesis to hug another schlumpoid fails. A few dozen comics later, when the hugger and the queen schlumpoid encounter their species' Hive Mind....
• Brain Bleach: Rock crab reproductive activities.

Vexxarr: If I could, I'd travel back in time and sever my own family line to unknow that.

• Brown Note: Hearing, or reading, Sploorfix's lifejournal posts will cause almost any AI to self-terminate.
• Brutal Honesty: A case of Be Careful What You Wish For

Schlumpoid Queen: I would like to ask you something, and I want a straight answer. Tell me the unvarnished truth,no matter how much it may hurt. [snip] Is our civilization also in decline? Schlumpool: No, but only because it is so pathetic it has nowhere to decline from. Schlumpoid Queen: Ok... I'm going to ask again and I want a direct lie. Pile one on so high I can't see daylight over its height.

• But for Me It Was Tuesday: A variation - it's not that they intend for anyone to get hurt, but because of Vexxarr's Cosmic Plaything status, there tends to be...er... some karmic overflow...

Minionbot: Have we yet again condemned an otherwise innocent species to brutal and premature extinction? Vexxarr: What makes you say that? Minionbot: Is it a Thursday?

• • • (And yes, they have).
  • Again when Vexxarr feels there's still something missing from the news that the ship is without power and at the mercy of a malevolent species.

Carl: Structural failure? Vexxarr: Nope. Carl: Reactor breach? Vexxarr: Be dissapointed if it hadn't Carl: Bleeding atmosphere into space... Vexxarr: It's a Thursday.

• Card-Carrying Villain: The plant AI's, from their first conversation, are quite clear about their plans with Vexxarr. It doesn't get better either.

AI: Now, let's discuss your feelings. Start with pain.

• The Chew Toy/Iron Butt Monkey: It moves over the scale, but the theme remains. The crew are regularly hurled across the cabin by uncompensated acceleration, decompressed, crushed, beaten up, chewed on by monsters, or scorched by energy entities, and yet never take permanent harm. Also, the ship remains unaffected by frequent collisions with asteroids, space debris and other ships.
  • However, the temporary damage they incur will often be very painful to repair.
  • As Vexxarr commented on the statue of himself as a literal chew toy -

It merely sums up a feeling I've had my whole life but couldn't quite put into words...

• Chewbacca Defense: For no real reason really, but effective nontheless.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Vexxarr's main way of keeping Carl in line.
• Cosmic Plaything: Vexxarr.
  • Vexarr becomes aware of this even before then:

Vexxarr: Just determine the most hazardous place (the warp sabot) could have gone and start our search there... Carl: I hate to say it but he has a certain practical logic... Minionbot: I concur... past experience supports this. Vexxarr: Whoa whoa whoa... stop right there! What have I told you both? We do not...ever...goad the universe!

• Cowardly Lion: Sid, like all rock-crabs, is afraid of almost everything, despite the fact that very little can hurt him.
  • To make it even weirder he feeds on radiation, like that produced by Bleen weapons and antimatter explosions. So he loves the things that most sane beings would fear the most.
• Dangerously Genre Savvy: Vexxarr's usual high level of Genre Savviness can sky-rocket into this occasionally. Usually this is directly proportional to how insane a bad situation has become.
• Deadpan Snarker: Vexxarr, Minionbot and Carl. Vexxarr and Carl have ribbing matches that go on for panels.
• Delicious Distraction: Used deliberatly by Vexxarr whenever a stressful situation arises. And they arise often...to the point Sploorfix has picked up the habit.

Vexxarr: First of all their planet was in the way and second it's triple layer carrot cake. See? There are raisins...

• Depth Deception: For the reader.
• The Drag Along: Vexxarr hates it when things get interesting.

Vexxarr: All I want is a safe place where I can enjoy a little cake and Xbox and instead I find bizarre civilisations in danger of unintended self-extermination. And then they want help. From me.

• Don't Explain the Joke: Or the threat, either.
• Dysfunction Junction: The crew consists of a Master Computer who, by way of entertainment, regularly plots Vexxarr's demise or makes him think the ship is doomed, a sarcastic robot very similar to the computer, a Wide-Eyed Idealist composed of nothing but eyestalks, and a prey species terminally afraid of being eaten despite the fact that it is Nigh Invulnerable. And Vexxarr himself, a lazy Snark Knight for whom seething rage and frustration is the default.
• Even Evil Has Standards:

Forebearer's computer: Your logic is cold, selfserving and unerring in it's cruelty. And that's comming from an renegade AI

• Everything Trying to Kill You: And everyone. By the time Vexxarr has gotten through facilitating an all-out war between the Bleen and the Lattrox, the only people's hit list he isn't on is the humans and their allies. And that's a pretty damn tiny percentage of the space-faring races, considering that it amounts to about... 3.
  • And he knows it.

Carl: What's life without a little danger? (beat) Vexxarr: How the hell would I know!?

• Evil Overlord: The emperor of Bleen.
• Evil Versus Evil:

Sploorfix: You want to spark a war between Bleen and the Lattrox? A war in which millions of intelligent, innocent beings will perish? Vexxarr: No, no. See, the Lattrox and Bleen would be fighting.... each other...

• False Reassurance: Well...
• Fastball Special: The result of the Nigh Invulnerability of the rock-crabs, and their access to a mass driver cannon.

Bleen: We've been hit! Hull breach, port side. Rock-crab: Excuse me. May I have directions to your airlock? I need to get back for the second salvo.

• Five-Man Band: probably the most anti-heroic in the history of science fiction but in any case, this is how the line-up looks after Sid has joined up:
  • The Hero: Vexxarr - (our Deadpan Snarker leader who the universe is continuously trying to kill)
  • The Lancer: Carl - (the homicidal ship A.I. who continually bickers with, torments and tries to kill Vexxarr... before going along with every one of his insane strategies)
  • The Smart Guy: Minionbot - (the Automaton who knows far too much about how all the circuitry of the ship and droids work, including a couple of life-saving-important secrets that he conveniently forgets to mention)
  • The Big Guy: Sid - (the silicon life-form who despite being a Cowardly Lion, is indestructible)
  • The Chick: Sploorfix/Sid - (and Sploorfix, who makes many heart-felt entreaties for everyone to stop fighting... all of which are Death Incarnate for any machine within visual or audio range)
• Genre Savvy: Vexxarr has become increasingly savvy about his attempts to find safety, to the point of having a betting pool on how long after encountering anything they would be attacked or ordered to surrender.

Vexxarr: Usually by this time we'd hear... an alien ship: Alien vessel, Do not attempt to flee or we will be forced to destroy you... Vexxarr: ...alright, fifty-seven seconds. Who had fifty-seven seconds? Minionbot: I had five dollars on fifty-seven but it was under 'Prepare to be assimilated...'

• A God Am I: Minionbot reprograms the repair drones to recognise Vexxarr as their deity. It goes about as well as you would imagine.

Drone (producing a software patch): {int Add(the green lout had it coming); };

• Good Is Not Nice: Vexxarr is a borderline type IV Anti-Hero who can be quite vindictive when he wants to be. But he still has a conscience - albeit one he has tried to literally bash out of his own head - and he will - in the end - do the right thing. He is not going to be nice about it though. Ever. And depriving him of cake is probably going to send him off the deep end.
• Gravity Sucks: Averted hard; at one point Vexxarr actually tries to hide in a black hole's accretion disk, relying on his invincible hull to protect him against the radiation. It almost worked, too.
• Gun Porn: In the early, black and white days of the comic, the art of earth's millitary equipment looked significantly more detailed than the characters.
• Gunship Rescue: Giant Mecha Rescue actually.

Vexxarr: If they think an insanely heroic rescue is in the works, they're in for an enormous disappointment... [sees combat mech with open cockpit] ...unless, of course, it would be unimaginably fun...

• Hammerspace: Vexxarr can conjure a paper list of research projects performed by Bleen AI seemingly out of thin air. The explanation: It's just that important to remember how any research project headed by an AI has Gone Horribly Wrong and ended with the creation of a tiny sun. (Except the one that ended with a super massive black hole.)
• Hive Mind:

Schlumpool: I am your Hive Mind! Schlumpoid Queen: Oh, don't be ridiculous. Schlumpoids don't have a Hive Mind. Schlumpool: I can prove it to you. Aid: I can't imagine how. Queen: The idea is too ridiculous for words. Aid: I believe everything you say. Queen: I trust you implicitly. Aid: You have my sword. (beat) Ok. That was disturbing beyond words.

• The Heart: Sploorflix keeps trying to get everyone to work together, help all the creatures they come across, and wants everyone to live in love and peace. Unfortunately, for him, he's in the wrong universe and within a lightyear vicinity of Vexxarr and Carl, where his extreme idealism does not hold up well in the face of Vexxarr's wormhole of cynicism. However, he does still manage to drag Vexxarr's conscience out into the open more than once, though, pulling their somewhat dysfunctional crew into doing the right thing. ...Eventually.
• Humans Are Special: Originally it seemed like Humans Are Warriors but the Mahakalosians stated that "Urthers" were not a warrior race due to the simple fact that they are neither unified nor extinct. Rather they are special because they are willing to work together with others.
• Humiliation Conga: An almost permanent one.

Vexxarr: So this is what it has come to... my dignity... had I any left... would get a devastating blow from this.

• Insult Backfire: An interesting example. Anytime Vexxarr claims that all machine life is murderous and always planning the destruction of organic life, his two robot crew will happily admit that he is correct.

Vexxarr: Not until that... that machine admits that it is a calculating, survival obsessed, self-centered, tyrant wannabee with a pathological hatred of anything organic! Carl: Yep. That's me to a tee. Shall we continue to the Lattrox DMZ? Vexxarr: By all means.

• Kicked Upstairs: Lampshaded

Emperor: Admiral, if you conquer these hu-mons in a single day, I shall make you ruler of their puny planet. Admiral: Thank you, your eminence. And if I should take two days? Emperor: I shall make you pretend to enjoy it. Admiral: One day it is then.

• Let's Get Dangerous: ... Everyone should be running, right about now.

Minionbot: ...before you begin this line of inquiry, do I have sufficent time to tunnel to an adjacent universe?

• Logic Bomb: Sploorfix's LiveJournal is a Weapon of Mass Depression.
• Long Runner: Strip hit #1000 on Monday June 6th.
• Manipulative Bastard: Vexxarr is slowly and steadily becoming a candidate for Magnificent Bastard, if not for the war he started between the two most aggressive races in the galaxy in order to get them to wipe each other out, then For this right here.
• Medical Horror: The Lattrox use the same word for 'hospital' and 'food factory'.
• Mohs Scale of Sci Fi Hardness: Although there are realistic parts or ideas throughout the comic, in general the Rule of Fun and Rule of Cool override realism.
  • Generally to awesome effect.
• Multiple Reference Pun: present in the titles often. References include Ghost in the Shell, Do androids dream of Electric sheep?, Isaac Asimov, Pink Floyd, South Park, Watchmen, Doctor Who, Sam Pekinpah, Ockham's Razor, Rage Against the machine... the full list is really long.
• Noodle Incident: When Carl and Minionbot are reviewing the results of simulated drone operations, we don't get to see what they're looking at, but we do hear the names Carl gave the various simulations, such as Ode to places a cutting torch should never go, Three drones, one airlock and no sense, and the cautionary tale about plasma torches, hypergolic fuel and explosive decompression called Don't.
• "No Respect" Guy: Vexxarr
• Not So Different: Vexxarr and Carl, to their mutual horror.
• Oddly Small Organization: The Bleen destroyer crew.

Ship Commander: Helmsman, put me on shipwide. I want to address the entire crew. Helmsman: We're both right here, sir.

• Oh Crap: Vexxarr's 'face' is very well suited for the appropriate expression. And of course, his status as Cosmic Plaything gives him plenty of opportunity to use it, like here.
• Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: Bleen never had religion, thanks to their race memory. Also, while on earth, he gets a visit from an annoying evangelist.

Evangelist: You're not one of those heretics that believes we evolved from monkeys are you? Vexxarr: Me? No. We evolved from cnidarians. Evangelist: ... you don't actually know that! Vexxarr: We have video.

• • Though Minionbot was briefly a Buddhist, and later he convinced the repair drones that Vexxarr (aka The Keeper of the Off Switch) was a god.
• Outrun the Fireball: Lampshaded.

Minionbot: How big is the fireball, and how fast do we need to travel to outrun it? Vexxarr: That's a tough question to answer. The fireball in question has our ship's ID and description...and it's possible we may owe it a lot of money.

• Properly Paranoid: Just checking.
• Pungeon Master: Sploorfix approaches this at times, much to Vexxarr's and Carl's utter dismay and horror.

Vexxarr (strangling Sploorfix): No court in the land! Do you hear me? No court in the land!

• Refusal of the Call: Vexxarr generally tries to refuse, but that never works out.
• Rubber Forehead Aliens: Averted, all aliens look decidedly non-human. The only strange thing is that despite Vexxarr's single eye, his eyebrow shows the exact same position-by-emotion as two human eyebrows would. See his angry-look (his look for roughly 90% of the comic.) in the trope picture.
• Sarcasm Mode: Vexxarr, frequently and repeatedly.

Vexxarr: I'm not the marauding warlord I may have led you to believe. Human general: Noooooooooo. Surely you lie. Vexxarr: Hey! The biting sarcasm is MY bit. Wound my pride with your own material, Bucko.

• Sarcastic Devotee: Carl has unwillingly become this to Vexxarr over time. That said, if he ever found this out, he would probably fly straight into an asteroid.
• Scary Dogmatic Aliens. The Conquistador variant. They're only doing it for the cake.
• Scenery Porn: Many comics that take place in space use real astronomical pictures as background, see the trope picture.
• Shooting Superman: It takes a while for everyone to realize that Sid, and the other Rock Crabs Are Immune to Bullets, beam weapons, explosions and blunt trauma. By now it's begun happening off-sceen, and we get to see the Reaction Shot instead.
• Snarky Non Organic Sidekick: Minionbot to Vexxarr. Not that either are entirely happy with the arrangement.
• Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: In-universe.

When you are aboard an alien construct of uncertain design and purpose, you touch nothing! You have no way of knowing if a lever could vent the atmosphere into space...if...if a switch could activate flesh-eating nanobots! Until you have studied everything, you have to assume that this station's sole purpose was to isolate and destroy you personally! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!

• Stop Helping Me!: It does actually help, it's just humiliating.
• Sufficiently Advanced Alien: There are an assortment of 'Ascended Races' in the comic, generally with rather strange agendas. Vexxarr despises these, with fairly good reason. Later even Sploorfix (whom even the Lattrox won't eat) starts seeing them as pests.
• Take That: Once earth starts to expand, they have James Cameron help the army with their first-encounter protocols. If the army's and Cameron's protocols ever agreed, the army changed theirs. Also, it is suggested several times that the Pontiac Aztec is the ugliest thing in the universe.
  • Ouch, Sony.
• Technical Pacifist. Parodied with the locutrons.

Locutron: Great Orator, I swear these ships and the thousands like them have been built to carry your message of peace and fraternity to all intelligent systems in the nebula. Their mission is one of peace. We wish to show nothing but our love for all living things. Vexxarr: Yet I can't help but notice that your envoys of are bristling with weapons. Locutron: There is, of course, always the slight possibility that they will not love us back. Vexxarr: Word of advice? Keep 'em charged.

• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Vexxarr's own robotic allies frequently give him one. And then there's the hostile AI left by the Schlumpoid Forebearers, who gives them to any Schlumpoid in range. They actually make use of it by assigning him to teach a class called 'Stasis: The failure of Schlumpoid Culture.'

AI: Welcome class. I want to begin by saying that no matter how your grades turn out, I will be giving each of you an F. Schlumpoid: What? What have we done to deserve that? AI: By the end of the semester, I expect you to tell me.

• Thrown Out the Airlock: Both Vexxarr and Carl try to do this to Sid. It never sticks.

Sploorfix: Just tell me what you think of when you look at him. Vexxarr: The airlock.

• • Later done with consent to Minionbot to disengage the malfunctioning hyperdrive.

Minionbot: ...because saving the ship inevitably results in Sploorfix blogging about it. And I am therefore safer out here!

• Translator Microbes: Justified, since Vexxarr is telepathic. However, all newly picked up crew members can not only talk to Vexxarr, but also to each other without problems (No mouths are ever seen on them either, and Sid lived in a vacuum, so perhaps they communicate telepathically too).
  • The Mahakalosians are an exception. At least until they learned Bleen.
• Unsound Effect: Oh so many...
• Weapons Grade Vocabulary: Weapons grade pleading?

Spoorflix: What...what happened to them all? Vexxarr: That would be you.

• What Does This Button Do?: Vexxarr tries to discourage this behavior in Sid. It doesn't stick.

Sid: There was a button. Its function was unknown to me...

• • Recently Vexxarr himself went through this, when trying to figuer out how to disengage a planetwide cloaking system from a console that was also invisible. There were some... problems.
• Wetware CPU: Most AIs it seems.
• Who's Laughing Now?: After managing to successfully impersonate the leader of a group of vegetable-based AI that have been trying to kill him, he vents pretty much all of the frustration he's accumulated over the course of the strip through creative vengeance

Sploorfix: What are you thinking? Minionbot: That Vexxarr has been in space entirely too long.

• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Spoorflix. [Insert Eye-oriented pun here].
• Wisdom from the Gutter: Comes from Sploorfix. At least if you ask Vexxarr, anyway.

Vexxarr: Get back here this instant and start spouting gibberish until my worldview is centered!

• Xanatos Speed Chess: Vexxarr eventually becomes far too good at a strange mix between this and Indy Ploy, courtesy of a mix of extreme paranoia, excessive cynicism, unfathomable Genre Savviness ... and a long career as the universe's favourite Plaything. Often leads to a Moment of Awesome. Carl is a frequent contributor.
• You Have Failed Me...: SOP for the Bleen.

Bleen commander: Look, I'm going to make this easy for you. Either tell me whether or not that planet is indeed the earth or throw yourself out of the airlock. Your choice. [.....] Command makes for a lonely life. That, and flushing your bridgecrew into space.

• • Granted, spacing is not fatal to the Bleen, but after the number of acolytes in orbit became a navigational hazard the Emperor started vaporizing them instead.
• Your Head Asplode: Robots actually win arguments this way.
  • Also, Minionbot once lost four heads in a row to Vexxarr's logic bombing raid.