Line #56 ComicBook/CaballisticsInc


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/irvingcabs.png]]
2
3	''Caballistics, Inc.'' is a comic featured in ''ComicBook/TwoThousandAD''.
4
5	The British government sells off a nearly defunct department originally tasked to fight off Nazi occultism during World War II to a mysterious entrepeneur. He reforms the organization into Caballistics, Inc., a private agency to fight off supernatural threats.
6
7	Followed by a SpinOff series, ''ComicBook/{{Absalom}}''.
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9	----
10	!!This comic provides examples of:
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12	* TheAlcoholic: Dr. Brand is rarely seen without a bottle after he discovers Jenny is possessed by a demon.
13	* AssholeVictim: Demon Jenny hits the bars a few times in search of fresh victims, one of whom was apparently a serial rapist and another one a child molester. Justified because she mentions that [[AbstractEater she feeds on human sin]].
14	* AwesomeMcCoolName: Invoked. Lawrence Verse and Hannah Chapter answer the two questions they're asked most often, one of which is whether those are really their names.[[note]]The other is whether they're lovers. They're not, given one is a former priest who took a vow of celibacy and the other identifies as a lesbian, though there was a drunken altercation between them in the past.[[/note]] They're not, but a gimmick like that draws in more clients for their monster hunting business.
15	* BadassPreacher: Lawrence Verse is an ex-Catholic priest who was forced to give up his vocation after an incident involving, as another character put it, "the novel use of a chainsaw during the Rite of Exorcism."
16	* BigBad: [[TheChessmaster Ethan]] [[FallenAngel Kostabi]] (heavily implied to be [[spoiler:a HumanoidAbomination called Nyarlathotep]])and his [[TheDragon dragon]], [[ViolentGlaswegian Micky Ness]].
17	* BloodBath: Readers first meet Solomon Ravne in the middle of one such bath, surrounded by the naked, bleeding corpses the blood had to have come from. [[spoiler: Because Ravne is suggested to be Really700YearsOld]], it may be that such a bath is needed to maintain his age and appearance or prolong his life.
18	* BornAgainImmortality: Ravne and Jenny's baby was possibly conceived so that [[spoiler:Ethan Kostabi]] could be reborn in a new host body.
19	* CreativeSterility: [[spoiler:Ethan Kostabi]] created [[spoiler:Solomon Ravne]] and his (mentioned but unseen) "siblings" as an experiment to create new life. Because he is a FallenAngel and not {{God}} however, he couldn't give his children a soul as he doesn't have one of his own nor does he know how to create one.
20	* DeliberatelyMonochrome: The entire comic is in black and white, which adds a lot to the creepy atmosphere.
21	* DemonicPossession: Jenny is possessed by a demon early on, who manages to keep this a secret for an extended length of time. Eventually the rest of the team catches on when Jenny keeps somehow destroying equally dangerous supernatural entities all by her lonesome when they're not looking. However, the possibility of an exorcism is rendered moot by the demon threatening to kill Jenny if they so much as try it.
22	* DistantFinale: Gordon Rennie eventually wrote a final one shot story detailing what had happened to the characters a full decade after the events that [[spoiler:destroyed Ethan Kostabi. Hannah visits Lawrence in the hospital while he is still in a coma and is suffering from a bad limp herself. Meanwhile, Ravne and Jenny are still together and are raising a child.]] Apparently, Rennie lost interest in the story after the two tie in novels were published without his input and he concentrated on its SpinOff, ''Absalom'' instead.
23	* DroppedABridgeOnHim: [[spoiler: Dr. Brand]] abruptly meets his end when [[spoiler: Ness]] pushes him in front of a train.
24	* EmotionEater: At one point Hannah Chapter and Lawrence Verse go hunting for a psychic vampire who feeds on the loneliness and despair of its victims. It was also a shapeshifter, as it assumed the form of a deceased girlfriend of Hannah.
25	* EstablishingCharacterMoment:
26	** Hannah and Lawrence are introduced being in the middle of a gunfight against a horde of zombies.
27	** Ravne is introduced having slaughtered several people to bathe in their blood.
28	* TheFaceless: One of Michael Magister's former comrades in Department Q during World War II apparently lost his face in "[[NoodleIncident some occult beastliness]] [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI in the Somme]]" and wears a mask, leather helmet, and flying goggles to cover it up.
29	* FallenAngel: [[spoiler:Ethan Kostabi, the {{Chessmaster}} of the series,]] is in fact an angel who fell down to Earth several thousand years ago and has since been living under different human identities.
30	* FantasticNoir: Whereas ''Caballistics'' is more straight UrbanFantasy horror.
31	* FormerRegimePersonnel: [[spoiler: Solomon Ravne]] was a member of [[{{Ghostapo}} Sonderkommando]] Thule during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. He still carries his old Luger as his weapon.
32	* {{Ghostapo}}: The strip makes mention of Nazi Germany's occult warfare division, Sonderkommando Thule, very frequently. When the titular Caballistics, Inc. was still functioning as a secret department in the British Government at its peak during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, as Q Department, Sonderkommando Thule was their biggest enemy. [[spoiler: [[TokenEvilTeammate Solomon Ravne]]]] is revealed to have been a former member.
33	* {{Golem}}: An Israeli occult division creates a Golem to kill the [[{{Ghostapo}} immortal Nazi]] Solomon Ravne, aka "Der Teuffel", for his crimes in the Holocaust. However, the Golem is stopped by Demon-Jenny for her own reasons.
34	* {{Gorn}}: Several characters meet rather [[LudicrousGibs messy]] ends throughout the strip.
35	* GunsAkimbo:
36	** Hannah is fond of a pair of 9mm pistols.
37	** Lord Rothchester, one of the World War II era Department Q members, is also fond of both dual pistols and dual submachineguns, depending on the situation.
38	* TheKetchupTest: During the mission at the Luddgate studio, Hannah tastes some of the blood the team finds all over the floor. It's not real, being merely KensingtonGore, but the substance itself is dripping down from mid-air.
39	* TheMirrorShowsYourTrueSelf: The demon possessing Miss Simmons is visible in a reflection.
40	* NaziProtagonist: Solomon Ravne is one of the main characters, and an ex-Nazi MadScientist. [[spoiler:[[ReallySevenHundredYearsOld He's even older than that]], though...]]
41	* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Ethan Kostabi, the reclusive multi-millionaire pop star of the 1970s who brings the titular organization together, is based to several extents on Music/DavidBowie.
42	* NoodleIncident:
43	** All that is known about the circumstances surrounding Lawrence Verse being forced to leave the Catholic priesthood is that he used a chainsaw while performing the Rite of Exorcism. The complete details are never made clear to the reader, although it's later suggested to have involved, at least in part, a zombie attack on the island of Martinique in 1995.
44	** When an ImmortalAssassin goes after Ravne and Jenny's baby, he comments that he hasn't encountered a homunculus like Ravne since "that queer business in Botswana" before throwing Ravne out of a window.
45	* OccultDetective: The main characters. Cabbalistics, Inc. was formed when Department Q, a Ministry of Defense department originally created in the 1940s to combat Nazi occult warfare, is privatised by the British government.
46	* TheOlderImmortal: Solomon Ravne is several hundred years old, having extended his life through {{Blood Bath}}s and other dark magic. However, his "father", [[spoiler:Ethan Kostabi]], is revealed at the end of the series to be [[spoiler:a FallenAngel created at the dawn of time who has been walking the Earth for at least two thousand years.]]
47	* OurHomunculiAreDifferent: During World War II [[{{Ghostapo}} the Nazis were running a program]] to assassinate Allied political and military leaders and replace them with homonculi. They were given this knowledge by [[spoiler:Solomon Ravne]], who is revealed to be one himself.
48	* PlantPerson: During a mission Hannah is captured by a female earth spirit who is rooted in a tree's vines underground. Naturally, [[GaiasVengeance she thinks humanity should be wiped out]].
49	* PlatoIsAMoron: The {{Chessmaster}} in the strip is one Ethan Kostabi, an eccentric former rock star from the 1970s [[FictionalCounterpart strongly resembling]] Music/DavidBowie. Whenever Kostabi's success as a musician is described, comparisons are always made to Bowie, and Bowie is always described as having been greatly inferior—having sold fewer albums and having "scavenged a career out of the discarded fads and influences that Ethan left in his wake".
50	* PopCulturedBadass: Hannah fights monsters and demons on a daily basis. She also happens to be a big fan of horror movies, which comes in pretty handy when the team is [[TrappedInTVLand trapped inside a horror film dimension]] by an evil director. Also the author of the unpublished book ''Mixed-Up Flicks For Mixed-Up Chicks''.
51	* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld:
52	** Solomon Ravne is suggested to be around 300 years old and must keep up his more youthful appearance through ritualistic {{Blood Bath}}s and other forms of TheDarkArts.
53	** [[spoiler:Ethan Kostabi]] is in fact a 2000 year old angel who fell to Earth.
54	* RedBaron: [[TokenEvilTeammate Solomon Ravne]], an immortal former Nazi, became known as "Der Teufel" (The Devil) to his victims during the Holocaust.
55	* RedShirt: During the group's first mission to stop a zombie incursion in the London Underground, they're accompanied by a group of special forces who are clearly there to serve as cannon fodder.
56	* RevenantZombie: In the epilogue, Ravne and Jenny are attacked by a powerful zombie of a British colonial soldier who has been ordered to kill their baby. He ragdolls both of them (a homunculus and demon, respectively), only being stopped by a kill-virtually-anything dagger stored in the mansion just in case.
57	* TheSoulless: [[spoiler:Solomon Ravne doesn't possess a soul, as he's not human but a [[OurHomunculiAreDifferent homunculi]] created by a FallenAngel]]. This makes it possible for him to sneak up on Michael Magister, whose psychic sensors only work on beings with souls.
58	* StakingTheLovedOne: Hannah Chapter reveals to a psychic vampire that before becoming an OccultDetective she was once involved with a woman who turned into a zombie, forcing Hannah to blow her head off. She turns off her com so that Lawrence (her closest friend) can't hear this.
59	* StupidJetpackHitler: Crossing over into {{Ghostapo}}, the Nazis had a cloning programme during the war, where they were creating homonculi that they were intending to use to replace Allied leaders to subvert the war effort. Magister notes that while the lab was destroyed, that he suspects the Allies took over the research themselves so they could have a more controllable version of Churchill.
60	* TaughtByTelevision: Invoked. When Miss Simmons asks if Lawrence Verse and Hannah Chapter have much experience in dealing with paranormal situations, Hannah snarks that they just play a lot of videogames.
61	* TeamKiller: Michael Magister is a former member of Department Q during World War II who happened to be a PsychoForHire. Unfortunately, his team members figured that out too late, and he ended up killing most of them before being locked up.
62	* TokenEvilTeammate:
63	** Two of them. Solomon Ravne is an immortal sorcerer who is also a former Nazi, while Jenny is possessed by a demon who initially keeps herself hidden from the others.
64	** Michael Magister was this for the original Department Q, being the most sadistic one of them all who {{Mind Rape}}s a captive German spy during an interrogation ForTheEvulz. He notes that he hated all of his comrades, barring maybe the resident TortureTechnician RabidCop who was a former Black And Tan.
65	* TrappedInTVLand: When the team investigates a haunting at the derelict Luddgate film studio, they find themselves trapped inside various horror movies produced by the studio after a failed demonic extraction of Jenny. Turns out that the studio head was an occultist who built his own dimension to both play out his own fantasies and to trap people in an illusion so he could suck out their lifeforce to sustain himself.
66	* VirginSacrifice: Subverted. Before Ravne offers Miss Simmons as part of a demonic sacrifice, he asks her if she's a virgin. When she says she isn't, Ravne explains how she best suits his purposes because innocent virgins don't actually make the best sacrificial offerings to Hell.
67	* ViolentGlaswegian: Michael Ness is a former SAS commando who was locked up in a mental institution and is quite the TortureTechnician. Supposedly, he has an interrogation technique which involves [[NoodleImplements half a dozen shards of metal and a cigarette lighter]].
68	* WeirdHistoricalWar: Michael Magister recalls an event during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII where the original Department Q took down a [[{{Ghostapo}} Sonderkommando Thule]] homunculus project, which Solomon Ravne was involved in. Magister also notes that one of his colleagues lost his face in an occult incident during [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI The Somme]].
69	* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Subverted. It's unclear in the ending if Hannah Chapter and Lawrence Verse survive the final battle against Ethan Kostabi, but a 2018 epilogue reveals that [[spoiler:Hannah survived with a severe limp and Lawrence is in a permanent coma.]]

Context ComicBook / CaballisticsInc