Webcomic / Evil Plan

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Evil Plan is a webcomic by Alexis Royce, about aspiring supervillain Tal A. Kinesis, and his engineer second-in-command, Alice Evanson. Originally, it was mostly gag-a-day shots parodying supervillain cliches, but by now it's become a character-driven story, focused on the main characters' romance and Kinesis' bid for power. It was updating weekly since 2007 and concluded in 2020. It has been on many platforms, including briefly on Webtoons, and is currently available both to download (both for free and paid with extras) on itch.io and is being rereleased on Alexis Royce's Neocities site

Evil Plan provides examples of:

• Alas, Poor Villain: Kinesis manages to overwrite William's personality onto almost everyone in town and then he gets into a fight with Amazingman, where he is mortally wounded. William doesn't know how to offer first aid, and their first impulse is to try to find a doctor, unaware of how far the personality overwrite has gone.
  • Then, Alice has to deal with his death, and the fact that Amazingman isn't willing to stick around for vengeance.
• All-Loving Hero: Amazingman genuinely doesn't want to hurt anyone, and tries to see the best in people, even villains who've already used his better nature against him. Considering the attitude most "heroes" have, it's clear that he's a genuinely good person.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: That one night wasn't all bad. Plus there are a LOT of hints, such as Kinesis staring in awe at Alice after her villainess costume change, Alice trying to seduce him just to apologise for her comment beforehand about William. And then there's terminology, where Alice openly admits she likes Kinesis.
• Bookcase Passage: In the form of a secret elevator.
• Break the Cutie:
  • Chapter 7 was pretty rough on the bright young hero, Kevin and this is before Kinesis has had a chance to make things personal.
  • Will's actual backstory, and his continued crush on Stan
    • Also could be considered for Dr. Kinesis' tragic backstory.
  • Lime after their fight with Lemon and subsequent "The Reason You Suck" Speech from Kinesis.
  • And, of course, Kinesis's death in Chapter 21 for Alice.
• Calling Your Attacks: Amazingman improvises the Amazing Punch during his first battle. The minions only realized he was a super hero after he invoked this trope.
• Character Development: Kevin gets plenty in Chapter 7.
• Clark Kenting: "A change of clothing and hair, and anyone can be a new person."
• Coordinated Clothes: Alice and Stan start dressing more similarly over time, with their minions naturally having the same color scheme.
• Corporate-Sponsored Superhero: Members of The Company are put in a position where they sell their hero "brand" for the profit of The Company. Their methods of recruitment are morally ambiguous.
• Create Your Own Nemesis: Kevin only became Amazingman because of the telekenesis upgrade chip designed by Kinesis and completed by Alice.
• Crossover: As of Chapter 7 we can now confirm Evil Plan takes place in the same continuity as Sire, though several months before the Sire story begins.
• Damsel in Distress: Alice's role in some heists was to pretend to be this as a distraction.
• Death Trap: Subverted, usually. Lemon and Lime employ potentially a variety of lethal traps at their office entrance, solely for the sake of snapping humiliating pictures of the trespassers/invited guests.
• Do Not Adjust Your Set: Kinesis hacks in to all television network and web browsers to deliver his ultimatum to Amazingman.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Billy and Amical from morphE showed up in the background of a strip 6 months before the morphE webcomic was launched.
• The Empath: Anguish is secretly a villainous example.
• Extranormal Prison: The Panopticon super villain prison.
• Faux Affably Evil: Anguish is unfailingly an all-around Benevolent Boss. He's also an evil empath who's manipulated the entire villain community into loving him, and casually executes a still-loyal minion who accidentally learned of this.
• Hates Being Touched: Kinesis hates human contact. Even the nice kind.
• Hero Antagonist: Kevin/Amazingman.
• Hollywood Spelling: Averted. Before William reveals to Kinesis then known as Stanley that he's gay, he quickly tells him that he used to date people by the names of Aaron, Adrian, and Don. Kinesis hears them as Erin, Adrienne, and Dawn.
• Mad Scientist Laboratory: Naturally.
• More Dakka: Stan applies this concept to his telekenesis. It looked impressive, anyway.
• Lethal Chef: That vat of fruitcake acid had to come from someone. And that some place is Kinesis' loving, unknowing younger sister.
• Living Emotional Crutch: The William AI for Stan.
• Love Makes You Evil: Over time, Alice and Stan both fall in love, and begin committing evermore despicable actions.
• Meaningful Rename: Alice eventually starts going by the villain name Dr. Dynamis.
• Minion with an F in Evil: The minions seem to think that Kinesis' cruelty is simply the way their leader shows them he loves them. They treat Alice like their Cool Big Sis, and often discuss their "feelings" or other non-villainous activities.
• Mook Lieutenant: Alice's role, in addition to being a Gadgeteer Genius.
• Personality Chip: Computer has a will of its own. Becomes an Pun when it turns out that the chip was mapped from someone named WILL-iam.
• President Superhero: Emmie Oakley, retired hero and President of the United States.
• Professor Guinea Pig: Kinesis is the first test subject for the Telekinetic Amplification Chip.
• Punch-Clock Villains: More or less everyone in the comic. Alice even gets hired on through a legitimate job posting.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Stan gives one to Lime of all people after she accidentally deports Lemon's mother. This leads to a downward spiral far greater than he intended.
  • After it's revealed that Anguish manipulated the whole thing, Stan and Alice give one while betraying him.
• Reckless Gun Usage: Mae is not pleased when Stan tries shooting a dozen guns at once with his telekenetic ability.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: Dr. Kinesis, and over time, Dr. Dynamis as well.
• "Second Law" My Ass!: Computer seems to never miss an opportunity to stick it to its creator.
• Shared Universe: Mortifer and Evil Plan have had a couple of crossovers, as have the artists' other works, Fringe Happy and Sire.
  • Also, since Piper appears in both Mortifer and Fringe Happy, we can assume that those two take place in the same universe, as well.
  • In chapter seven, we learn that Paul Enfield was Kevin's stepbrother, making Evil Plan and Sire linked directly.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: When Lemon and Lime first meet Alice, they immediately assume that she's Kinesis' girlfriend. Alice's words say no, but her expression says differently.
• Shout-Out: Kinesis actually raids the TARDIS.
  • Kinesis invents combustible limes.
    Kinesis: [monologue] I call it... the genetically modified ignescent Citrus Aurantifolia!
    Alice: You mean a combustible lime? Aperture Science is filing a lawsuit as we speak.
    Kinesis: Cave Johnson can eat my bankrupt...
• Start of Darkness: The flashback chapters.
• Super Drowning Skills: Alice is very hydrophobic after almost drowning as a child. Having a Slippery Swimsuit moment after almost drowning at Villain-Con didn't help matters.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Invoked by Dr. Kinesis. He threw out the resumes of any minion applicants with an IQ above 100 so that they wouldn't be smart enough to overthrow him.
• Take Over the World: Of course.
• Unequal Pairing: Alice and Stanley. The employee/boss dynamic is the second biggest issue with their ship, right after Stan's lack of interest in romance.
• Unfazed Everyman: Alice. It takes her some time to get used to the whole supervillain thing.
  • Also, Kevin. He's a pretty plain college boy.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Stan and Alice's end goal? To create a world where everyone can trust one another.
• Villain Protagonist: Dr. Kinesis has organized a bank robbery, hacked the computers and TV feed of Urbane City, committed cold-blooded murder, and abused his henchwoman. Yeah, he's the protagonist.
  • Lemon and Lime also qualify. Those two lovable lesbians do black market business and steal patents from their rightful owners.
• Villains Out Shopping:
  • Anguish at the start of Chapter 14 is revealed to lurk on internet imageboards and pose as a normal person for kicks.
  • Stanley runs into Kevin while literally out shopping for groceries. They even have a pleasant conversation about valuing relationships before realizing the other's alter-ego.
• Villain Song: By Andrew of Songs to Wear Pants To, no less. Can be downloaded here.
• We Can Rebuild Him: How Amazingman survived his fall from the water tower. Shame it came with an impossibly large hospital bill he must work off now.
• We Used to Be Friends: Kinesis Stanley Alfred, (back in college) and William supposedly sever ties after a fight about the telekinetic chip.
  • Subverted with the reveal that William died in an accident when trying to install a telekinetic chip inside of him, and that Kinesis installed a personality clone into Computer.
• Wild Mass Guessing: Nobody seems to be able to agree on what William's plotting.
• Work Off the Debt: Kevin and Agent are debt-slaves to The Company due to their expensive medical procedures which bring fallen heroes from the jaws of death. As long as they are profitable as heroes they will not be allowed to fall.