Webcomic / Lightning Made of Owls

Lightning Made of Owls is a webcomic from the mezzacotta website consisting entirely of user-submitted guest strips, launched on 15 November 2008. Its name is a deliberate word salad title. It features the following stock characters:

• Holly, an optimistic, lively young woman. Always depicted with clear round Nerd Glasses.
• Ambrose, a learned, eccentric older man. Always depicted with a yardbrush moustache.
• Samantha, a smart, vain, self-motivated young lady. Always depicted with large earrings.
• Oliver, a bald man who is always law-abiding and noble. Always depicted with an L-shaped scar.
• Meridien, a long-haired spiritual woman. Always depicted with a cloth fashion accessory, typically a ribbon.
• Delkin, a young technician, and the joker of the bunch. Always depicted with Eyes Out of Sight.

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Lightning Made of Owls contains examples of:

• And Then What?: In "Steve Wars VI: Made of Jedi", Steve's plan to conquer Indiana falls apart once he realizes he has no idea what he'd actually do as ruler of Indiana.
• Anti-Humor: "Zombie Apocalypse". Delkin's quip is tangentially related to zombies, but doesn't really make sense. The caption and author's note fully acknowledge this.
• Argument of Contradictions: In "I'm gonna have to issue you a citation", this is the societal problem Ambrose seeks to solve using the internet. The solution merely consists of attaching Wikipedia-style citations to "Is true!" and "Is not!".
• Artistic License – Music: Parodied in "The Sound of Failing at Music". After Holly finishes writing a song, Delkin starts criticizing her on various aspects, one of which was that she used the wrong tunings. Holly points out that those aren't even real tunings.
• Bag of Holding: In "Holly's Folly / Sack of Holding", a bag of holding is disguised as a regular potato sack - to hilarity when Holly attempts to use it for a sack race.
• Bait-and-Switch: In "Experiment", as Delkin is poking a Blob Monster with a stick, Oliver warns him that Ambrose said never to touch the experiment. In a zoomed-out panel, we see "the experiment": a bottle rocket knocked over on a counter, which Delkin flimsily insists he didn't touch. Anyway, the blob was an Airbnb guest.
• Beach Episode: The aptly-named "Beach Episode", where Delkin and Meridien meet every cast member lounging at the beach.
• Broken Record: In "Parrot Game", Delkin invents a version of the parrot game, wherein he'd repeat everything Holly said. As the near-identical two panels afterward reveal, this version entails repeating everything he, himself said.
• Call-Back: A few to one-off character interpretations.
  • In "Mr. Hurts Donut", Holly is depicted as a donut. In "Dungeon Master's Misgivings", this turns out to be one of the many TTRPG characters she's playing.
  • In "Lightning Made of Owls News 2", Samantha is depicted as the Weather Frog. In "The Other Weather Frog", we see Meridien as... well, the other Weather Frog, and in "Lacere Diem", Samantha's command to "rip it" causes trouble for Holly with Ambrose's blueprints.
• The Chew Toy: Steve becomes this quite rapidly after his introduction as a new main character.
  Steve's permanent feature: someone trying to kill him.
• Color-Coded Characters: In addition to the single identifying trait each character has, they also have consistent colors and patterns: Holly is green with floral motifs, Ambrose is blue with patches, Samantha is red with stripes, Oliver is orange with no pattern, Meridien is yellow with star and planet motifs, and Delkin is purple with diamond patterns.
• Cool Shades: The most common method by which to conceal Delkin's eyes.
• Continuity Cavalcade: Parodied with the "Annual LMoO Lore Character Reunion", which consists solely of Bit Characters standing around in awkward silence.
• Crossover:
  • A few with Square Root of Minus Garfield, both being mezzacotta comics. The first crossover was even reflected on that day's SRoMG comic.
  • Jenny Everywhere made a brief appearance in a two-parter. She's not quite used to LMoO's frequent Art Shifts.
  • There was a very brief crossover with the other mezzacotta comic Comments on a Postcard. Due to that comic's gimmick, that makes this crossover the second ever actual depiction of the Postcard universe.
• Depending on the Artist: Inevitable, considering it's a user-submitted comic.
• Destructive Teleportation: Parodied in "Shmime Machine Time Shmachine", where this concept is applied to a time machine. The user is disintegrated, and, if the many-worlds interpretation holds true, there exists a timeline where they happen to materialize out of thin air at their destination with all their memories intact. ("Does your machine do anything other than annihilate the person inside? "No, not really.")
• Didn't We Use This Joke Already?: The setup to "Ambrose Jumps Out a Window".
• Distinguishing Mark: Oliver's defining feature is an L-shaped scar.
• Forced Perspective: In "Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Owl", Holly fails to tell apart Oliver behind a ledge from the eyelid and pupil of a one-eyed Giant Spider due to the panel being zoomed in and without color.
  Holly: Gonna be honest, I'm not big into visual gags, so just pretend your pupil is Oliver.
  Creature: No.
  Holly: Do it.
  Creature: No.
• The Glasses Gotta Go:
  • The trope all but lends its name to the title of this one. Holly abandons her Nerd Glasses, and Delkin decides she looks great without them.
  • Parodied in "Save the Date", where Samantha suggests that Holly take off her glasses for her upcoming date... and her eyes... and her body... and her head, leaving her completely invisible. It turns out her date is also invisible, and she remarks that they really hit it off.
• Instant Awesome: Just Add Mecha!: "Go Go Lightning-O!" has Holly and Samantha fighting Space Empress Meridien in a giant owl mecha.
• Mad Scientist: Helpfully categorized in "Scientists".
• Metamorphosis: Samantha turns into a gigantic Kafka in this one.
• Metaphysical Fuel: The titular rocket of the "Holly's Rocket" series runs on the internet. It consumes random sites on the web and leaves behind SEO spam.
• Negative Continuity: The only thing guaranteed to be the same between 2 strips is the cast. Even then, the only thing that's consistent about them are their names, their basic personality traits, and some identifying features. Nothing else is guaranteed — not even multicellularity.
• Nerd Glasses: Holly's defining feature is wearing these.
• Not the Fall That Kills You…: Parodied in this strip, where Oliver notes that he still has to decelerate within a reasonable time frame.
• Overly Narrow Superlative "Steve II" states that Steve has been very popular among characters of the cast named Steve. (There is only one character named Steve.)
• The Professor: While not restricted to it, this is Ambrose's usual characterization; his name is "Professor Ambrose" as often as not.
• RPG Episode: The GarNim series takes place in a Tabletop Game run by Ambrose.
• Running Gag: "Rhymes, but Oughtn't", culminating in "should rhyme, doesn't", and "shouldn't rhyme and doesn't".
• Sacrificial Lion: Lampshaded when Delkin attempts to kill Steve as a Ratings Stunt.
  Steve: You can't kill me! I'm a lovable semi-regular character with great potential!
  Delkin: If you weren't those things, I wouldn't be doing this. It's not like I'm shooting Meridien.
• Sharing a Body: Delkin and Meridien in this strip (and nowhere else).
• Sinister Shades: Parodied in "Slyness", where Delkin wonders to himself if his sunglasses let him be an emotionally distant jerk as long as he doesn't tell anyone that's what he's doing... then quips to Holly that he wonders if his cool shades let him be an emotionally distant jerk as long as he doesn't tell anyone that's what he's doing.
• Sixth Ranger: Steve (originally Steve the Flamboyant Fairy) first appeared in comic #387, about 3 years into the comic's run. He then came to be used mainly as a generic male character, a Chew Toy, or an Almost Dead Guy. Unlike the other characters, he doesn't have a distinct color, pattern, or identifying feature, though two identifying features were suggested in the author notes: "a big nose", and "someone trying to kill him."
• Spot the Imposter: Inverted in this strip, which features Samantha trying to pass herself off as one of her robotic duplicates. As The Rant notes, it doesn't work so well in reverse.
• Starfish Aliens: Parodied in "Holly's Rocket Episode IV". Holly and Meridien meet Delkin, who is a strange limbless creature with three mouths. This causes Meridien to instantly go on a Wall of Blather about how different the ecosphere on his planet must be to favor trifold symmetry and an abundance of mouths... forcing Delkin to reveal that he's actually just a Human Alien with a Holographic Disguise.
• Stealth Pun: In one comic, Meridien has a clone named "The Other Meridien". Think about what that implies the original Meridien could be called. A later comic spells it out.
• Title Drop: Though it's discouraged in the FAQ, some strips run with the theme of Lightning Made of Owls.
• Universal-Adaptor Cast: To the extent that they can represent letters or mathematical concepts.
• Visual Pun: In A Turning Point in the Conversation, Ambrose is sitting on a line touching a cubic function. He's going off on a tangent.
• Waxing Lyrical: To Buzzcocks lyrics in this strip.
• What Year Is This?: Parodied here
• Word Salad Title: "Lightning Made of Owls" is an intentional non-sequitur, though there exist a handful of comics actually relating to lightning and owls.

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