History ComicBook / Monstress

* Island of Mystery: The Isle of Bones is a sinister example.

* HomosexualReproduction: Implied when the Baroness warns her wife against getting too frisky as it's both their "Lunars" and getting pregnant during the war would be inconvenient for either of them.

* AnArmAndALeg: One of the comic's most consistent themes:
** Maika is missing her left forearm when introduced, neatly amputated at the elbow. Revenge for her missing arm is explicitly stated as one trigger for her RoaringRampageOfRevenge. [[spoiler:She later loses the rest of that arm all the way to the shoulder.]]
** The Cumaea make Lilium from the bones of Arcanics by harvesting their limbs a little bit at a time to minimize waste, which means their cells are full of dismembered Arcanic prisoners.
** Maika rips an arm off Inquisitrix Flay and mooks just end up in pieces more often than not.
** Maika later [[LampshadedTrope lampshades]] [[spoiler:her second amputation]] with "There won't be anything left of me if I keep paying what it takes to survive."

Has a Characters Sheet that NeedsWikiMagicLove.

* FiveRaces:

** Humans are the ''Mundane'' race, being your bog-standard. Humans stand apart in this series in that they have the highest technology of the setting, and collectively have a high degree of racial intolerance and thirst for power in comparison to other races. Female, purely human individuals also sometimes develop psychic powers, and are inducted into the Cumaea when found.
** Arcanics straddle the line between ''Mundane'' and ''Stout'', as the second most common race, where most are fairly average compared to humans, but many have animalistic or monstrous attributes that gives them physical abilities that humans just don't have, and some can use magic. Maika, for instance, has SuperStrength despite having the physique of an average teenager.
** Ancients take the ''High Men'' slot, being the most magically capable species, as well as being immortal and invariably ancient though still hale. Far from being idealized, Ancients are just as fallible and prone to having their own shortcomings as anybody else. Despite being older and more experienced by dint of their extreme age, this doesn't necessarily make them enlightened, or even wiser in some cases. Ancients often play the part of the top aristocrats in Arcanic society, idling away their days when they can't ignore matters and largely becoming stagnant. Though they remain very powerful magic users, their powers are also declining, and few people are sure why.
** Cats take up the part of the ''Cute'' race because, well, they're cats. They have a reputation as being cultured and scholarly, their professors and especially poets being highly regarded in their society. They also appear to have the second highest concentration of magic users after Ancients, most being of the necromantic variety. They also have a well earned reputation for being sneaky and schemers, capable of some shockingly ruthless actions. Ren managed to kill a human soldier he took by surprise early in the series, using just his claws and teeth, though over time he proves his chief strength is both his mind and his ability to manipulate the dead.
** The ''Fairy'' race is held by the Old Gods, as they are the most outright mystical species.

** Lady Sophia isn't quite aloof, but has the arrogant disdain of other people and DragonLady good looks, but this all changes after getting torched and now then just looked melted. With injections of [[AppliedPhlebotinum refined Lilium]], she's slowly getting to look like her old self, but with [[LockedIntoMadness white hair]].

* ReverseMole: [[spoiler:Lady Atena of the Cumaea is passing reports to the Prime Minister of the Human Federation, who is eager to try and end the witch-nuns' influence on her country. And Rezak, the Arcanic slave at her compound, is actually Atena's half-brother.]]

** Lady Sophia also had the arrogant disdain of other people and DragonLady good looks, but this all changes after getting torched and now she just looks melted.

* FantasticMedicinalBodilyProduct: The Cumaean witch-nuns can use the body of Arcanics to create a substance called Lilium. It has many healing effects, and even brings a character back from the dead.
* FantasticRacism: Loads and loads of it. Heck, it drives the entire conflict of the series! The humans hate the Arcanics, the Arcanics hate the humans, both of them resent the Ancients, the Ancients often resent them and the cats, everyone distrusts the cats, the cats hate the Old Gods, and the Old Gods hate everybody. There's even racism between the Arcanics, as human-appearing Arcanics like Maika are seen as being borderline humans by some of the more animalistic Arcanics and treated with disdain (animalistic traits are seen as gifts from the goddess by the Arcanics).

* AppliedPhlebotinum: Lilium. It's magical, can do practically anything including augment human psionics, and is made from the bodies of Arcanics (or Ancients, if the Cumaea are lucky enough to catch and kill one).

** [[spoiler:Ren is spying on Maika for his superiors, who know more about the Monstra than they're letting on. When they decide to abduct Kippa for some reason, however, he turns on them.]]

* NoodleIncident: Constantine. All that anyone knows is someone or something set off a FantasticNuke that killed more than 140,000 people. Maika and seven other Arcanic children were the only unwounded survivors; survivors whom the Ancients are perfectly willing to sacrifice hoping to learn what happened because human fear that the Arcanics were responsible is the only thing holding the tenuous peace. While the Arcanics are doing their best to stoke that fear, they have no more idea what happened than the humans do. [[spoiler:It is later revealed to be due to Zinn appearing due to Maika and devouring almost everyone there, including part of Maika's left arm with only Tulva and several other children knowing about it and swearing not to tell anyone what happened, including Maika herself.]]

* TheAce: The Shaman-Empress was far and away the most powerful Arcanic ever. She was also a scientist of the highest calibre and developed technology and magic that Lady Yvette claims "...makes anything we have currently look like the Dark Ages." Unfortunately, the Shaman-Empress took everything with her to the grave and this led to adventurers of all stripes looking for her tomb, among the would-be tomb raiders was a party that included Lady Yvette and Moriko Halfwolf.

* AlwaysChaoticEvil: Averted. No matter how evil a race or order seem to be, an exception is always revealed. Emilia is a human who risks her life to help Maika and Kippa get back to Arcanic territory, [[spoiler:Lady Atena]] is a kind Cumaea member, the Monkey King appears so far to be an unselfish Ancient, and [[spoiler:Rezak]] is one of two characters so far introduced aligned entirely with Good, defying the trope of the brutal Arcanic. Even [[spoiler:the Monstra]] isn't so bad.

* ArchaicWeaponForAnAdvancedAge: The Arcanics overwhelmingly prefer using swords, spears and bows in a steampunk world (though some do carry steampunk guns). Could be justified as some of these archaic weapons are magical and a number of the Arcanics are primitive. The Cumaea witches also favour using knives, swords and other archaic weapons.

* BarbarianTribe: The stereotype of the Arcanics. So far, except for the royal courts, much of Arcanic society seems to be based off of Central Asian tribes, so you could make a case that it's partially true.

* BrutalHonesty: The Sword of the East will not hesitate to tell her Ancient superiors like the Queen of Wolves that they've grown feeble to the point of almost being mortal, and that the only way the Ancients survived this long is through thousands of their hybrid children being used as cannon fodder.

* ChildrenForcedToKill: Several Arcanic children, including Maika herself (who is only 17 when the series starts, and much younger in often-violent flashbacks) have to kill to survive throughout the series.

* ConvenientlyTimedAttackFromBehind: In the third issue, Kippa draws attention away from the friendly human woman Emilia just before the Cumaea can kill her baby for harboring Arcanics. Master Ren draws attention away from Kippa, but the Cumaea surround them both. Kippa is backed up against a tree, surrounded by Cumaea {{mooks}}. She fights back, but is no match for them. Then suddenly, one of the Cumaea's unicorn steeds comes running at them, bleeding, in pain, and frenzied, and it soon becomes clear that someone ''tore off its horn''. Cue the Cumaea EliteMook being [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome gored through the neck]] [[BigDamnHeroes by the horn Maika ripped from the unicorn's forehead and threw like a javelin]].

* CultureChopSuey: The different societies in this world are mostly based off of the writers' Asian roots, but while many elements of our Asia are obvious, different Asian and a few Western cultures have been thrown together to create each society.

* DefectorFromDecadence: A villainous version of this. Lady Sophia and her mother, Lady Yvette, were actually renegades from the Cumaea. The Cumaea had forgotten their scientific roots and became almost purely religious, so Sophia and Yvette struck out on their own to do their own research into Lilium, the Old Gods and the mask.

* EnforcedColdWar: Ever since the event at Constantine, which saw 146,000 Arcanics and humans killed in a single blast, both sides have established a hostile peace with each other. The Human Federation lost almost all of its Cumaean witches in the blast, leaving only novices and a small number of elite. Without the Cumaeans, the Federation fear Arcanics would steamroll them. Meanwhile, the Arcanics are trying to build up their forces and discover the cause of the blast. The Sword of the East fears that the humans still have the means to dominate the battlefield, while the Ancients and noble court have grown too indolent to adequately wage a war. And then Maika destroys the peace treaty with her destruction of a Cumaean compound...

* EvilUncle: The Sword of the East is this to Maika, even before she knew she had a niece. Before her death, Moriko warns Maika never to trust or go to the Sword of the East for help.

* FamilyMan: Seizi Imura, Maika's goddessfather, is a brutal former pirate and rules his trade empire with an iron fist. His love for Maika and his brother is his sole redeeming feature — he wants Maika to inherit his empire one day, when she's done rampaging.

* FantasticDrug: Dreamtar is a fantasy analogue to opium and it causes feelings of euphoria and seeing visions. Unfortunately, Arcanics are easily hooked on it. Because it was the cats that introduced the plant that is the main ingredient for Dream Tar, many Arcanics hate cats, believing the cats had done so to purposely hook them on the drug.

* FantasticMedicinalBodilyProduct: The Cumean witch-nuns can use the body of Arcanics to create a substance called Lilium. It has many healing effects, and even brings a character back from the dead.

** Maika's missing arm really does hinder her, during a fight she has to bash someone in the face with her stump. It's only because of surprise and her own inhuman strength that the attack was enough to knock her opponent over. The lack of an arm also limits how much she can carry, so she needed to recruit Kippa as a personal carrier.

* HumansAreWhite: Averted, the palest humans or human-like individuals are a light brown or dark yellow. After that there are many people with much darker skins.

* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: Maika is a caught in a bomb blast and, standing near a window, she gets impaled in many areas of her body with large pieces of glass.

* InterspeciesRomance: Arcanics can trace their existence to relationships between human and Ancient basically impossible today. [[spoiler:It also turns out the Shaman-Empress controlled Zinn not because she had the techno-magical might to order Monstra around, but because they were lovers... at least, that’s how Zinn remembers it.]]

* LadyLand: WordOfGod says that ''Monstress''[='=] world is influenced by the matriarchal culture of ancient China; the Cumaea, who basically rule humankind, are all women, while the Arcanic Empire is more egallitarian, but still has an awful lot of women in the leading roles.
** In [[https://www.guernicamag.com/making-a-monstress/ Guernica magazine]], Liu mentions she wished to flip the switch on the SmurfettePrinciple and make a world where there's 5 women for every men with [[HandWave no explanations required]].

* LittleBitBeastly: Most Arcanics — excluding Maika, Moriko and Tuya, who are the only Arcanic thus far seen who have a fully human appearance — have horns, animal ears, wings, or some other animal-like trait, but are mostly humanoid. This is in contrast to the Ancients, who range from looking like talking animals to simply having animal heads.

* LostTechnology: The Ancients of old and the Shaman-Empress could create amazing technology, which includes stasis chambers, robots and memory-recording devices. According to the Lord Doctor, they could even travel the stars and manipulate time. One of his professed goals is to build a world where such technology can be recreated.

** All of the Inquisitrixes use NomDeGuerre like "Flay", "Hammer", and other decidely bloodthirsty references.

* NoodleIncident: Constantine. All that anyone knows is someone or something set off a FantasticNuke that killed more than 140,000 people. Maika and seven other Arcanic children were the only unwounded survivors; survivors whom the Ancients are perfectly willing to sacrifice hoping to learn what happened because human fear that the Arcanics were responsible is the only thing holding the tenuous peace. While the Arcanics are doing their best to stoke that fear, they have no more idea what happened than the humans.
* OffscreenMomentOfAwesome: When the Dusk Court elite forces turn on Maika and ambush her, she whips out her assault rifle. The next scene you see Maika unconscious inside a high-tech sarcophagus and Tanno saying that she killed some of his finest soldiers.

* PersecutedIntellectuals: The cats. "Everybody knows [their] kind are thieves," after all. The Cumaea describe them to a group of young novices in a background panel as "the most treacherous creatures a member of our Order can face." They appear so far to be mostly harmless, even ineffectual — if mysterious — poetical philophers, but there may or may not be something deeper and darker to them.

* PowerIncontinence: Maika's infiltration plan depends upon using her Arcanic magic to break her slave collar. When she's finally fueled by enough rage [[spoiler:and boosted by the Monstrum]] her power breaks open ''all'' of the slaves' collars and also breaks open all of their cell doors to boot, flinging the entire front of Maika's cell across the cell block with enough force to fatally pin her tormentor to the opposite wall.

** While she's not exactly royalty, there is no way the reader could have guessed that Maika is a lady before [[spoiler:Corvin]] mentions it. There's implication that Maika's mother is the sister of the warlord known as the Sword of the East.

* {{Steampunk}}: Very much so, although with more Asian and ancient Egyptian aesthetics than the usual. Advanced technology, including flamethrowers and prosthetic limbs, in an old-fashioned society, complete with plenty of bronze-coloured metal and large numbers of airships.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: Neither the Monkey King nor the Sword of the East hestitate to murder innocent Arcanic children if it suits their purposes.

* WideEyedIdealist: Although she knows when to fight or run if she or her friends are in danger, Kippa is still pretty idealistic. She reacts to a cat like any child of our world (where cats are cute and not eccentric and not always trustworthy sapient philosophers) when everyone in her world knows you should never trust a cat. (Or a nun... or a nurse... [[Series/DoctorWho huh]].)

* BadassGay:
** [[spoiler:As it turns out, Maika and Tuya were more than just best friends...]]
** The genius Cumaea scientist Lady Sophia kisses her partner Atena.
** [[spoiler:Though it's a political marriage, the Sword of the East is willing to marry the Baroness of the Dusk Court and she bothers to consummate the marriage.]]

[[caption-width-right:350:This is one of the [[SugarWiki/AwesomeArt less elaborate]] covers.]]

Enter TheProtagonist, an Arcanic teen named Maika Halfwolf. The only daughter of the formidable Moriko Halfwolf — known, respected and feared by both the Cumaea and the Arcanics — Maika grew up a starving, degraded slave in human territory. Eventually Maika escaped, maturing into a strong, badass young woman [[AntiHero driven by rage at the humans who enslaved her, the Arcanics who abandoned her... pretty much everyone, really]].

* FacialHorror: When forcibly removing the two mask fragments that Gull is wearing, Maika tears her entire face off in the process.

* RightHandVersusLeftHand: The Federation's army and navy are at odds with each other, with the WarHawk leaders of the army siding with the Cumea while the more reasonable and peaceful admiralty siding with the Prime Minister.