Webcomic / Crow Time

Crow Time is a gag webcomic by Isabelle Melançon (a co-creator of Namesake).

In a World of Funny Animals, a bunch of crows get themselves into hilarious, and often awkward, situations.

Note: As the vast majority of crows in this comic go unnamed, some of the quotations are attributed to generic names such as "Crow 1". These are not the names of the crows in the work.

Crow Time provides examples of:

• Animal Motifs: Edwin generally has crow feather-shaped adornments on their dresses and they love shiny things. Justified, as Edwin is a shapeshifter that was born as a crow.
• Animal Talk: Crows, spiders, and roosters have been shown to understand each other with no translation needed.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!:
  • This is the whole point of "Shiny". A crow has an existential crisis about why it likes shiny things that will never love it back. It then forgets it once it sees another shiny thing.
  • One a crow collects enough "shinies", and lays upon their hoarded collection, they turn into a dragon.
• Animorphism: A witch turns herself into a crow in "Crow Witch". After she introduces herself to the other crows, they respond that she received a serious "glow-up" after she transformed.
• Bilingual Animal: Downplayed, in "Bilingual". One crow can speak broken Human, in the style of You No Take Candle. It accidentally hits on a girl while trying to talk to her.
  GIRL HELLO PRETTY TALK
• Big Brother Instinct: In "Crowmance 4", Edwin's brothers all come to Duma (the groom)'s house and aggressively ask about Edwin's wedding gift for him. Lampshaded by the author's comment, "The crow brothers would crack their knuckles if they had some."
  Brother 1: Hey groom!
  Brother 2: Yeah, hey groom.
  Duma: Hello?
  Brother 2: C'mere, we need to talk rocks.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: The crows do this sometimes, mostly to offer meta-commentary.
  • "Cursed Sword" has:
    Crow 1: Someone has to churn out antagonists.
    Crow 2: I love a good redemption arc.
    Crow 1: Who doesn't?
• Buffy Speak: Two people in "Sigil" accidentally summon a "small would-be air spirit with muddy feet." In other words, a crow.
• Bullying a Dragon: In "Falconry", a crow calls a falcon a "winged golden retriever" and is woefully unprepared for the consequences.
• Creepy Crows:
  • In "Cursed Sword", a couple of crows get a human to take a cursed sword For the Evulz.
  • Crows are depicted as Hades' minions in "Underworld".
• Didn't Think This Through: In "Falconry", a crow taunts a falcon without thinking of the consequences.
• Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?: Lovie and Crowthulu are seen being in a loving relationship, despite Crowthulu being an Eldritch Abomination.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: Crowthulu has an eye on its stomach and eyes all over its wings.
• Eyes Out of Sight: Edwin has long bangs covering their eyes.
• Familiar: In "Breakfast", there's the familiar auditions, where a witch chooses a familiar out of all the animals that show up. The witch ends up choosing a rooster instead of the crow because it can give her breakfast every morning.
• Feather Fingers: Noticeably averted, for a World of Funny Animals. In "Crowmance 4", Edwin (humanoid shapeshifter) shows off their ability to pick items up to their crow family, who react with amazement.
• Guardian Entity: In "Sigil", the rune ends up summoning a crow to protect the summoner.
• Hellhound: Laika" uses the idea that Laika became the Church Grim of outer space, watching over the souls of dead astronauts.
• Humanity Ensues: In the Crowmance arc, a crow named Edwin turns into a human and breaks a mage's curse. Said mage, an elf named Duma, falls in love with them and they marry each other. Unusually for this trope, Edwin likes being a human.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Implied in "Bonus Crows 2". It is mentioned that one of the reasons that the crows from "Cursed Sword" stayed with the human that they tricked into taking the cursed sword was that the sword cursed them too.
• Horsemen of the Apocalypse: "Horsemen" features a slightly modified version of the Horsemen. There's Death, War, Plague, Famine, and an original fifth horseman, "Leaving your Bed on Winter Mornings".
• Identity Breakdown: A minor variant of this in Crowmance. Edwin wonders whether they are forgetting how to be a crow because of being a human too long because of them mistaking a piece of brick for a pebble. Their mother reassures them that they will always be a crow, and no matter what they do, they will never forget how to ask other crows for help.
• Inexplicably Identical Individuals: All of the crows look exactly the same, to the point where you can't tell whether the comic follows one group of crows or an extreme Ensemble Cast.
• Interspecies Romance: The Crowmance arc follows a crow-born shapeshifter named Edwin and an elvish mage named Duma falling in love.
• Magical Star Symbols: A pigeon draws a pentagram to summon the devil in "Soulless Pigeon".
• Meaningful Name:
  • Verona Calamity Desdomona Sobrecoeur's name means something along the lines of "Truth Calamity Unlucky Darkheart" word-for-word. Fitting for a dark-and-dour goth.
  • Downplayed with Edwin. Their name means "rich friend", so somewhat fitting for the crow child of the local Eldritch Abomination.
• Nightmare Fetishist:
  • In "Party Time", a crow finds plague doctor's uniforms to be incredibly beautiful.
    Oh! Wow!! I love your dresses! What a look! They must be the life of the party!
  • Implied in "Warm and Cozy". One crow judges another for bringing a knife to their group cuddle, claiming that it's not "warm and cozy". The other one claims that it's "warm and cozy" to it.
• Nonhuman Nonbinary: Edwin, a crow-born shapeshifter, uses they/them pronouns.
• Odd Name Out: In Demon", the members of the bird demon support group are Stolas, Caim, Malphas, Andras, ??Pigeon??, and Kevin.
• Overly Long Name: In '"October Return", there is a goth woman named Verona Calamity Desdemona Sombrecoeur.
• Papa Wolf: Every goth has a crow guardian assigned to them, which seem to take on a parental role to the goth. When Verona's crow hears about her abusive ex-boyfriend, her crow is implied to be planning to murder him.
  Crow: [tear in its eye] Oh my goodness! They grow up so fast!
  Spider: Her last boyfriend was a dick though. It's been a hard year, wait till you hear all of it.
  Crow: Wow, that's a shame. Where does he live? Asking for a friend, haha.
• Planet of Steves: As "Kevin Network" points out, there are an insane amount of crows named Kevin.
• Pink Means Feminine: Edwin's mother usually wears a pink handkerchief around her neck, and is seen being interested in feminine activities such as cooking and preparing for weddings.
• Pointy Ears: Elves and some shapeshifters have pointy ears.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: In "Marble", there's a Elder God stuck in a marble.
• Shapeshifting Lover: Several instances in Crowmance.
  • Duma is engaged to Edwin, a crow that shifted into a human.
  • Downplayed with Edwin's father. He is a Sizeshifter and can turn himself from normal crow-size into bigger than a mountain. He is also happily married to Olga, who is a normal crow.
• Soul-Sucking Retail Job: Implied with the Shadow Wizard. He hated his job so much that he started practicing dark magic.
  Crow: Retail made you a shadow wizard.
  Shadow Wizard: Sure did.
• Try to Fit That on a Business Card: Edwin's father's full title is "Monsieur Nightmare, Guardian of the Southern Gates, Suzerain of the Marshes of Madness and the Valley of Echoes."
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: "Crowmance 6" has a lovingly rendered and detailed drawing of a crow regurgitating partly digested food to feed its young.
• Your Normal Is Our Taboo: "Crowmance 6" has Edwin trying to feed their fiance Duma and him shying away. It is explained that in elvish culture, feeding a lover is a very intimate act, while crows feed their young all the time, so it's just a sign of affection.

---