A sequel to Captain N, and one of the few truly dramatic Sprite Comics out there—though the drama is often not as immediately apparent as the dark comedy.

Alex Williams was a 22-year-old college dropout, working at the local sub shop and spending way too much time playing emulated video games (hence his grades, and hence the "dropout" part). As he puts it, "trapped by my own fear and apathy, and doomed to become another mindless drone."

That was about the time something went wrong with one of Lucca's inventions in the land of Chrono Trigger, and Alex got sucked into Videoland to become the successor to one of his boyhood idols: Kevin Keene, the eponymous hero of "Captain N." The Game Master, however, was supposed to be someone pure of heart—so why a foul-mouthed, self-centered cynic?

Before long, things get complicated, and fast. Interdimensional kidnappings, incarnations of Alex's five chief vices (Arrogance, Hatred, Cynicism, Hypocrisy, and Apathy) trying to save him from a Fate Worse Than Death (by killing him, of course), a "Great Change" that occurred years before, a mysterious zombie, nested flashbacks, and repeated hints that one of the most important people involved in the goings-on may, in fact, be Alex's old baby-sitter.

Definitely worth a read, even if you're not familiar with any of the source material. Available through this link.

  • External Retcon: All sorts, like how the prissy, jerk Belmont that was helping Captain N was actually Simon Belmont's brother, Simone (silent "e"). An interesting question is whether or not these changes are due to Alex's perception of Videoland altering the reality.
  • Evil Gloating: In one case it directly led to the villain's undoing: For those interested, between Lucca's attacks, Palom's Bio, and the Frog Squash, not counting any damage from the ongoing poison damage, he had 54 HP when he enacted this plan.
  • Exact Words: "There is nothing you can say that can change my mind." Crono says nothing and changes her mind.
  • Face Palm: Alex upon realising that the book he got some time ago (of which he only read one page) is the manual that just might answer some of his questions about, among others, the Sovereign of Sorrow. Part of the problem is that he was Wrong Genre Savvy, having found the book in an RPG world, and assumed that the book only had one page. His companions at the time reinforced this notion, finding the notion of a 24-page book astonishing.
    • Protoman gets one himself in #731, when he finally dawned on him that
  • Fatal Family Photo: With Lampshade Hanging
  • Fantastic Racism: RPG sprites aren't well liked in Nexus, to the point where their natural behaviors are considered a psychological disorder. This is also because RPG Sprites have the ability to grow and develop, whereas most other sprites remain static.
  • Fence Painting: Alex uses this technique on Palom to get him to wash his pants and jacket after Palom vomits all over them.
  • Filler Strips: Many of them are omakes, however.
  • Fisher King: whatever impressions the Gamemaster held of Videoland's citizens before entering it seem to become true.
    • Not only this, but it's based on his videogames. Meaning, for instance, that if he got a whole bunch of items, the protagonists still have them. Cue "Alex has no life" joke.
  • Flaw Exploitation: Well, at least character exploitation:
  • Foregone Conclusion:
  • Fridge Logic: An in-universe example.
  • Fun with Acronyms: D.H.O.P.E.S.
  • Genre Savvy: Alex, among others
    • It didn't end up needing to be necessary, but that's only because Ultros dozed off during the ceremony.
      • gets a beauty right after the Eater of Dreams battle ends.
  • Glasses Pull: Braveshroom puts glasses on before making a speech to show that he means business. It even gets an Unsound Effect ("Glassified!").
  • God in Human Form: The Game Masters.
  • Goggles Do Nothing: Subverted: they do nothing for you if you don't have them. See...
  • Goggles Do Something Unusual: One of the Game Master's artifacts is a pair of goggles that are supposed to protect him from reality changes between worlds, and give him an automatic Libra, i.e. extensively detailed information, on anyone he looks at with them on. Unfortunately for him, the goggles were stolen away before he even knew that they existed.
  • Goldfish Poop Gang: Most of the members of the Daltonian Hyper-Oceanic Piratical Extortion Squad were these in their own games, and while they haven't had a major role yet, Alex's reaction to them indicates that they will become this to him.
  • Gone Horribly Right:
    • Dr. Wily ran as Haggar's running mate to try and take control of Nexus and run things behind the scenes. Unfortunately, after they got elected, Hagar started doing random things like abolishing taxes, appointing wrestlers to governmental positions and getting involved in expensive and pointless wars based off of obviously fraudulent testimony. Wily had to spend four years running things behind the scenes in order to control the damage he himself was not causing. And he couldn't cut and run because Blues would track him down and force him to listen to Garth Brooks.
    • Gone Horribly Wrong: All his attempts at invading people's minds has gotten Eggplant Wizard beaten up.
  • Good Bad Bugs: Used in-universe and deconstructed. Did you ever wonder what it would be like to live through one?
    • Another use of one here: Vanish + X-Zone!
  • Groin Attack: Alex delivers a well-deserved one to Boogerman.
  • Groundhog Day Loop: Poor Alex nearly got stuck in an endless loop between a save point and his first random encounter. Ironically, the only thing keeping him in the loop was his own stubborn pride.
  • Guest Strip
  • He Who Fights Monsters: Parodied. In one of the guest comics Braveshroom realizes this when, after defeating Bowser, he finds himself fighting against Mario using exactly the same strategy Bowser used:
  • I Have Many Names: Drab Lord,
  • Idiot Ball: If you're a video game character and you just entered Nexus, odds are you just picked it up big time.
  • Idiot Hero
  • I Just Want to Be Normal: Despite being touched by the Sovereign and knowing the truth, Erim just wants to live a normal life as Lufia rather than serve the Sovereign or continue her duties as the Sinistral of Death..
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: In an Omake arc, Alex learned to be a lawyer by "hitting the books", which meant attacking them RPG style, learning skills like "You learned 'Subpoena'." One of the characters in that particular strip thought it was quite lame, to say nothing of Alex being far too literal-minded in this case.
    • Eggplant Wizard has a non-stop barrage of these. Alex constantly wants to beat him senseless for this.
  • Infinite 1-Ups: Nexus's PLIF Building provides life insurance coverage to the residents of Nexus in the form of 1-Ups, whereas government officials like Mega Man are given an infinite stream of 1-Ups. This allows Mega Man to fight an opponent whom is completely out of his league (ie: a physical god like Amon) by getting a few hits in, dying, immediately respawning and continue the battle and hopefully win via Death of a Thousand Cuts. Of course, when
  • Infinity+1 Sword:
  • Invocation: Every time someone of sufficient power casts magic, the spell is accompanied by an impressive invocation. Unless the caster has SPS, of course.
  • Ironic Echo: "Heroes let people down."
    • And now we have Ryan telling Alex he "can't say."
  • It Got Worse: Pretty much everything that's happened at least since Alex got arrested, the most recent being
    • Has managed to reverse itself with .
      • It's even worse now for the Captain.
  • Irony: Alex mentions that if he can't get people to transcend their natures, then everything he's done is for naught. One of his goals is to do something that the Sovereign does as a matter of course.
  • Jossed: In-universe example: Alex's guesses that Golbez is the Drab Lord and is plotting evil were both incorrect.
  • Kick the Dog: by Mother Brain in a flashback.
  • Killed Off for Real: Sprites killed via Omega Energy are Deader Than Dead regardless of their game world mechanics.
  • Kleptomaniac Hero: Among his many What The Hell moments, Alex is quite willing to take, as well as do, anything to win.
  • Knight in Shining Armor: Despite how after the Great Change, the residents of Videoland became much more cynical, Frog remained just as idealistic as to be expected from this trope. Not surprising considering the weapon he wields. Look above at Infinity+1 Sword for more information.
  • Knight Templar: Ryan has shades of this. Max Force is this trope.
  • Lampshade Hanging: Constantly.
  • Loads and Loads of Characters: Although most are relatively minor
  • Long Runner: The comics been going more or less now for ten years and it still seems to not even be close to the middle of the story.
  • Look Behind You!: Hatred falls for this over and over.
  • Love Makes You Crazy: After witnessing , even Kefka joins the Mass "Oh Crap".
  • Mega Crossover: In addition to the whole of Nintendo's properties (par for the course as a Captain N sequel), it also takes The Power Team as canon.
  • The Messiah: To many people in Videoland, the Game Master (like Captain N) is seen as one, being summoned forth by The Creator via the Ultimate Warp Zone to save Videoland in its darkest hour. Alex on the other hand... the big question isn't whether or not he's a messiah,
  • Mind Hug: In addition, Narrator!Alex says that Hope is one of the two great corrupting forces, alongside Sorrow.
  • Mind Probe: Eggplant Wizard attempts one on Subverted hillariously due to a tiny kink in Eggplant Wizard's plans, as instead,
    • The Mysidian Elder gets one himself in Chapter 444 when he realises that
    • Eggplant Wizard gets five of these in a row (the fourth one shared with the Monkeyspank virus) after
  • One Steve Limit: Invoked in #704 when Alex learns that Kevin Keen and Princess Lana had a daughter named Hope, as Hope Keene was the name of his babysitter when he was a kid. And parodied in the same strip when Protoman points out that Hope is as common a name for girls as Alex is for boys, and that he isn't connected to every Alex in existence. However, it should be noted Alex often named his characters after himself and his friends. So, it may not be as big a coincidence as it seems at first.
  • Ontological Mystery: Slowly accumulating. The most concrete thing we know for certain is that the Game Master influences Videoland unconsciously, as first shown by the 99 Excaliburs.
    • Our second clue is that the whole Videoland universe seems to be sentient on some level; and malevolent, at least towards the Game Master.
  • Our Presidents Are Different: Haggar is President Action, while Ronnie was, at one point at least, President Target. Dr. Wily planned to be Vice-President Evil, but the combination of Haggar's stupidity and Blues's threats stopped that as soon as he became Haggar's VP.
  • Overly Long Scream: Alex's Atomic F-Bomb.
  • Overly Narrow Superlative: In episode 770:
  • Plot Threads: At this point it's hard to tell exactly how many concurrent plotlines there are in this comic. Lampshaded in "The Ass Episode", and even this isn't an exhaustive list of the series' plot threads.
  • The Power of Love: Uhhhh....we're not sure if this a straight example, an inversion, a subversion, or an aversion of some combonation of all 4.
  • Primal Scene: When Terra tells Celes and Relm that her father showed her the moment of her conception,[1] it completely Squicks them out. Terra, for her part, doesn't understand what the big deal is.
  • Psychic Static: Subverted, and combined with Cassandra Truth. Daos, Sinistral of Terror, tries to read Alex's mind to find out what his worst fear is. When all Daos can find is "a giant pink smiley face that blinked in and out of existence", Daos concludes that it's some kind of mental shield, refusing to believe that Alex's worst fear would be something that ridiculous. (See also Cassandra Truth, above.)
  • Puff of Logic: Alex tries and fails to invoke this against Hatred.
    • Some monsters do it to themselves.
    • It does succeed against a lawyer of a non-existent corporation in one of the omakes, though.
    • In an omake, the mere act of granting Alex pants defeats the Sovereign in a Puff of Logic. Apparently, she is the embodiment of the sorrow of Alex's lack of pants.
  • Rainbow Speak: Sprites who have been Touched speak in a purple font.
  • Reality Warper: Alex's Cynicism can alter reality to make events more ironic, the Sovereign can do this on a massive scale, and anyone who says gets smacked for their hubris, even if they are correcting someone or just reciting a story where that happens. That last one is believed to be directed by some sort of consciousness.
    • The consciousness of the world itself, no less.
    • Anyone who is Sorrow-Touched seems to be capable of this to some degree or another, including and the Little Girl in the FFVI world.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: eyes turn red immediately after he turns evil.
  • Redemption Earns Life: A slightly more pragmatic version of this trope is Discussed here:
  • Red Shirt: Parodied
  • Relax-O-Vision: The Nintendo Censorship Angel
  • RPG Mechanics Verse: At least two so far
    • In #337 Lucca provides Crono one of her inventions, the Reality Stabilization Belt, which allows the user to carry over their world's gameplay mechanics to another game world. In the world of Final Fantasy IV, this gave him the ability to fight on the overworld. To the people of that game world, Crono's actions are the equivilent of a cutscene, as normal combat takes place in another dimension as a random encounter screen. This makes Crono a killing god, as very few people in that world are capable of defending themselves on the overworld.
  • Running Gag: Getting slammed in the face by a treasure chest/Gato for saying "I am invincible".[2]
    • Only ninja can defeat ninja (an explicit superpower is the power of "badness" which, among other things, allows one to defeat ninja without being a ninja).
  • Sarcastic Confession: Alex and Bass both do this. "The best lie is the truth", indeed...
  • Save Point: Both played straight and subverted; Alex has to have his game controller to be able to reload the game back at a given save point. If he doesn't have it, and he dies...
  • Schedule Slip: And how!!
  • Schrödinger's Gun: Invoked in this strip.
  • Scooby-Dooby Doors: Used in this strip.
    • Of course, those stupid robots totally ruined the routine.
  • Sdrawkcab Name: Done so subtly that you won't even notice.
  • Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can: Fusoya sealed Golbez's anger deep inside Golbez's mind.
  • Series Hiatus: A lot of real life got in the way. To keep things stupid fresh, the author turned this into an omake storyline. Though since February 21, the comic is being updated once again regurarly.
  • Shout-Out: "Christ, don't tell me I got the Bob and George version of Mega Man." He didn't.
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Prior to the Great Change, Videoland was very idealistic, where The Power of Friendship will always triumph over evil. Post-Great Change, Videoland have become much more cynical, the previous idealism disappearing. A great example of this is Mega Man, with his blue and green halves of his personalities representing cynicism and idealism.
  • Smoke Shield: Parodied: in episode 517 a cloud of smoke appears after Alex drops a string of Cluster F-Bombs as a part of his plan. Also lampshaded, as in the very next episode noticing the smoke makes Alex realize that his swearing didn't have the intended effect.
  • Somewhere a Palaeontologist Is Crying: Lampshaded in-universe.
  • Talking Is a Free Action: Averted in a turn-based battle!.
  • Tempting Fate: If you say a certain Stock Phrase, a treasure chest, or some other item of even greater mass, will fall from the sky and land on your head.
  • Thank the Maker: The Creators
  • Too Dumb to Live: Zeromus makes stupid coffee puns all the damn time. He also falls for the "look behind you" trick no less than 3 times. He only survived the plasma cannon to his back by being invulnerable. However, his stupidity is justifed, because he is the embodiment of Alex's hatred, specifically, what he hates the most. This happens to be stupid people.
    • Molly has shades of this, reflecting her status as a Perpetual Victim in the Sailor Moon show. When Alex passes her a note with instruction, she not only doesn't read it, she's even unaware that she's holding it. When she has an opportunity to flee, she wants to properly thank Alex first. Then there are the Sailor Scouts who show up to challenge the Sinistrals just as Alex managed to talk them into leaving, position themselves smack dab in his line of fire, and get belligerent when he tries repeatedly to get them away from there. And Boogerman manages to blow an almost successful attempt to bluff the Sinistrals, by loudly explaining the whole gambit.
      • In fairness, it's appearing as if this version of the "Scouts" and Molly are the DiC dub versions, crossed with their Another Story versions. So the vast majority of stupidity likely comes from their dub versions.
  • Too Kinky to Torture: Kefka, unlike the rest of the cast of Final Fantasy VI, is immune to the Sovereign of Sorrow's power. Everyone else is utterly bewildered at this.
    • Only two other characters showcase this ability, Green Mega Man (who's got the Warp Zone of Life flowing through him), and Cecil (a paladin of impeccable nobility).
  • Tranquil Fury: Protoman shows us how it's done.
  • Un Evil Laugh: The Drab Lord's got this all over him. Just look at the damn page quote for the trope.

...and includes characters from:

  1. ↑ This is an actual scene in Final Fantasy VI
  2. ↑ WHAM!!!!
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