The Dreadful

A webcomic written and drawn by Matt Speroni of How I Killed Your Master fame, The Dreadful is a fantasy story in a Wild West setting. It stars Kit, a cute demon ("Devikin") gunslinger who wields the eponymous weapon, a magical pistol. It also has a fairly strong supporting cast, that is becoming more developed as the comic goes on. These include Boozloaf, a minotaur preacher; Erin, a winged sniper; and Liz, a sharpshooter who once ran with the same gang Kit did.

The story begins with our heroine shot in the back and left to bleed out in an alley. Someone called Judge Catherine finds her lying there and whisks her away. She recovers after two days in the hospital and is taken to meet with a detective agency. They task her to hunt down and kill the leader of her old gang, Jeanne Noelle. Given that Jeanne was more than likely the one who ordered her shot, Kit has no problem with this. But the job may not be as simple as it first appears...

You can find it here.

Tropes used in The Dreadful include:

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: The Feather Sword chops through the monkey-like villains like they are made of tissue paper.
• Accidental Aiming Skills: Erin shoots Liz's cigarette in half at night, and the lines around her nose indicate that her attention was drawn to it by smell. However, Word of God is that this was just an awesome-looking accident.
• Anachronism Stew: The setting is nominally Wild West / Weird West and the standard sidearm is a single-action revolver, but then you have things like Burke's drum-fed grenade launcher, and meta-references to .jpgs.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Chapter 4 leaves Kit and focuses on Erin, a Winged Humanoid who is carrying out Jeanne's contract on Liz.
• Art Evolution: Kit gets lips on page 62, and the overall style moves from Animesque to more realistic. Unusually, it's a deliberate and immediate shift rather than a gradual change.
• Attack Backfire: Combat Tentacles aren't so useful if they're stuck in a tree.
• Axe Crazy: Burke, who was planning to kill Liz and feed her to a steadily increasing chain of predators.
• Bad Boss: Burke again, who shoots a henchman for making a bad joke.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Strongly averted. Kit looks like hell (no pun intended) after her first zombie fight.
• Berserk Button: Don't imply anything unpleasant about Poe in Kit's presence.
  • Also, don't call her Pinky. If you do, this happens.
• Bifauxnen: Liz
• Bilingual Bonus: Erin the German bird lady.
• Body Horror: That... thing that takes over Burke's corpse. Euuugh.
  • Its offspring don't disappoint, either.
• Bottle Fairy: Kit.
• Bullying a Dragon: The show-off gunman - who had just seen Kit disarm multiple opponents (and is still holding her gun) - who tries to intimidate Kit with his gun-twirling skills and bravado. It turns into a literal case of Too Dumb to Live.
• Bus Crash: After being briefly introduced early on, "Muttonchops" and the centaur agent initially sent to accompany Kit reappear several dozen strips later as heads on pikes.
• Chekhov's Gunman: That fairy Liz had in the bottle.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Burke, again.
• Cold Sniper: apparently the case with Liz, a sharpshooter who is also kind of a taciturn bitch.
  • And then there's Erin
• Cool Guns: Erin uses a Mauser c96 as a sidearm
• Cool Horse: Jeanne appears to ride a draught horse, possibly a Clydesdale.
• Cute Little Fangs: They go with the horns.
• Cute Monster Girl: Kit and her sister, Poe.
• Defiant to the End: See Facing the Bullets One-Liner.
• The Dreaded: Jeanne Noelle. Even Liz calls her the most dangerous person alive.
• Eloquent in My Native Tongue: Erin's English could use some work.
• Eyes of Gold: Kit, and presumably Poe.
• Facing the Bullets One-Liner: Erin, who says the German equivalent of "Kiss my ass."
• Fantastic Racism: Devikin aren't particularly liked, and aren't given many opportunities in civilized society.
• Fantastic Slurs: "Pinky" seems to be one for Devikin like Kit and Poe.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink
• Foreign Cuss Word: "Leck mich."
• Forgot to Feed the Monster: here.

Liz: Wow, I forgot I had this fairy in a bottle thing.

• • Astonishingly enough, this becomes a plot point when Ith, the starved fairy, resurrects Erin by possessing her.
• Genre Savvy: Upon seeing the slug-revived things, Erin and Ith instantly guess that they are zombies and shooting them in the head would be the best course of action.
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: Except that these particular zombies apparently don't work that way.
• Gentle Giant: Boozloaf
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Liz constantly has a cigarette drooping from her mouth, highlighting her hard-boiled and cynical nature.
• Great Offscreen War: Referenced in one comic.
• Guns Akimbo: Combine Kit, a pair of AK-47s, and a giant, fire-breathing eagle. What do you get? Awesome.
• The Gunslinger: Inevitable, this being a Western.
  • Type A: Kit, Liz
  • Type B: Burke
• Hand Cannon: The title appears to refer to one of these. Burke also has one that fires grenades.
  • The eponymous pistol is actually closer to a Wave Motion Handgun.
• Hat Damage: Well, it is a western.
• Hellish Pupils: Kit's are vertical.
• Hime Cut: Poe
• Hitman with a Heart: Partially the case with Kit.

Liz: "Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot you was a killer with standards."

• Horned Humanoid: Seems to be standard for devikin.
• Hotblooded Sideburns: Muttonchops.
• Hurricane of Puns: Kit and Boozloaf enjoy slinging these back and forth.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: What Liz thinks of them In-Universe.

Liz: Did Kit just puke lightning? Boozloaf: What a shock! Liz: Not now. Boozloaf: I'm sorry, it was just set up so perfectly.

• Hyperspace Arsenal: Lampshaded:

Liz: "Where'd that beam go, anyway?" Kit: "Let's not dwell on questions about how The Dreadful works."

• Imagine Spot: Liz imagines herself blowing Kit's brains out in response to the aforementioned Hurricane of Puns.
• Immune to Bullets: Burke takes one between the eyes and it only annoys him.
  • All devikin are as long as they aren't silver (though Kit is tough even by those standards). It can still knock them out for a while, particularly if you get them in the head.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Kit apparently has them. She's able to go one better than Blasting It Out of Their Hands by shooting the hammer off of a cocked and loaded rifle.
  • Aptly demonstrated again here, where she shoots the hammer of a revolver in midair and causes it to fire into the man's face.
• Insistent Terminology: Kit's not a pinky. She's a devikin.
• Instant Chucks: Bananachucks!
• In the Back: The first scene involves Kit being shot from behind.
• In Medias Res: See In the Back.
• Juggling Loaded Guns: Literally, here. What really pushes this into Too Dumb to Live territory is the fact that he's pressing Kit's Berserk Button while his pistol is in the air.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Burke.

"I'm the best around! Nothin's ever gonna keep me --" *gets hit by the Dreadful*

• Large Ham

Burke: No one interfere. This is my soup. And fortune... IS MY SPOON!!! The eggs I lay HATCH PAIN!!! I am a bolt of lightning in a lightning bolt factory!!

• Lightning Can Do Anything: Trying to get drunk on magical reagents can make you vomit lightning, with unpleasant results.
• A Load of Bull: Boozloaf, a minotaur preacher with a penchant for bad puns.
• Looks Like Cesare: Liz.
• Ms. Fanservice: Kit in the non-canon Eagle Beer arc.
• Monochromatic Eyes: Jeanne's eyes.
• Nice Hat: Kit's custom stetson. Liz also sports an army cap.
• No Mouth: Liz when she's got a cigarette (at least before the Art Evolution), which is nearly all the time.
• Not Me This Time: Liz's response to Kit's line of questioning.

Liz: I didn't try to kill you. That oughta be obvious seeing how you're still alive.

• Not Quite Dead: Erin
• Oh Crap: Kit's reaction when she finds out the hard way about Burke's immunity.
• Orifice Invasion: Spidermonster!Burke's slug offspring(?) do this to Burke's companion's corpses to reanimate them.
• Our Centaurs Are Different
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Burke seems to be something of an Expy of Yosemite Sam.
• Our Elves Are Better: They have excellent hearing, but the one we've seen thus far was killed too quickly to learn anything else from.
• Painting the Fourth Wall: After Ith revives Erin and they start Sharing a Body, Erin's speech is in the standard font for the comic, while Ith's is in a more "jagged" font.
• Pieta Plagiarism: Here
• Pinkerton Detective: The Jackson Detective Agency, aka "Jacks".
• Power At a Price: Burke's ring was enchanted to make him Immune to Bullets, but at the cost of his sanity.
• Power Incontinence: It appears Kit doesn't have perfect control over The Dreadful.
• Present Company Excluded:

Erin: Will nothing keep itself dead?! *realizes* Not that I am complaining, Ith.

• Pungeon Master: Boozloaf and Kit, at least when they're around each other.
• Punny Name: The Moomons. Word of God is that these cow-people only superficially resemble Mormons, their religion having nearly been called Cowtholic instead.
• Reality Ensues: For a given value of "reality". A posse shows up at Kit's hideout. Their arrogant leader threatens and insults Kit while flipping his gun around Revolver Ocelot-style. It looks like an epic gunfight is about to ensue, but Kit simply shoots the hammer of his gun mid-flip, causing it to shoot him in the head.
• Sadistic Choice: In flashback, after a job went bad, Jeanne gave Kit and Poe a choice. Either they kill the unarmed, bound and hooded bookkeeper that they took as a hostage, or Jeanne would do it. And if Jeanne did it, she would get creative about it.
• Sharing a Body: Erin and Ith (the fairy Liz had bottled up) as a result of a possession-based resurrection.
• Shout-Out:
  • To Black Mage of Eight Bit Theater, which is hosted on the same site.
  • To Dead Space

Erin: They look like zombies, so I assume the best place to shoot is the head. You agree? Ith: That is what I would suggest. Though Dr. Clarke in his essay on "Necromorphosis" suggests the limbs. I think he's a crackpot, personally.

• Sophisticated As Hell: Erin, the bird-lady, though maybe only apparent for those fluent in german.
• The Stoic: Liz, as a foil for Kit's flamboyance and adrenaline-junkie tendencies.
• Super Senses: Kit frequently points out that she has excellent night vision.
• Stylistic Suck: El Sabueso from this Omake comic was intentionally drawn like a character from a Rob Liefeld comic.
• Talkative Loon: Burke.
• Tall, Dark and Bishoujo: Judge Catherine
• Too Dumb to Live: See Reality Ensues above.
• Unexplained Recovery:
  • Kit was shot with cheap bullets.
  • Also Erin, with a little help from Liz's fairy.
• Wave Motion Gun: The eponymous gun, clearly.
• X Marks the Hero: Erin has one of these scars right in the center of her forehead, presumably due to the fact that that's where Liz shot her.
• The Wild West
  • Weird West
• Winged Humanoid: Erin, whom Word of God has confirmed is not an angel despite her appearance.
• Your Size May Vary: Kit's chest. For example, compare panel 1 with panel 5.