Comic Book / Finder

"It's nice, living in a city. No rain, no snow, no cold wind, no hot summer. No three different wardrobes to keep up with. Air scrubbers on every corner, and all the sun you want from the streetlamps. No bugs in your food and no rats in your walls and no big crime surge after dark because there isn't any dark. Just shut off your windows when you decide you've had enough. Hours and days and weeks , nice neat and dependable, and tons of tings going on to fill all those hours up, and a nice quiet nest to retreat back to. No more neighborhoods out in the open with big walls around them and razor wire and broken glass on top of 'em. No more armed guards and gunfire at night. No more living in a glorified root cellar because we're too afraid to live in the house itself. Everything above ground and I don't just mean the buildings."

— Rachel

Independent comic book described by the creator, Carla Speed McNeil, as "aboriginal sci-fi", although perhaps better described as "people in a weird world with very human problems."

Strange creatures, Lost Technology and bizarre customs regularly crop up in rich detail, but they're all eerily familiar and serve as the backdrop to tales of love, hate, confusion and seeking.

Think of it as Slice of Life Embellished, with the embellishment cranked up, then taught to play nice and not upstage Slice of Life. The stories are focused on (or at least tangentially related to) Jaeger, a member of the title order of Finders.

Several issues and two complete storylines can be read at the creator's website.

Dark Horse have recently begun publishing Finder, releasing the first seven arcs as two omnibus 'Library' volumes and continuing to publish the comic in serial format and graphic novels.

Has nothing to do with The Finder tv series.

Stories so far:

• Sin-Eater (two volumes): Jaeger returns to the city of Anvard and discovers that Emma Grosvenor, his on-off girlfriend, and her children are in danger from her mentally-disturbed estranged husband, who is Jaeger's former commanding officer who Jaeger is still in contact with.
• King of the Cats: Jaeger travels to the city-cum-theme-park of Munkytown to help arrange a peace deal between his own nomadic Ascian people and the Nyima, a culture of humanised lions.
• Talisman: Emma Grosvenor's youngest daughter, Marcie, struggles with the fall out of Sin-Eater and her own developing writing talent.
• Dream Sequence: Magri White is the creator and, via brain-computer integration, human server of Anvard's most popular MMORPG. But something in his mind has started to attack his guests...
• Mystery Date: Vary, a high-class prostitute and anthropology student, has to deal with cultural issues and her attraction to both of her academic supervisors.
• The Rescuers: The baby son of one of Anvard's wealthiest men is abducted and murdered, and Jaeger attempts to ensure that some kind of justice is done.
• Five Crazy Women: Jaeger confides in a gay buddy about the problems of heterosexual dating.
• Voice: Rachel Grosvenor, Emma's eldest child, tries to win full acceptance in her mother's clan despite her half-breed status.
• Torch: Partially published online, then abandoned: the installments were later deleted, and the Rachel plot thread was recycled and expanded into Chase the Lady.
• Third World: Published in the Dark Horse Presents anthology series and the first color comic in the series. Jaeger gets a job as a courier, is sent on an unexpected trip out to distant parts, and finds himself confronting the dark secrets of his past.
• Chase the Lady: Also from Dark Horse Presents. Rachel discovers that becoming Llaverac aristocracy just means more financial worries and public pressures. And then there's the Ascian community that she's somehow become the public protector of, and the very real physical and spiritual dangers of her increasingly deep involvement in their Voudoun-like religion.

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This comic book series provides examples of:

• Abridged for Children: "Talisman" has a weird in-universe inversion of this. Marcie Grosvenor spends years trying to find a children's book that Jaeger read to her regularly when she was a little girl. When she eventually finds it she discovers that it's complete rubbish... and then she realises that it's not just Nostalgia Filter, it's that Jaeger was improvising almost everything and using the book simply to get prompts from. She ends up feeling oddly betrayed by him over this.
• After the End: Word of God has said this is technically the case, but the End happened a loooooong time ago and it's not at all important.
• All of the Other Reindeer: As a half-breed, a Finder (a member of a greatly revered secret society) and a Sin-Eater (a religious caste of untouchables), Jaeger is simultaneously outcast from his own people and essential to their culture. No wonder he spends so much time away from them. Fellow Finder Chief Coward puts it best - "Contradictions make the best stories, but in daily life, people can't stand them."
• All There in the Manual: the endnotes in the collected editions clarify a great deal about some of the more enigmatic worldbuilding details and character motivations.
• Amateur Sleuth: "Finders solve problems and break trail, that's all."
  • In the Rescuers story, Jaeger is willing to assist the professional investigator of a kidnapping, but both parties are frustrated that Jaeger's talents and methods would never be admissable, and his social status makes bringing him on much too awkward, leaving both of them hamstrung. Jaeger vents his frustration on his fellow Ascians, who could easily do the same feat of tracking, and they eventually do, administering some harsh vigilante justice.
  • Rachel has to become one in Voice, ironically enough so that she can track down Jaeger so he can help her recover her ring.
• Ancient Tradition: The society of Finders stands apart from their native cultures, in order to see them as outsiders do, and there are specific customs to enlist their help.
• Art Shift: "Third World" is the first story with color art.
• Artificial Animal People: There are a number of humanised animals who were either uplifted by humans or created directly as servants. The ones who get most exploration are the Nyima, uplifted humanoid lions who retain something close to natural lions' social arrangements, with females running society and a single elite male providing sperm to them.
• Artificial Zombie: Inverted, the zombies are still alive but they still go about scuffling along in packs. This is because they're office workers; they have a chip in their brain that lets them do all their work on the internet while their bodies are sent out shambling to get more exercise.
  • One woman's husband shows up to get a look at her because he just got a post card announcing her promotion
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: Magri versus his Enemy Within, who happens to look like Jaeger.
• Beast Man: Many, by implication the result of a very-high-tech past culture engaging in genetic augmentation of animals. The ones who get most development are the Nyima, humanised intelligent lions who retain something close to contemporary lions' social arrangement.
• The Beautiful Elite: The Llaverac clan.
• Beauty Contest: The Llaverac competition to gain clan acceptance.
• Becoming the Mask: Sort of; Jaeger was originally partially protecting the Grosvenor family from Brigham and partially providing Brigham with information about them. This eventually shifted to Jaeger entirely protecting the Grosvenor family after he realised just how insane Brigham was and that his relationship with Emma was unsalvagable.
• Big Fancy House: Rachel has one of these now...which she can't really afford.
• Binge Montage: When Rachel gatecrashes the Ascian wake in "Voice".
• Bio Punk: Borderline example as the biotech seems to have been used by a previous ultra-tech civilisation that collapsed, but it's the only non-magical explanation for many of the oddities of the setting (certain characters' mildly superhuman powers, how physically and mentally similar the members of the Clans are, the anthropomorphic animals...)
• Black Comedy Rape: Not quite rape, but the aforementioned Magri porno, and Jaeger's body rendering has become a popular porn star.
• Blessed with Suck: Jaeger's Healing Factor, which keeps him from being killed but also makes him ill if he doesn't get hurt. It's also implied to be tied to his inability to stay in one place for any extended amount of time
• Bloody Hilarious: Jaeger messing up Grazie's bathroom while cutting himself to activate his Healing Factor.
• Body Horror: "Dream Sequence" is not recommended for people sensitive to this.
• Braids, Beads and Buckskins: Invoked but quickly subverted with the Ascians.
• Brain/Computer Interface: Present in the form of plugs or brain computer.that seem to work similar to cyberjacks, which exist in varying forms of complexity, from student-level jacks to full-immersion interfaces. Marcie's has an advanced jack especially for medical computers to directly monitor her condition and influence her treatment. She can also use it to interface with computers, mentally conduct Instant Message conversations and learn skills quickly (albeit unpleasantly; Marcie runs away screaming when Lynne offers to teach her to read via hookup.) Movie theaters take advantage of this by including sensory enhancements and "mood tracks". In the Dream Sequence storyline, the narrator has a full-immersion connection as a job perk, which allows his employer to physically pack employees like sardines, while they experience a lush virtual office setting. The plot revolves around a virtual theme park/MMORPG whose creator hosts the world inside his fully-networked brain (which, of course, goes horribly wrong).
  • Interestingly Deconstructed as it's shown that this let's technology can manipulate memory, if you pay enough people won't remeber the way to your house without their express permission.
• Casting Couch: If you can't get accepted as a full member of a Clan in Anvard, pretty much your only option to rise socially is to find a mentor/sponsor, and it's openly accepted that sexual service will be part of this.
• Catgirl: The Nyima, partially crossing over with Talking Animals.
• Chosen Conception Partner: "Chase the Lady" reveals that this is a recognised private practice among the Llaverac, who all look and identify as female regardless of their genital anatomy. If two female-bodied Llaverac marry, they will recruit a "third-maid" from within the clan to act as a sperm donor.
• City of Adventure: Anvard is a mighty strange place.
• The Clan: a big part of society in the cities.
• Cliffhanger: Third World ends with a massive one.
• Cryptic Conversation: All over the place. One character even complains that everyone in her family acts as if they're in on some secret.
• Deconstruction: Jaeger is one of the Loveable Rogue and Walking the Earth tropes. On the surface he may seem like a traditional action-adventure hero, except that his medical conditions force him to live that lifestyle. The only therapy for his unknown disease is for his body to endure a physical shock, meaning that he has to keep moving and getting hurt just to stay healthy.
• Doing in the Scientist: "Third World" features what appears to be an actual malevolent spirit, although it might conceivably be some kind of cyberspace phenomenon.
• Domed Hometown: Anvard, as well as some others that don't really come into the story much. Anvard's design is a variation on the usual trope, though- rather than being a normal city with a big dome on top, it's built in layers, and in most parts of the city, you'd never see the dome itself. It was also built so long ago that the inhabitants don't really know how it works, and is starting to break down. No one seems to be that alarmed, though.
• Downer Ending: "The Rescuers". Well, it is mostly about child murder.
• Dream Apocalypse: When Magri finnaly falls asleep all the players in Elsewhere are booted out of the game, later when he mentally reviews the area large sections of it are simply washed away or forgotten.
• Dropped After the Pilot: The first chapter of "Sin-Eater", and the whole comic, has Jaeger arriving in Anvard and going to a bookshop, where he has a lengthy conversation with the staff, all of whom he seems to know well, which seems to be setting them up as major characters. So far, they've never been seen again.
• Dysfunction Junction: The Grosvenor family. Mom's a Cloud Cuckoo Lander, Marcie is a Creepy Child sometimes, Lynne is a Deadpan Snarker and Well-Intentioned Extremist with gender issues, Rachel's the closest thing to the Only Sane Man, and Dad is a crazy Stalker with a Crush for Mom, who walked fifty miles through a warzone to get away from him.
• Empathic Healing: In Javecek, this is done to people. Not necessarily with their consent.
• Enemy Without: Still technically within, but causes plenty of problems nonetheless. On the border between this and Jekyll & Hyde.
• Everyone Is Bi: According to the endnotes, it's culturally accepted that the majority of people in Anvard are bisexual to some degree. To the point that some people define two sexual orientations: bi and "monosexual".
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Lots. Jaeger's many haircuts show the passage of time and his general status; if the cut happens onscreen, it usually says something about his relationship to the character doing the cutting. Lynne dyes it brown to pass as a Medawar. The decline and fall of Magri's fabulous fiberous hair closely reflects his mental state.
• Expy: The awkward line between archetype and expy is riffed on throughout "Dream Sequence"; one of its themes is the golden ideal of originality vs. the basically influence-driven nature of actual art. Many side characters have their roots pointed out in footnotes. Magri himself is a partial expy of several characters, and he gets some on-screen trouble for it.
  • One that isn't pointed out in the footnotes: tweenage Marcie Grosvenor in the middle section of "Talisman" has some similarities to Marcie in Peanuts.
• Fantastic Arousal: Vary's unknowing sexual favours to Shar at the start of "Mystery Date".
  • Filtered through an interesting case of Bizarre Alien Psychology though, she basically fulfills the roll of a child for Shar, this helps him feel fulfilled in what's specifically compared as a sexual impulse.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Guns exist in this Scavenger World, but the means to manufacture guns and ammo is limited. The Nyima refuse to use guns for this reason, except for one tribe that makes their own, averting the logistical vulnerability dependence on firearms would open.
  • Can someone check the above? I'm not sure enough to edit, but I had the strong impression that guns aren't harder to manufacture, rather the Nyima avoid them simply because it would foster dependence on outsiders (Amish logic).
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink
• Full-Frontal Assault: Jaeger strips naked while being chased by the security guards of a Disneyland-esque city and nails one of them in the face with his soaking-wet underwear.
• Gender-Blender Name: Lynne, deliberately. Most Llaverac men have female or gender-neutral names, and Emma carried on the tradition.
• Genius Loci: Magri White identifies as such though he's not as good at it as he thinks
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: Blythe's binary representations of her conflicting priorities - she's programmed to look out for her user's best interests, but also to push for new upgrades whenever possible.
• Handsome Lech: Jaeger on his worse days.
• Healing Factor: Jaeger has one, which is the main reason he's still alive. On the down side, if he doesn't get hurt for a while, it starts making him sick.
• Hollywood Psych: Averted; the books' portrayal of mental illness (of various stripes and strengths) is stylized but well-researched.
• Humanoid Female Animal: Female Nyima are humanoid bipeds, while the males look like, well, lions. The reasons for this are only hinted at, but the one non-humanoid female we see, and the humanoid king implies some sort of hormonal manipulation that suggests the Nyima were artificially uplifted.
• I Know Your True Name: Rachel is only able to form a true relationship with the Ascian goddess of wealth by giving her a new name that is genuinely meaningful to Rachel.
• Ignored Enamored Underling: Psyche, Rachel's PA in "Chase the Lady" is in love with her and they're implied to have had casual sex a few times. When Rachel finds out just how strong Psyche's feelings are, she's interested in pursuing a relationship, but Psyche refuses because of Rachel's ambiguous relationship with Jaeger.
• Impoverished Patrician: This is Rachel's situation in "Chase the Lady", with a newly-acquired Llaverac title of nobility but no actual money to support the necessary lifestyle.
• Indian Burial Ground: "Third World" has an Ascian burial ground that is threatened by development and is actually haunted by an evil Hate Plague-inducing entity.
• In the Blood: Members of the clans have a *lot* in common.
• Inspired by…: The murder mystery in "The Rescuers" is loosely inspired by the Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping.
• It Makes Sense in Context: Pretty much everything; it's sort of the point of the series.
• Jerkass: Lynne, who becomes a Jerk with a Heart of Gold for Marcie (but for almost no one else).
  • This becomes especially noteworthy in Voice, where Lynne helps Marcie but refuses to help Rachel find her ring, even though by helping Rachel Rachel in turn could help Marcie (because if Rachel can get admitted into the Llaverac clan, Marcie can go to college)
• Junkie Prophet: Rachel initially can only channel the Ascian goddess of wealth by getting blackout drunk, which has bad effects on her health.
• Knight Templar Big Brother: Lynne to Marcie. He wouldn't give his older sister Rachel the time of day, though because he figured out she's only his half-sibling, and isn't actually a halfbreed like him and Marcie.
• Lizard Folk: The Laeske. According to Prof. Zivancevik, they're the only non-human intelligent people in the world who evolved sentience naturally and weren't uplifted by humans. (Which makes sense, since they're by far the least humanoid.)
• Lost Technology: All over the place, particularly the domes enclosing Anvard and elsewhere.
• Mad Doctor: Javecek is an entire city of them, they have to be when congenital diseases are hoping between people.
• Mayor of a Ghost Town: "Chase the Lady" reveals that Jaeger is hereditarily the sole remaining representative of an otherwise extinct tribe which continues to be recognised by Anvard's administration as a legal fiction to achieve various political aims (similarly to "rotten boroughs" in the pre-Reform UK Parliament). This allows him to take control of a hoard of unclaimed money that has been paid to the "tribe" for allowing other people to rent its embassy building.
• My Skull Runneth Over: Magri White's problem given he's using his skull as the main server of a hugely popular MMORG
• Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game: "Elsewhere", the central concept of "Dream Sequence".
• Mental Monster: In the "Dream Sequence" arc, the central character is, via brain-computer linkage, the human main server of the MMORPG that he runs. When a monster starts attacking his clients in the game, he eventually realises that it is the personification of his repressed anger at the fanbase, and defeats it by going way beyond I'm Not Afraid of You and having sex with it.
• Mental World; This is effectively what Elsewhere is given it's based out of Magri's head, the fact he's licensing it lets other people explore it too.
• Naked People Are Funny: see Full-Frontal Assault. Also, one of Magri White's fans makes virtual gay porn starring Magri, then shows it to him.
• Ninja: One character calls Jaeger a "ninja do-gooder". It's more accurate than you'd think.
• Noble Savage: Averted. While a lot of city folk THINK the Ascians are like this, they're just as annoying and tradition-bound as anyone else.
  • Especially blatantly called out in "The Rescuers" when the part-Ascian scullery maid Lydia, who's fascinated by Ascian culture, refuses to believe Jaeger when he points out to her some rather unpleasant facts about Ascian traditions, including traditional misogyny and viewing twins as ritually impure (to the point that if one twin doesn't die, it needs to be abandoned), two customs that arose from Ascians being nomadic and needing to conserve resources
• Noodle Incident:
  • However Jaeger annoyed Brom enough for Brom to nearly beat him to death.
  • "Chase the Lady" is implied to take place after the cliffhanger ending of "Third World", and we don't find out how Jaeger got out of his bad situation at that point, except that there is now something weird about his left eye.
• N-Word Privileges: Jaeger is allowed to call Brom "fag". (Although see also the Noodle Incident entry.)
• One-Gender Race: Almost. Thanks to genetic engineering and culture, all Llaverac, regardless of actual anatomy, look like and identify as women.
• One Twin Must Die: Ascians view twins as such a crime against nature that both are killed at birth, this is showcased in The Reascuers.
• Le Parkour: Jaeger has this in spades and demonstrates it repeatedly throughout the series.
• Please Select New City Name: "Third World" has a small city just called "Third World", because all of the ethnic groups inhabiting it have a different name for it and won't allow any of the other names to be accepted.
• Present Absence: Jaeger in "Voice".
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: the Medawar men, most of whom work as police officers in Anvard
• Remember the New Guy?: Brom is introduced in "Five Crazy Women" as one of Jaeger's best friends, but has never previously appeared (although there's a guy who may just possibly be him visible in the edge of a panel at the end of "Sin-Eater"). Justified to a degree given Jaeger's wandering habits and solitariness.
• Rite of Passage: Every member of a clan goes through some form of test to obtain full status in the clan. They can range from complex tests to some hellish version of a fashion show.
• Scavenger World: It was this, the cities that seem to have been set up to ride out a long passed apocalypse are opening up and sharing resources.
• Schizo Tech: The setting may or may not be Earth in the far-flung future. One marketplace scene looks like a standard fantasy setting, until you notice a veiled woman carrying a Walkman and wearing Chuck Taylors.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: Custom requires Jaeger to refuse payment for his services as a Finder, but then he doesn't have much use for material wealth, and he has a knack for scrounging up what he needs.
• Screw Yourself: Once Magri realizes the Jaeger-monster is the personification of his repressed anger, he declares, "you're mine to do with as I please", and kisses him.*
• Self-Harm–Induced Superpower: Jaeger has to resort to this sometimes if he doesn't get accidentally hurt or deliberately injured by someone else because his healing factor turns on him and gives him auto-immune problems if it has nothing to do for too long.
• Serious Business: The Llaverac beauty pageant (and all of the other clan initiation tests, but the Llaveracs are the most dramatic about it), and generally anything to do with family rings.
• Shout-Out:
  • Many, often referred to in the notes. A possible one not acknowledged is that the bookseller who Jaeger buys Marcie's gift from at the beginning of "Talisman" looks a great deal like the horror writer and critic Kim Newman.
  • Towards the end of "Chase the Lady", Jaeger is watching TV, and the dialogue in speech bubbles from what he's watching implies that it's the film adaptation of No Country for Old Men.
• Sin Eater: Jaeger Ayres, the protagonist of many story arcs, is a ritual sin-eater for the tribe of nomadic Ascian people from whom he is partially descended. As such, he is simultaneously needed but also feared and distrusted, which metaphorically overlaps with his other on-and-off role as a sort of private eye.
• Souvenir Land: Munkytown in "King of the Cats" is a heavy Disney theme park parody.
• Stalker with a Crush: Brigham Grosvenor to Emma. Rachel also gets two of these later on.
• Stern Teacher: Zivancevic
• Stock Scream: As a young woman, Marcie makes money as the voice for them.
• Straight Gay: Brom
• Sweet Polly Oliver: Lord Rod
• Teacher/Student Romance: Vary with both her academic advisors, Zivancevic and Shar.
• Themed Tattoos: The tattoo which marks a person as a member of the Finder society, a barred stripe around some part of the body with a line of dots parallel to it. Jaeger's are around his hands and have to be frequently redone as his Healing Factor causes them to decay. Rachel's is around her neck.
• The Trickster: It's very difficult to get a straight answer out of Jaeger, he rarely holds a steady job, and his decisions often appear random and inscrutable. When someone sees him rolling dice she asks what he's doing. His answer? "Thinking."
• Unproblematic Prostitution: Vary, mostly, although the nastier kinds of prostitution also exist.
• Verbal Tic: Jaeger tends to call people 'cousin'.
  • Laeske tend to enunshhiate their 'S's, being deshcendantsss of lizardsss.
• Walking the Earth: Pretty much Jaeger's job.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Most Llaverac men. For libertarian values of "wholesome".
• Wolverine Wannabe: Jaeger has some obvious similarities to Wolverine — short, tough, hairy heroic guy with a Healing Factor and occasional berserk fits, with a constant inner conflict between desire for solitude and need for company, and a tendency to befriend teenage girls in a non-creepy way.

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