Cwen's Quest
is a webcomic written by Nick Stroffolino and drawn by Sarah N. It stars Cwen, an angry ex-princess with tiny wings; Riddly, her mysterious life slave, and Wendy, her cute stuffed animal companion and wise sage, all on Cwen's titular quest for revenge against her father. Despite the premise, the comic has thus far avoided getting too serious and tends to address serious situations with black humor.
The story takes place in a strange fantasy world years after the titular character, Cwen, has been exiled via a swift kick off a cliff, and left for dead by her father Lord Attez. When Cwen returns, she finds her father long gone and chaos in his absence. Cwen's interest is in getting even with her father, but she is forced to help some people along the way in order to find him, gaining a few allies as she does so. The story tends to jump between the past and the present frequently through various narrative devices to show various characters' back stories and dropping plot points to be explained in the present.
What makes Cwen's Quest stand out, though, is its bizarre original setting, which fuels much of its humor and doesn't dip into the usual sources like World of Warcraft, Dungeons & Dragons or Final Fantasy. In a world where wolf-men run hordes of invaders as tight-fisted CEO, the mysterious FauX group runs magic like science, a girl has a paralyzing fear of hats, and giant apes with British accents fight dragons, hilarity seems to be the only option left to most characters.
Cwen's Quest also features a creator blog which dives into mostly unrelated side stories about other adventures living in the CQ universe. The author himself seems to be an avid TV Tropes fan, as he has written trope examples at least twice into the comic in response to people putting the comic as examples on tropes that didn't really fit.
This comic stopped updating in 2013. While the official website is dead, some of the comics are still archived here.
This comic provides examples of:
- Amusing Injuries: Inverted. While many characters have suffered amusingly painful slap stick style harm character has consistently shown to be actually harmed by these including keeping broken limbs for whole story arcs and secondary characters keep scars from being set on fire.
- April Fools' Day: A fake cover was put up for chapter 5; it helped that the update naturally fell on April 1.
- Art Shift: A small one when the comic gained limited color, Sin City style.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Cwen and Sabril settle the issue of who should be the Witch Queen by building things to fight for them.
- Backstory: We frequently get flashbacks to Cwen's and later Sven's past.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Riddly is a nice happy-go-lucky guy who will beat someone to death with a fish if you ask him.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Attez family. Attez personally screws up all his kids and the fan theory is he kills his wives.
- The Cameo:
- Mostly from the artist's other comic, Vampire Phantasm, and the author's wife's comic, Charby the Vampirate. Some have even become regular characters in Cwen's Quest.
- In one bonus page, Riddly asks Jack of Vampire Phantasm why he [Jack] is the one to get all the fan art. Jack then explains that it's his dark allure, and that Riddly would probably get more if he came over to their more serious story for a little bit. Riddly then pictures himself getting stabbed by Orlock, as Jack often does, and chooses to turn him down. Ironically, Jack and Orlock would later run into Riddly and give him help in tracking down Attez.
- Challenging the Chief: This is one of two options for settling disputes over who has the right to be the Witch Queen, though like good magic using nobles they create champions rather then fight themselves.
- Couldn't Find a Pen: Inverted. Ulric likes scrawling notes on his own body, then on scantily clad assistants, then on naked assistants, and eventually on the armor of the nearest guard.
- Disproportionate Retribution: A lot of people seem to want this in CQ but so far none of them have gotten any. In particular, Sven wants to kill Cwen just because their father used to mistake him for her due to the fact they look and their names sound sort of the same...and he's never even met her before!
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Lord Attez dies after Bullying a Dragon, resulting in said dragon accidentally killing him with a breath of flame. Riddly says that he wasn't expecting him to die like that at all, expecting his death to be horrible.
- Evil Chancellor: Subverted; the three chancellors are actually nicer than the Witch Queen they serve!
- Fake Platform: Lord Attez' floating island after years of neglect.
- Honor Before Reason: Averted. The Witch Queen would have gladly just had Cwen killed on the spot when the queen challenged Cwen to an honor duel for the throne. The only reason she didn't was that Cwen had a very large dragon at the time.
- Human Sacrifice: The original Witch Queen had literally sacrificed all the children in her kingdom that could be found.
- Insane Troll Logic: Cwen loathes her siblings just for being born because her father, whom she wants to kill, kicked her out when a younger sibling was born. She is aware that this makes no sense, but that hasn't done much to change her mind.
- Mr. Exposition: Ulric gives a PowerPoint-assisted exposition twice for the benefit of a confused Riddly.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: This seems to be Team Vorg's business model. "Vision, Community, Scorched Earth Tactics"
- Mysterious Past: We know very little of Riddly before he entered the comic. Then again, no one ever asks Riddly.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: While Lord Attez was probably never completely right in the head, it was Riddly's aggressive actions that inspired him to become the Evil Overlord he is today.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Cwen remembers Lord Attez as one of these. Later when Riddly meets him he turns out to be a brilliant scientist studying magic.
- Parental Abandonment: All of Attez' kids get exiled.
- People of Hair Color: Symus the demon cat girl has blue hair, but since the comic is mostly in gray with only occasional color, we rarely get to see this.
Word of God states that blue hair is a demon trait in the CQ universe. - Politically Incorrect Villain: Averted. "Team Vorg is equal opportunity and does not judge after all."
- Put on a Bus:
- Essex, who simply left off panel between chapters with no indication of where he was going, but since Cwen owes him a huge favor, odds are good he'll be back to collect.
- Lyria was not so much put on a bus as hit with one. It's questionable whether or not she survived, since she seems to be some sort of cyborg.
- Regent for Life: Averted. The Witch Queen eventually took power away from her advisers when she became powerful enough.
- Royal Blood: Cwen was abducted once as a child because she has both Royal and Demon blood.
- Schizo Tech: For the most part CQ seems like an off beat fantasy world but if you see a FauX logo on something that seems to go out the window.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Cwen has spent most of her life plotting revenge against her father. While her previous accomplishments haven't been rendered entirely meaningless, the fact remains that her father's Jerkass behavior finally caught up to him shortly before she was ready to wreak her own vengeance.
- Shown Their Work: Inverted. The author doesn't research since the comic runs on rules of funny but will come up with detailed explinations for questions asked by fans.
- Super-Soldier: Zergarem the Destroyer was supposed to be one of these, but he found he was apparently better suited to police work.
- There Are No Therapists: Subverted. Although she appears mostly in the side stories Doctor Elestria provides therapy to several characters. Though it is obvious some characters haven't been to see her yet.
- Unusual Ears: Many characters like the Witch Queen and Sven seems to have variations on pointy ears. Symus even comments on her new ears in surprise when she is turned into a cat girl.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Averted, as Team Vorg's good name is based on their reputation for total war against those who defy them.