Webcomic / Hitmen for Destiny

Following

Half sprawling fantasy adventure, half doorslamming farce, Hitmen For Destiny is a webcomic by Øyvind Thorsby. The setting is a city in Norway in 2009. Fusk and Vorte are assassins working for a mysterious organisation called Destiny. Their job is to covertly ensure that various prophecies come true. Their current job is to protect a woman called Anette Iversland, who has stumbled upon a magical sword that gives her unnatural strength, a lust for killing, and psychic dreams showing strange and fantastical monsters that she must kill.

And so begins a series of wild adventures involving portal monsters, miniature worlds, shapeshifting, Demonic Possession, Bizarre Alien Biology, and lots and lots of Zany Schemes.

It was originally hosted on Webcomics Nation, and later on Comic Fury after the former site shut down.

Tropes:

• Action Hero: Rolf Rust. He's the spitting image of a grizzled mercenary, and he prefers to solve his problems with lots of firepower. His readiness to attack leads to Vorte killing him in self-defense.
• Affably Evil: Zwarg-Hoth-Hor might be Ormhild's immortal demon servant, but he's very polite to Anette for as long as he has her captured. If anything, he's more bored and exhausted with the "immortal" half of his servitude. Subverted once his Restraining Bolt comes off, granting him the freedom to do evil... then double subverted as he politely bids Anette and Maythorn farewell.
• Ambiguously Human: Vorte. Not even Fusk knows if he's human.
• Anyone Can Die: Lampshaded when Maythorn shouts "YOU CANNOT DIE!" as an important character dies.
• Bait-and-Switch: In the first strip, a hideous-looking alien and a knight step out of a portal, while one of the hitmen mentions that "the monster will breathe fire on the hero, badly hurting him". Cue the KNIGHT breathing fire on the ALIEN.
• Berserk Button: Lostclock hates the belief in ghosts, and will often spend hours telling you why.
• Bittersweet Ending: Maythorn isn't made the evil ruler of Europe, and Anette survives her prophecy, but Bianca leaves Anette for good. However, Maythorn and Anette remain committed, and they decide to use Maythorn's power to make stop-motion movies. Fusk and Vorte never answer for their crimes, and as a direct result of their actions Destiny suffers enough failed prophecies to threaten collapse of the business.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: So, so much - and almost always explained in exquisite detail by Lostclock.
• Bookends: The first and last strips take place with two hitmen for Destiny watching over an alley, where a rift opens with a good and bad guy coming through, and both have a significant prophecy trying to come true.
• Brick Joke:
  • The dwarves are delusional; one believes that there are birds hiding in the ground to spy on people having sex. 150 strips later, we find out these birds were real.
  • Lostclock assures Bianca that her tentacle will fall off in a week or two. They meet her after a three year time skip on her end, the tentacle having grown to monstrous proportions, and she quotes his words back at him sarcastically.
• Butt-Monkey: Jymre is stung by trantoros, electrocuted, vomited upon, and nearly blown up across multiple occasions.
• Chekhov's Boomerang: The pentagram drawn for the ceremony of Dagon later catches one of Gerhardson's hitmen. As a demon, he is unable to leave the circle. When Bianca returns to collect her things, the demon is still there, and he tells her that Anette will die.
• Clingy MacGuffin: At one point, Bianca attempts to get rid of the sword. Anette dreams about its location the next day and eagerly recovers it.
• Closet Shuffle: Jymre hides in a closet onboard the pilgrim ship.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: The orks try to punish Anette and Lostclock this way.
  • Played for Laughs when Fusk and Vorte hang Jymre by a dartboard as punishment for interfering with destiny.
• Combat Clairvoyance: The feeyoufee sees by reading the minds of others. If the targets close their eyes, the monster has trouble finding them.
• Conscious While Possessed: Dagon's servants possess those who do the ritual incorrectly, and Anette confessed her love to Maythorn while the servant was rampaging. She was slightly embarrassed when Lostclock acknowledged that he remembered everything.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Jumping over lava pools, anyone?
• Cover-Up Clone: Rolf Rust was killed by the two hitmen. In order to try keeping the prophecies intact, they hire a shapeshifter to take Rolf's place.
• Descent into Addiction: Anette's sword grants her physical prowess and a heroic excuse to fight evil, but she starts liking her sword a little too much. Soon all she can think about is how much she wants to kill monsters. Thankfully, she's cured as soon as her prophecies end.
• Demonic Possession: Dagon's "servants" can possess people for failing to perform a ritual correctly.
• Empathic Weapon: The sword allows Bianca to commune with an alien dragon that shows up in her dreams, leading her to the next monster she has to kill. Once Bianca gets rid of it, the weapon begins trying to convince Anette to kill Bianca. It's how Anette figures out that the dreams are from the sword itself.
• "Eureka!" Moment: "Well, they didn't have any ears."
• Eye Spy: Vorte can eject one of his eyes to spy remotely for him. It even grows bat wings.
• Fat and Skinny: Fusk (tall and skinny) and Vorte (short and stout).
• "Fawlty Towers" Plot: The comic has this in spades, mostly from Fusk, Vorte, and Jymre. There are examples where the web of lies doesn't "come crashing down" but is [awkwardly] stabilized. In particular, the end of the Passion, Lies, and Fungus arc.
• From Bad to Worse: Any given story arc is one long string of the characters trying to keep up with frantic mashing of the 'make it worse' button.
• Go for the Eye: Attempted, but punching it with a fist wasn't good enough.
• Hollywood Evolution: Averted. Thorsby really understands evolution, and the evolutionary histories of his monsters are really well thought out. But they're still hilarious.
• Heteronormative Crusader: Downplayed. Although Lostclock believes lesbians are "dirty perverts", he seems to have no further issue with Anette dating Maythorn.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Third Prophecy episodes are named "In which...", Fourth Prophecy episodes are named "The ____ of _____", Fifth Prophecy episodes are named "____ and ____", Sixth Prophecy episodes are named "[Adjective] [Noun]", and Seventh Prophecy episodes are just single nouns or "__ hours/minutes".
• Idiot Ball: Lampshaded. Despite Lostclock clearly maintaining that he and Anette should go along with the delusional dwarves, he draws the line at ghosts - which gets them both kicked out in short order. Anette chews him out for it.
• Illusory Wall: Maybecaves play with this trope. A maybecave only exists if the person believes in it, so it can both exist and not exist for multiple people simultaneously. Bianca has to close her eyes and be convinced by Lostclock in order to see one right in front of her.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction: Bianca says aloud that she doesn't care if Anette dies. In the next panel, she's already got her phone out to send a warning.
• Improbable Taxonomy Skills: Professor Lostclock is able to name and describe the evolutionary history of more or less every animal in the multiverse.
• Improvised Golems: Play-Doh and life is an experiment with the first improvised golem, which rips itself apart as it moves because of its weak material. She later creates a fully functional golem from random scrap, which wasn't durable but was at least able to repel the monster with a few swings.
• Incompatible Orientation: Jymre tries seducing Anette while shapeshifted into human men before she reveals that she's a lesbian.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Bianca - or rather, she wants to stay normal in the face of everyone around her doing crazy prophecy stuff. By the end, it's why she decides to leave Anette for good.
• I Know What You Fear: Subverted with Caspar Gropius - he can see peoples' worst fears and manifest them into reality, but he's extremely lazy with this power, and if the fear in question is even slightly abstract or difficult he just summons a Giant Spider because "everyone is scared of them".
• Junkie Prophet: The seventh prophecy was obtained by licking toads.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Fusk and Vorte royally screw up at their jobs, then lie to their superiors and kill lots of innocent people to cover it up. In the ending, they successfully escape into another universe where they can evade the authorities.
  • While Jyrme does get some punishment early on in the series, he gets off practically scot free for almost succeeding in becoming the ruler of the world, being able to return to his homeworld and make amends with his girlfriend.
• Literal Cliffhanger: When the castle turns invisible, Lostlclock catches a ledge and can't pull himself up. He sees how much danger he's in when the castle re-appears.
• Lovecraftian Superpower: Vorte can release "deadly headspikes" from his head, vomit immobilizing slime, and let one of his eyes roam free on bat wings; Kubrick can suck enemies into his glowing navel, which utterly destroys them; the Servant of Dagon can sprout tentacles from the body of whoever it's currently possessing (which remain fully controllable after it leaves).
• Mexican Standoff: Between Fusk and Bianca, who both have guns aimed at each other. The twist is that one of the guns has blanks, but neither of them know which. What follows is a lot of Gunpoint Banter as each tries to out-game-theory the other.
• Most Definitely Not a Villain: Jymre is probably the worst shapeshifter of all time. He doesn't bother to try to act like the people he's impersonating, and whenever questioned, he panics severely.
• No Immortal Inertia: The magic granted to the three sisters only operates in their own house. They use magic to keep themselves alive, but as soon as the walls for last sister's house gets knocked down, her skin and tissue dissolve to leave only a skeleton.
• "Not Wearing Pants" Dream: "Dreaming of bread" has Anette fully clothed. Rather, the passport she uses to buy bread shows her naked.
• Once More, with Clarity: In "14 Minutes", we see a a montage of various scenes we'd already seen, but now with the knowledge that the Triceratops at the restaurant, Inatario's girlfriend, and Lostclock's ghost were all actually Jymre, the shapeshifter.
• Only the Chosen May Wield: She Who Is Bound To The Sword is, well, bound to the sword.
• Perfect Disguise, Terrible Acting: Jymre is probably the worst shapeshifter of all time. He doesn't bother to try to act like the people he's impersonating and, when questioned, he panics severely.
• Portal Cut: One invincible foe is defeated in this manner. His upper body is kept around, but doesn't decay.
• Portal Network: The living portals are creatures with portals in their bodies that connect to another creature's portal.
• The Quiet One: Kubrick.
• Required Secondary Powers: Averted - anyone who's invisible is also blind, since light cannot reach their eyes.
• Ring of Power: Brynhild's ring of invulnerability.
• Running Gag: Caspar Gropius can manifest anyone's worst fear once per person, but almost always ends up summoning a giant spider instead.
• Screw Destiny: Though destiny does its best to combat those trying to change fate, a prophecy can be broken, usually if the person or creature with a destiny dies earlier than expected. The first "successful" attempt resulted in a prophesied villain being struck by lightning in broad daylight. Broken prophecies often cause future prophecies to become unstable. By the end of the comic, it's implied Destiny itself is headed this way as well.
• Shout-Out: Whenever Fusk and Vorte are in the restaurant, there's usually a few characters from other comics or cartoons at the adjacent tables.
• Shapeshifter Default Form: Jymre's default form is a weird looking alien with spindly limbs, bushy green hair, and a thick elephantine trunk.
• Shapeshifting Seducer: Jymre attempts to seduce Anette by shapeshifting into human forms. As he figures what type she's not attracted to, he makes an excuse to leave, pretends to get killed offscreen, then shows up in a new form.
• Sliding Scale of Free Will vs. Fate: People mentioned in prophecies sometimes try and fight fate. Sometimes it works, but most of the time, it doesn't. The first successful attempt caused the bad guy to get killed by lightning when there was a clear sky, but it broke prophecy with the other person not needing to leave his home for the quest. It was later discovered that a missed prophecy will cascade into future prophetic failures. The result is Because Destiny Says So slowly shifts to Screw Destiny.
• Spike Shooter: Vorte's headspikes.
• Spiritual Successor: The Accidental Space Spy by the same author.
• Taken for Granite: Trantoros, which can turn themselves into rocks for extended periods of time, but can't move during that period. A few strips later, they're used as projectiles and as a perpetual motion machine.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Despite Jymre's frequent attempts to twist fate in his own favor, Fusk and Vorte are forced to keep him alive so the other agents don't discover Rolf is dead.
  • Fusk and Bianca as well, though only to save their own skins once Kubrick shows up.
• Torture First, Ask Questions Later: The troll is told to torture the two prisoners until they talk. Said troll doesn't speak English.
• Troubled Fetal Position: Faust assumes one aboard the pilgrims' ship when his Snowball Lie collapses.
• Unstable Equilibrium: The more prophecies fail, the less likely future prophecies are to succeed without intervention.
• Wham Line:
  • "Drop her."
  • "The shapechanger doesn't have green blood. Inatario did."
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Anette solves all monster-related problems by applying copious amounts of sword.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: The miniature worlds have controls to configure their speed. One had a time lapse of millions of years to try to exploit evolution for a Lord of the Rings world clone, and another was skipped ahead a few millenia in order to see what happens to the magic woman who declared herself a god (which broke down into a civil war that eventually constructed robots that kill humanoids outside their faction.)
• Zany Scheme: Fusk, Vorte and Jymre screw things up so often that they need to pull these once or twice a storyline. Used to triumphant effect in "Passion, lies and fungus".