Webcomic / Swan Boy

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Swan Boy is a webcomic by Branson Reese focused mainly on the antics of the titular Swanson "Swan Boy" Dandolos, a deeply stupid and borderline-sociopathic, but still pretty lovable, anthropomorphic swan who thrives on causing problems for himself and others.

Also in the mix are SB's two friends: Rona Valenti, a cat with crippling anxiety, and Noel Household, a pretentious chameleon. Other recurring characters like Cassie, a gazelle who is Swan Boy's on-again off-again girlfriend, and her bandmates in the death metal band Saddam Hussein Hole, also show up from time to time.

An animated version of the webcomic, featuring Reese himself voicing Swan Boy, aired as part of the fifth season of the FXX anthology series Cake in 2019.

The comic can be read here.

Tropes found in Swan Boy include:

• Achievements in Ignorance: Sextape manages to steal a car and bust out of prison, but since he doesn't have eyes (and his cellie Cookie Puss may not either), they get so lost on the road that they run over Noel, drive into his coma fantasy and run him over again, and become stranded in ancient Greece, all by sheer accident.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Swan Boy canonically has ADD, which is implied to be a large part of the reason he's such a lunatic.
• Anxiety Dreams: Rona has these a lot. They're invariably bizarre and terrifying, and the sheer depths of horror her mind can conjure up is the source of quite a few punchlines.
• Chaotic Stupid: Swan Boy seemingly strives to make the worst decision possible at any moment.
• Childhood Friends: The main three have been friends since at least high school. Swan Boy claims he's known Noel since "before memories", which goes a long way towards explaining why they hang out together.
• Commonality Connection: The main three characters have been friends for years, but they all have very different musical tastes with only a bit of overlap. Swan Boy reveals in one strip, through an elaborate Venn diagram, that the only artist that all three of them like is the '90s Math Rock band Chavez.
• Consistent Clothing Style: Swan Boy has a large collection of plain black T-shirts with punk and hardcore band logos on them, only a few of which have repeated over the course of the comic's run.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Early on, the comic implies that the animal characters keep humans as pets, something that Branson himself admitted was him "still figuring out the [Swan Boy] world" but has since dropped.
  • Rona first shows up 10 comics in, but looks more cat-like than her design would eventually become. Noel's first appearance is in the 13th comic, but he's called Nowel in that first strip, and also has a much different appearance than what he'd settle into.
• Extreme Omnivore: Swan Boy eats scissors, batteries, and whatever else he can get his hands on.
• Fallback Marriage Pact: Rona and Swan Boy have one.
• Family Theme Naming: Noel is revealed during the "Noel Goes to Hooters" arc to have a brother named Liam (likely not named by their rock-fearing mother). True to form, the brothers don't seem to be on good terms and both come off as equally annoying and pretentious in different ways.
• Famous Ancestor: Chris, the guitarist for Cassie's band, is the son of The General from the insurance ads. His dad even shows up in a couple strips.
• Foul Waterfowl: Swan Boy isn't aggressive or malicious, but he is an impulsive risk-taker who's usually the last to realise why something is a bad idea.
• Garage Band: Saddam Hussein Hole, where almost every member is "lead". Since Chris comes from a wealthy family and has enough money for gear, the others are stuck with him as a frontman even though he's a tyrant with pretensions of brilliance; Cassie fights with him, Hector mostly ignores him, Shannon interjects and goads him just to amuse herself, and it's not clear what (if anything) Brümhilde thinks.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: Pops up occasionally. Even Swan Boy's "good" angel encourages him to steal from a child's lemonade stand.
• Has a Type: Swan Boy's love for women with beehive hairdos is a running gag. He also has a thing for elves in one strip, although that's more of a Fetish.
• I Am Not Weasel: One mailbag strip addresses the common assumption by new readers that Rona is a chihuahua instead of a sphynx cat. So Swan Boy decides to print all those letters out, ties them to a brick, and throws them into Rona's car, which doesn't do her anxiety any good:
  Swan Boy: She's been silently staring at her reflection and listening to "Dreams Made of Flesh" by This Mortal Coil for five and a half hour, but we'll let you know what she says if she ever speaks again.
• Insane Troll Logic: Noel frequently launches into highly-principled, meandering rants, such as insisting that terms like "the early nineties" have a clear and important definition.
• Long Neck: Swan Boy, being a swan, has a long, thin neck, which is often in a looped position.
• Magic Plastic Surgery: Somehow Swan Boy gets surgery to look like a Na'vi from Avatar.
• Maurice Chevalier Accent: Baptiste, a semi-reoccurring French worm.
• Nervous Wreck: Poor Rona can get an anxiety attack even from choosing the cashier line at the supermarket.
• Old Shame: Rona's father Pinocchio was a star of Italian Giallo films as a young man, under the stage name Doncarlo Incognito. He kept this from Rona until she saw him in a movie in her adulthood, but his explanation for what happened to him sounded too much like a shonen battle manga for her liking.
• Random Species Offspring: The setting runs on this, going by species on an arbitrary character-by-character basis. Among the main cast alone, Noel's parents are a gecko and a snake (also both reptiles), Rona's dad is a sphynx cat (the same as her), and Swan Boy's mom is a dalmatian (no connection at all).