- "I’m retired. So why am I running around LA, trying to dodge every conspiracy there is just to stay alive? Oh, right.I’m me."— Get Blank
Get Blank
is a comic neo-noir novel and a sequel to Mr Blank. Our Hero, now going by the alias Robert Blank, is retired and trying to separate himself from the Information Underground when his girlfriend is framed for murder. Now it's back into the insanity, dealing with the Russian Mob, two dangerously mad movie stars, and several underground cults to clear her name. At least Bigfoot is on his side.
Get Blank provides examples of:
- Air-Vent Passageway: Averted when Our Hero uses the false ceiling to crawl around the jail.
- Bald of Evil: The Satanists deliberately invoke this trope, as they want to look as evil as possible. Vassily is also bald and evil, but on him it merely completes the image of him as a landbound cetacean in a shiny suit.
- Big Beautiful Woman: Mina Duplessis is a plus-sized model and described rather generously in several places.
- Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: Bigfoot himself appears in a cameo. He seems like a pretty good guy, and apparently he had a meeting in Los Angeles. He can also identify Russian mobsters by sight, but in his defense, it was a pretty distinct mobster.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Dan Onanian is an interesting subversion of the trope. On the surface, he plays it straight to the letter: skilled criminal lawyer who is obsessed with his belief in the Reptilians: a lizardlike alien race that wears human masks. Yet in the Blankverse, the Reptilians are not only real, Our Hero has worked for them. Dan has managed to successfully identify several people as Reptilians, but has no actual proof in the matter.
- Chekhov's Gun: Lampshaded and averted with the flamethrower in the back seat of the Men in Black car. Our Hero even remarks on it as Chekhov's Flamethrower, but it's never actually used.
- Church of Happyology: The Rosicrusophists and their screenwriter/prophet Dr. Frank Wood are clearly not based on any highly litigious cult from the Los Angeles area.
- Come with Me If You Want to Live: Invoked by name by Victor Charlie, the Man in Black, but because his brain is scrambled, he says, “Enter my conveyance if you wish to retain molecular consistency!”
- Conspiracy Kitchen Sink: The main character used to work for every last shadow group there is, and still has the encyclopedic knowledge of them. Pretty much a textbook case of this trope.
- Cult: Several in the book including Satanists like the First Reformed Church of the Antichrist, the Order of the Morning Star, and the Sons of the Crimson Gaze. Also includes the Ordo Templi Orientis and the Rosicrusophists.
- Depraved Bisexual: Certainly implied for movie star Rodrick Rand if the "Bangkok Balloon" is any indicator.
- Dig Your Own Grave: Gargantuan Russian mobster Vassily "The Whale" Zhukovsky forces our hero to do this.
- Drives Like Crazy: Ingrid Brady in her skinny Porche.
- Eldritch Abomination: Our Hero mentions dealing with these.
- Fantastic Noir: Conspiracies, cryptids, aliens, and a few garden-variety unkillable mobsters.
- Fat Bastard: Vassily the Whale, the local head of the Russian Mob, is described as looking exactly like a beluga whale someone put in a suit and taught to talk like a Bond villain.
- Femme Fatale: Subverted with movie star Heather Marie Tooms. She would certainly like to be, but she mostly only succeeds in creeping Our Hero out.
- First-Person Smartass: Our Hero never met a quip, insult, or pop culture riff he didn't like.
- Genre-Busting: It's a comedy noir with elements of a conspiracy thriller, a little horror, some science fiction, and urban fantasy thrown in.
- God Guise: Played for laughs, when the hero impersonates the Devil for a room full of Satanists. The problem is that they're two different sects with wildly divergent ideas of what the Devil really is. It does not go well.
- Hollywood Satanism: Lampshaded with the First Reformed Church of the Antichrist who are not only evil, they'd proudly put it on business cards if they thought it would help them.
- I Have Many Names: Our hero has tons and tons of names, and they're all phony.
- The Mafiya: The Kosher Nostra, and their monstrous leader, Vassily the Whale, definitely qualify.
- The Men in Black: Victor Charlie definitely qualifies.
- Naked on Arrival: Lord Hezebolus. He's not totally naked. I mean, he is wearing a helmet.
- The Napoleon: Paul Tallutto, of the First Reformed Church of the Antichrist, is a primordial dwarf and is pretty aggressive with everyone he meets. Or at least their knees.
- Only One Name: Elias the golem. Any other name might seem gauche.
- Psycho for Hire: Heather Marie Tooms is a Rosiscrusophist, but she's also a hitter for hire. And bow howdy is she crazy.
- Sweet Polly Oliver: Brady still dresses like a man.
- Waif-Fu: Ingrid Brady, despite having what should be a debilitating eating disorder, is some kind of kung fu master.
- Weirdness Magnet: Our Hero can't even retire without having people approach him with powerful artifacts, noir plots, and conspiratorial information. He even finds a secret room in his local supermarket.
