Bruno: I hope I don't have amnesia or something. Oh, wait... Name? Bruno. Occupation? Vagrant writer. First ten digits of pi? Three point one four one five nine two six five four. Okay, I guess I'm okay.
Bruno
is a Slice of Life webcomic by Christopher Baldwin (author of Spacetrawler and Little Dee). It ran from 1996-2007, and reran with annotations from 2010-2019.
Bruno provides examples of:
- Adorably Precocious Child: Cousin Amy knows things children are not meant to know.
- Brainy Brunette: Bruno is intellectual to the point of paralysis.
- Cats Are Snarkers: Bruno's cat snarks in thought bubbles.
- Crash-Into Hello: Donna meets Bruno by running into her on rollerblades.
- A Dog Named "Dog": Bruno's cat, named Cat.
- The Fundamentalist: Jay begins as a strawman Christian (which often puts him at odds with Bruno) but later develops into a more complex character.
- Gender-Blender Name: Bruno is a girl. (She's named after Giordano Bruno.)
- Ghostly Goals: the ghost in Stanley's basement wants something, and Bruno must figure out what.
- Gonk: women are drawn normally, but men are often grotesquely distorted.
- Goth: Allison has black makeup, all black clothing, and a fondness for death and despair.
- Lethal Chef: Subverted with Stanley. When the title character stays in an isolated house with him, he manages to ruin everything he cooks for her. At the end of the storyline, he reveals that he's an excellent cook; he initially made inedible food because he wanted to be left alone, and kept doing it because Bruno's reaction was so hilarious.
- Little Miss Snarker: Amy has learned her cousin's habit of biting comments.
- Mouthful of Pi: Bruno recites a few digits of pi to reassure herself that she's okay.Bruno: I hope I don't have amnesia or something. Oh, wait... Name? Bruno. Occupation? Vagrant writer. First ten digits of pi? Three point one four one five nine two six five four. Okay, I guess I'm okay.
- NEET: Bruno is intermittently unemployed and idle, especially in the early years.
- Rage Against the Author: The title character has stepped out of the page to pester her author about the strip's lack of direction, first here then here and here.
- Snark Knight: Bruno makes jibes at everyone and everything.
- Speech-Centric Work: There's no narration, and usually only one panel per strip. Almost all the action is in the speech bubbles.
- The Stoner: For most of the comic, Randall is seldom seen unintoxicated. When this changes, it's a plot point.
- Strawman Political: Various of Bruno's acquaintances, especially religious ones, express particularly hard-to-defend forms of their ideologies.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Cousin Amy's parents think Bruno has corrupted her, but they're unable to undo it.
- World of Snark: Most of the major characters take every chance for mockery, which accounts for most of the comic's humor.
Bruno: Oh, right... and my cynicism, which actually takes up most of my time.
