Culture Shock is a fantasy/comedy webcomic written and drawn by Reed Hawker.
It follows the event's of a knight from 700 years ago named Alec who was sent to the present to search for an evil witch. He is taken in by Lane, the runner of a hacking ring, and forced to live with a ninja named Tadashi who apparently only came to America to save random women from muggers. In exchange for the shelter, Alec and Tadashi are sent on frequent missions to fight... some kind of rival company or something. About midseries, the officer in charge of that area, Officer Foxx, moves into Lane's apartment building, deciding to oversee Lane's illegal actions for some reason or another. A few comics later Alec's elf "girlfriend" from the past, Brooke, moves in with Foxx.
As the title may suggest, the series focuses mostly on the Time Traveling Couple and resident ninja's adjustment to modern America.
Tropes appearing in Culture Shock:
- Anime Hair: A lot, but most notably Tadashi's
- Breather Episode: Several of the early strips.
- Cassandra Truth - Foxx has trouble believing the whole "time travel", "witch", and "elf" thing.
- Continuity Nod - The Witch looks suspiciously like Yvonne of Alt-Ctrl-Dimension, an earlier comic that has since been discontinued.
- The Ditz: Brooke
Brooke: ...and after hitting glass six times, I figured out how to see it! |
- Eternal English
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The strip is about people from the past in the present, and a ninja in America. There's also this bit of dialogue:
Foxx: So what's with the elf ears? |
- Fictional Counterpart: "Corporate-Mart" Notably after the "McDonalds" Product Placement
- Fish Out of Temporal Water
- Fridge Logic: Alec's "ten-year celibacy period" should be over by 690 years by now.
- Maybe he's counting ten years of personal time? Plus, he takes his quest pretty seriously.
- Highly-Visible Ninja - Tadashi, who seems to only be aware of the popular culture version of the ninja and woefully uninformed about stealth.
- Idiot Hero
- I Know Mortal Kombat: Or more like
"I've mastered Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and Tekkens 1, 2, and 4" |
- Knight in Shining Armor: Alec.
- MacGuffin: The witch.
- Magnificent Bastard: Lane
- Perma Stubble: Lane
- Product Placement - Take That: Many and many of times. Often overlapping.
- Rescue Romance: Tadishi's motivation. Brooke and Alec.
- Younger Than They Look: according to this strip, Lane is a kid.