Comic Book / Hexed

Hexed is an Urban Fantasy Comic Book series that ran from 2008 - 2009, with a second series in 2014 - 2015.

It's said there's no honor amongst thieves. Add to that a thief operating in the occult underground, and it's a whole different kind of nasty! After the events of Fall of Cthulhu, Luci Jennifer Inacio Das Neves, Lucifer for short, takes a new job that will expose her to the macabre underbelly of the city, and a secret that she'd rather nobody know.

There was a book published in 2015 Hexed: The Sisters of Witchdown

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The 2008 series contains examples of:

• Anti-Magic: Dietrich has an amulet for this purpose.
• Bargain with Heaven: What kicks off the mini-series.
• Barred from the Afterlife: The Harlot has claimed Lucifer's soul upon her death to become the next Harlot. Nothing else can lay claim to her as long as the hex is there.
• Broad Strokes: Though Hexed takes place in the same continuity as the earlier Fall of Cthulhu, the events of that series are only referred to vaguely. No mention is made of the gods and creatures of the Cthulhu Mythos, the only two characters who reappear are Lucifer and the Harlot, and no mention is ever made of Walter McKinley, the Miskatonic University professor who found Lucifer in Rio, saved her from a wretched existence in the streets and who pretty much was her surrogate father before his suicide.
  • The Harlot doesn't seem to need the Wicker Boxes any more.
• Broken Angel: Not seen in the comic but this apparently happened, Lucifer needs to retrieve their wings so they can be surgically reattached.
• Cool Old Lady: Lucifer's employer, Valeska Brisendine gets introduced here, she's a bit knowledgeable herself and is fully prepared to cremate an inconvenient body if need be.
• Cursed Item: Carasinth can be used to kill someone by speaking their real name to it, of course then they die a horrible death.
• Divine Intervention: An angel saved Lucifer's life after she was shot thrice by Dietrich via Magic Kiss.
• Experienced Protagonist: Lucifer starts out as an experienced thief, who uses magic when needed, when the story begins.
• The Fake Cutie: Lucifer pulls this in issue four to get into a police station she is able to turn the police against the mooks that Dietrich set on her by acting like they're sexually harassing her and into an evidence locker by pretending to be reporting a lost pet.
• Hostage for MacGuffin: Dietrich threatens Lucifer with Val's life (since she has little regard for her own) unless she brings him the Carasinth and takes him to visit the Harlot.
• I Know Your True Name: Plot-point. Dietrich is seeking to take over the magical underworld and needs Madame Cymbaline's true name to use the Carasinth, as it will let him kill her regardless of the distance.
• Magic Mirror: Subverted, using a mirror Lucifer can travel to the Harlot's realm but that's because she's her heir and as such can easily step into her realm.
  • In the second series a mirror allows the users to peer into "The Shade", stops working at the end, because the entire realm is gone.
• Mark of the Beast: That "h" Tattoo on Lucifer's back, a hex put on her by the Harlot's "mother" after the Godwar in Fall of Cthulhu to mark her as the Harlot's successor.
  • A lot of beings recognize the mark and act differently around her.
• Mouth of Sauron: Madame Cymbaline speaks through a nearby servant at all times, and the act alone makes said mouthpiece manifest Volcanic Veins.
  • The second series adds Blood from Every Orifice and if it goes on long enough they bleed out.
• The Queenpin: Madame Cymbaline controls the entire magical underworld.
• Shout-Out to Shakespeare: Madame Cymbaline shares her name with the play about the king of the same name, she later claims to inspired this plays original subject.
• Super Crime Boss: Madame Cymbaline is the magical version of this.
• Verbed Title: Shows up in the series for the Mark of the Beast the Harlot's Mother gave Lucifer.
• Villain in a White Suit: Well it's a white bodysuit but Madame Cymbaline definitely counts.
• The Von Trope Family: Dietrich von Huessel, apparently Lucifer met him in Germany but it's allegedly an affection.
• You Wouldn't Believe Me If I Told You: Lucifer uses a drowned corpse in a city morgue to enter an underwater realm but a coroner sees her, she uses this trope so he'll keep it to himself.

This 2014 series contains examples of:

• Afterlife Antechamber: The Shade is essentially this, a point where all souls go before crossing over. Some chose to stay longer due to circumstances. Crosses over with Eldritch Location.
• A God Am I: Madame Cymbaline Graeae after being resurrected as a god to kill Lucifer as punishment for her summoning a devil.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Madame Cymbaline makes it clear she wants Lucifer to work for her to get the Yellow Crown, allowing her to make a magical shroud to hide from the Harlot, otherwise she'd kill Val and Raina. When she refuses next issue, Val is killed off-screen.
• Artifact Domination: The Yellow Crown is a Magical Crown that allows you mind control other people, but the user themselves are being controlled by something else in turn and their heads explode after a few days.
  • The truth is a bit different. It brings the world itself to the god.
• Astral Projection: Lucifer has to do this from The Shade to communicate with Raina, although she calls it Haunting.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Madame Cymbaline wanted to become the next Keeper of Secrets. It left her crippled long enough for Fastrada to kill her.
• Berserk Button: The Harlot doesn't like Necromancers. At all. Raina now being one by accident means she could bring the Harlot's sisters back to life.
• Bittersweet Ending: The second series ends with Val and Fastrada dead, but Lucifer is freed from Divine Punishment and Madame Cymbaline is gone. Raina opens a new art gallery, and Val left a present for Lucifer in a painting, a feather from an angel who told her she could be redeemed, meaning she can atone now and find her way to heaven where Val is waiting.
• Boom, Headshot!: How Lucifer kills Corvus. With his own gun.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Madame Cymbaline was fatally wounded in the attempt, but she managed to banish the devil that other gods have died to get rid of from the human realm on her own. She's made a god for the effort.
• Cain and Abel: Cymbaline and Yves don't like each other much and she puts him down the moment she got the chance. Neither do the Harlot and her sisters. Though, this is because she sold them out to the Abbott after they tried sacrificing her daughter.
• Came Back Strong: Madam Cymbaline, who returned as a god after fighting off The Devil.
• Collector of the Strange: Val has a museum basement filled with magical artifacts. They later get confiscated after Madame Cymbaline and Yves end up burning the museum down.
• Combat Pragmatist: Lucifer.
• Eldritch Location: The Shade, where souls cross over to the afterlife.
• Evil Versus Oblivion: Madame Cymbaline against the Demon Lucifer summoned, mostly because she saw the world as hers and doesn't like competition. She won.
• Exact Words: The Thief said that the last of the Hexerei would die in Issue 12. Lucifer transfers that power to Madame Cymbaline and then Fastrada ends up killing her.
• Harmless Freezing: Lucifer freezes Banshee with a spell, which she notes was non-lethal....
  • Literally Shattered Lives: ...which she promptly corrects by shattering her to pieces to make sure she's dead.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Bob sacrificed his mask so that Fastrada, the former Harlot, could leave the Yellow Sands with her memory intact. He's still alive, but he has no way back and no memory of anything. They manage to pull him out about two days later though.
  • Fastrada who used the Yellow Crown to get rid of her sisters and the god-empowered Madame Cymbaline so that Lucifer would be safe.
• He Who Must Not Be Heard: Madame Cymbaline is under a vow of silence not to speak personally, so she uses proxies. When she does it herself, it's enough to cause agony to all those who can hear her.
• Insistent Terminology: The Thief refers to the former Harlot as Mother post-change.
• Keeper of Forbidden Knowledge: Harlot, the Keeper of Secrets. She knows just about everything. Except the one secret she desires the most, the location of her child. She doesn't use the boxes anymore but she still has an extensive library.
  • We get to see the Harlot's predecessor the Weaver.
  • Lucifer, once she becomes the new Keeper of Secrets, Thief.
  • Cymbaline, once The Thief gives up the power.
• Kill the God: Cymbaline has confessed to killing gods before, and she intends to kill the Harlot, who is near omnipotent. Later on, she moves on try and do the same to the Thief.
• Loophole Abuse: The devil Lucifer summoned cannot be banished from the Mortal World. So she drags it into the world of the Graecea and then banishes him from there.
• Loss of Identity: The sand of the Denazian desert makes you forget just about everything, including your sense of self. Lucifer tosses the Yellow Crown in that dimension to make sure Cymbaline can't get it.
• Mama Bear: Val treats Lucifer and her intern like daughters, to the extent that she was more than willing to take a bullet for one and put a spear through Yves for the other. The Harlot sees herself as this to Lucifer in a spiritual sense.
  • Before she became the Harlot, Fastrada, pushed back some sort of demon and fought her sisters off to stop her daughter from being sacrificed. She then became the Harlot to protect the child, but lost her in the process.
    • In the final issue, she performs a Heroic Sacrifice to save Lucifer, thinking of her as her daughter.
• Monochrome Apparition: Lucifer is drawn in shades of grey when speaking in the Afterlife.
• Morality Chain: Once Val dies, Lucifer gets mean.
• Mouth Stitched Shut: Cymbaline's mouth is revealed to be sealed by a piece of metal screwed onto her lips.
• Necromancer: Raina Westmore, the Intern, inadvertently becomes one.
• Nothing but Skin and Bones: All the Hexerei are drawn like this including the Harlot.
• Nothing Personal: When Madame Cymbaline tries to kill Lucifer so her brother can't get her soul and become more powerful she states that if she was in the same situation she would understand.
• Parting-Words Regret: Lucifer yells at Val for talking to the Harlot behind her back. By the time she's ready to apologize, Val is dead.
• Portal Picture: Lucifer can enter into a painting within a binding frame, it's a perfect place to store a MacGuffin too.
  • Phantom-Zone Picture: Said painting was also sealing in Yves.
• Position of Literal Power: The Keeper of Secrets counts, the first seen is the Harlot and then with her successor the Thief Lucifer taking over afterward. They have access to immense depths of information but part of their position is that the secrets closet to their heart they truly need they can never have while they hold the position. They have other boons with the position too, if we leave aside their ability to exact the prices they do in trade, such as immortality and durability enough to stand up to gods, still they shine as a Keeper of Forbidden Knowledge.
• Rapid Aging: The Harlot's price for information about Lucifer being her heir was that the person asking had to give up their youth.
• Rescued from the Underworld: Raina makes a deal with the Harlot to pull Lucifer from The Shade, and later pulls Val's cat from The Shade after it was killed as well. In the final chapter, she pulls out Fastrada's sisters.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Once Cymbaline kills Val, Lucifer burns down her building, kills all her men, and then summons a devil that gods had fought and died to keep out of their world, before killing the Harlot and taking her place as The Thief.
• Sdrawkcab Name: Lucifer casts her summoning spell in reverse.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Fastrada becoming the Harlot to keep her daughter safe was for nothing, because she ended up in the Orphanage and died of a plague three years later.
• Sibling Rivalry: Cymbaline and Yves don't like one another. If the two are allowed to fight then the war between the would drag in countless people. Lucifer traps Yves in a painting and lets her burn it, thus killing him.
• Slashed Throat: Lucifer did this to herself in order to enter "The Shade" and died for it. She recovers due to Raina making a deal with the Harlot.
• Spinoff: Of Fall of Cthulhu.
• Summon Magic: Lucifer stores things like Fang Worms inside of an apple.
• Take Up My Sword: Raina takes up Val's job after she dies and Lucifer becomes the Thief.
• That Man Is Dead: After killing the Harlot Lucifer declares that she is no longer that person, but The Thief.
• Villainous Virtues: Courage and sacrifice, Madame Cymbaline Graeae is willing to square off against what's essentially the Devil to keep the world safe and gets suitably awarded.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Lucifer does herself up in pig-tails and yells that two men (Dietrich's enforcers) are trying to take her away in front of a police station. Given how old she looks makes her seem rather young, the police swarm the guys.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: Yvesè schtick is that he gains power from stealing souls. Since Lucifer's soul is special because she's been hexed it would give him more than enough power to kill his sister.