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Mephistopheles before putting the hurt down on a recurring villain.
Underling is a defunct web-comic about an ordinary teenager named Lazarus, fed up with society in general, and always in trouble with school. One day, a demon shows up and offers him the ability to rule the world. All he has to do is gather supplies for it, and then he'll have everything he wants! Unfortunately, it doesn't go that easy, and he ends up trapped wandering dimensions. Even worse, he's the spawn of Satan. Hilarity Ensues!
Underling began in 2009 and abruptly stopped in 2013. The original website has disappeared at some point after 2017, but a Wayback Machine archive of the comic can be read here.
Tropes used in Underling include:
- Adventurer Archaeologist
- Ancestral Weapon
- Anti-Anti-Christ: Lazarus is one of these.
- As Long as There Is Evil: Satan, though in this case it's actually more of a weakness.
- Badass Bookworm: Lazarus. At one point he uses chemistry and physics to collapse the roof on some pursuers.
- And at the start of the story, Laz gets a list of ingredients he has to pick up, number one being "The Tooth Of A Beast That Man Has Never Killed." It takes him less than ten seconds to figure that one out: One Dinosaur Tooth, coming right up.
- Batman Gambit: Lilitu (aka Lilith, aka Lazarus' real mom) has one of these going on. It involves stopping the Apocalypse and sticking it to Satan, and maybe stopping his depredations through the otherworlds. Of course, Lazarus remaining an Anti-Anti-Christ is a key component of the plan.
- Because Destiny Says So
- Bullfight Boss: Laz gets into one of these in.
- Brilliant but Lazy: Laz is bright but lacks motivation.
- Cool Gate
- Creepy Child: Lures Laz to play with her.
- Deadpan Snarker: Lazarus.
- Due to the Dead
- Face Palm: One of the monkey-people in page 51.
- Fish Out of Water: The main plot of the story.
- Genre Savvy
- Gods Need Prayer Badly: A slight variant. Supernatural beings are empowered by people knowing of them, and even more so by actual belief.
- What's more interesting is that a god doesn't necessarily NEED belief, depending on it's nature. Quetzalcoatl is a god of, among other things, learning, and rivers, which were around long before humans were, so even without belief, or even without humans, while he'd lose his powers, and even his form, he'd still exist. Satan, on the other hand, is basically a God of Evil, and evil is a purely human creation. No humans, no Satan. Period.
- Grave Robbing
- Half-Human Hybrid: Subverted. Lazarus is all demon, considering his mother's Lilith.
- Healing Coils
- Hollywood Atheist: Lazarus. Ganesha even lampshades it at one point.
- Imagine Spot: Lazarus gets one during the story of Ravana, on page fifty-eight.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Lazarus gets the double-whammy of finding out he's the offspring of Satan and Lilith.
- It Can't Get Any Worse
- It Was a Gift
- Monologuing
- The Nicknamer: All the Lilitu, which backfires when they call Lazarus " Nephewkins".
- The Power of Blood
- Punch Clock Villain: Mephistopheles and Adramelech. The former is basically Hell's bookkeeper (and dresses the part), the other is an old, washed-out god who resents having been forced to join The Legions of Hell by the rise of monotheism (he still does his job, though. Except no).
- Red Eyes, Take Warning
- Running Gag: Furry puns.
- Satan: Hekind of a dick, too.
- Standard Female Grab Area: here.
- Super-Deformed: Happens to Lilitu at one point.
- Take a Third Option
- This Is Gonna Suck: Lazarus's reaction to finding out he was in the temple of Ganesha, God of Obstacles.
- And he gets another when, after exhausting himself escaping from a saber toothed tiger, finds himself surrounded by half a dozen wolves.
- With Due Respect