Webcomic / Planet Zebeth

That's what he gets for stealing Samus's high-jump!

Planet Zebeth... a plot-based Metroid comic strip, centered around booze, chaos, and destruction. And people say that Paint and text editors are useless...

"Metroids are jerks."

— Kraid

Planet Zebeth is a Sprite Comic that revolves around the adventures of Samus, Kraid, Ridley, and other characters from the original Metroid for the NES. The story takes place In Medias Res of the first game... kind of. Kabutroid, a cross between a Metroid and and a Kabutops from Pokémon, has uploaded the main characters (and a slew of "enemy" characters) to Planet Zebeth, a planet like Zebes in appearance but not in layout. Samus and her previous antagonists, Kraid and Ridley, now spend most of their time looking for powerups, booze, and generally goofing off.

The main characters are:

• Samus Aran: Portrayed as ruthless, violent, and greedy. She is usually found either at the bar or searching for powerups (whenever she isn't making fun of Kraid or punishing him for his perverseness). Samus has a low tolerance for idiocy, long-windedness, and anything standing between her and booze. She enjoys killing things, especially minor enemy characters. She hates Kabutroid and often calls her "Metroid-thingy." Since Kabutroid is the Author Avatar, she usually gets screwed over as a result of this.
• Kraid: Samus's "best friend", Kraid is the generally clueless Butt-Monkey and Jerkass of the group. He has an unnatural obsession with Samus, but his efforts to seduce her usually end with him getting a face full of missiles. Kraid is also an accomplished master of pogs. He has not known the taste of alcohol before the strip began, but after being introduced to it by Samus, he became a raging alcoholic and can be instantly summoned whenever he hears someone announcing free booze.
• Ridley: Ridley is a greedy capitalist whose main purpose is to run the bar.
• The "Crocomire Hunter": Loosely based on Steve Irwin, the Crocomire Hunter is a sprite of Simon Belmont from Castlevania who tries to protect the poor defenseless natives of Zebeth. Since Samus is on the planet, this job is one of the hardest there is. The Crocomire Hunter has spawned his own sub-series which has him wrestling different creatures from Metroid and other NES and SNES games. These escapades usually end painfully for the poor guy.
• Kabutroid: The Author Avatar and generally omnipotent character. Kabutroid is usually playing video games and only pays attention to the antics of Samus and the rest when their actions annoy her or when she has to explain something. Her Catchphrase is "Eh."
• Mother Brain: Although ostensibly the antagonist, Mother Brain mostly provides zany schemes that Samus either foils or ignores completely. She is the figurehead of the "normal enemy union" (which doesn't include Kraid or Ridley) and so has control over all the minions on the planet, although they're usually not happy about it.
• Geruta: A normal enemy, until Samus and Kraid tortured him in an early storyline. Part of that torture involved him losing one of his arm/wings; as a result, this particular Geruta is recognizable by his mismatched transplant arm. Geruta has sworn revenge on the pair, although his plans usually fail or backfire.

Some other recurring characters include "Boxy and Unspawny," a pair of normal enemies where one is trapped in a box and the other is half-spawned on the outside of the box. Their only wish is to die. There is also "Gronky," a sprite glitch that Crocomire Hunter tries to keep as a pet, and the Metroid Queen, Ophelia, who was taken from ZR388, (the Zebeth version of SR388 from Metroid II: Return of Samus), and serves as Ridley's bouncer.

Sadly, the Metroid-related storyline seems to have petered out after the final battle against Mother Brain. Instead, Kabutroid has been making a comic-blog based on events in her own life and random musings, etc. A new Zebeth comic does sometimes pop up every few months still, though.

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This comic provides examples of:

• Aborted Arc:
  • Played for laughs in the Trabnagian tribe arc. One member of the tribe has an even longer name than normal, whose initials spell out "I will kill you slowly in your sleep" and is heavily implied to be slowly killing off other members of the tribe in their sleep, while framing another member whose initials spell out "Innocent Scapegoat" for the murders. He is immediately killed off by Samus in his second appearance, simply because she is annoyed.
  • This also later happens to the space pirate, though that's because Kabutroid didn't know where to go with that storyline and decided to nix it.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Ridley's Bar is often under attack, usually by the minions.
• Ambiguous Clone Ending: Played straight. It can be argued that only the Samus from the beginning of the comic had her suit stolen, though Kabutroid points out that in strip 812 and strip 833, both Samus' claim the same suit as being 'theirs', so either one of them would know that a suit was stolen, and equally claim that it was their suit that was stolen.
• Ambiguous Ending: Discussed by Kabutroid in the final strip in the "Samus's Quest" arc, pointing out that the Smash to Black as Samus is about to fire one of her glitched missiles at the heart of Mother Brain's cloning machine after running out of regular missiles, with no idea what would happen to herself or the emulator when she does, makes for an appropriate finale for the webcomic as a whole if she was unable to update it any further than that.
• Animal Wrongs Group: The Crocomire Hunter fits this quite well. He goes into fits of sobbing and/or plots for revenge when an enemy creature (yes, they are referred to as enemies, even though many are friendly or at least unassuming) is killed. Pretty much all other main characters have no sense of value for the enemies' lives, so this happens often.
• Author Avatar: Kabutroid.
• Author Filibuster: Kabutroid occasionally uses her Author Avatar to rant about how society and the economy is affecting his life and everyone else's lives in general. The rants are usually done in their own comic/episode with the occasional quip from the other characters.
• Back from the Dead: Ridley, although he doesn't know it since he was killed. Since he touched a save post on ZR388, he respawned remembering events prior to said save point.
  • Fridge Brilliance when you remember that despite being killed multiple times, Ridley comes back in nearly every Metroid game, so it's just keeping in character.
• Berserk Button: For the love of god, don't be a Jerkass around Samus. Also Crocomire Hunter snapped once after two Samii blast a Trabnagian he had saved from Samus before.
• Beware the Nice Ones: As stated by Kraid in this strip:
  Kraid: I forgot the most important rule of dealing with Samus. If she should EVER act nicely for some reason, watch the hell out.
  (He then promptly takes several missiles to the spine shortly after losing most of his thick skin.)
• Big "NO!": A Running Gag. A prime example is when Kraid steals Samus's high-jump. The Big "NO!" is so big that she keeps screaming into the next comic, catches her breath, then resumes.
  • Kraid thinks a Big "NO!" when the situation is reversed in front of a new unknown item.
  • Samus seeing Kraid un-ball himself after Kabutroid gave Kraid the Maru Mari (Morph Ball) in the previous strip.
• Bolt of Divine Retribution: Kabutroid once hit Samus with lightning for insulting her. Kraid has also been a victim of this.
• Brain Bleach: Kabutroid has the unfortunate luck of seeing Kraid trying to use Bombs.
• Butt-Monkey: Basically everyone is one of these at one point or another, even Kabutroid.
• Call-Back: Kraid attempts to steal an item from Samus by using a distraction (though this one was done on the fly and he didn't plan ahead). This attempt was done nearly in the same way where Kraid successfully stole the Hi-Jump Boots from Samus. However, Samus never forgot about the Hi-Jump and knew Kraid would try same trick again, so she freezed him and waited for the exact moment he thawed out in which she snagged the new item right in front of him.
• Catfight: Played to hilarious effect. When Kabs' programming error causes two Samii to appear with only one armor suit between them, they promptly enter into a missile-fueled catfight over who gets to keep it. Kraid, reptilian perv that he is, takes great delight in watching.
• Ceiling Cling: Crocomire Hunter thanks to the Spider Ball he accidentally acquired on ZR388. He uses the Spider Crawl to do research and to escape/avoid danger.
• Character Blog: Kraid has his own Twitter feed.
• Cyberspace: The whole world exists inside Kabutroid's server, complete with glitches, computer crashes, and different operating systems.
• Deadpan Snarker: A few characters have their moments including Geruta, Ridley, and Crocomire Hunter.
• Didn't Think This Through: Samus and Kraid during their trip on ZR388 herd a horde of Metroids into a corner until they all start to overlap. Samus, using video game logic, shoots the crowd with a single Ice Beam shot and they all freeze at the same time. Samus then proceeds to blast them all with Missles in the same fashion, resulting in a massive explosion of Metroid blood and guts that completely covers her and Kraid. Samus admits it wasn't exactly the best of ideas.
• Dividing By Zero: The 8 year anniversary strip has Kabutroid using a calculator and dividing by zero to distort the planet into the shape of an 8.
• Dramatic Drop: When Samus is about to hurl a cinder block at Kraid (before he goes on a rant), she drops the cinder block after seeing something off-panel.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: How Zebeth comic anniversary celebrations take place.
• Easter Egg: Numerous "Secret Zones" exists across the entire Planet Zebeth website. Good luck finding them.
• Fat Bastard: Kraid, full stop. Nearly everything he does, whether it is shedding burnt skin or hiding items in his folds of fat, disgusts everyone, especially Samus.
• Filler Strips:
  • On occasion Kabutroid goes on vacation, or has work issues, or other things interrupt her life, so she makes strips to talk about the vacation or whatever. At first she even illustrated these, but then she realized it took ten times longer to make the filler strips than the normal comic, so eventually the illustrations got phased out. Normally the comic gets paused while these strips are run, although sometimes Kabutroid gets back to the strip only to see that time has passed in the strip as well. Hilarity Ensues.
• Gender Swap: At one point Samus and the Crocomire Hunter switch bodies. Samus is horrified.
• Get It Over With: From comic #223 —
  Mother Brain: Guess it's time for me to die then...
  Samus: No! It's time for you to LIIIIIIIVE! [Evil Laugh]
• Samus On Samus Is Hot: Lampshaded when Kraid witnesses a deathmatch between two Samii. A moment later, the pair mysteriously find a swimming pool full of mud, and decide to chuck the whole deathmatch thing:
  "I don't know... but being in here makes me want to wrestle rather than just blast you..."
  "No... I just want to make out with you instead."
  "Yes! Let's make out!"
  "Lots!"
  It's all a daydream, of course, as a nearby minion rudely informs him.
• Going to Give It More Energy: How Samus and Kraid finally defeat the Omega Metroids in the ZR388 story arc - by feeding them random enemies until they explode.
• Good-Guy Bar / You All Meet in an Inn / Local Hangout: Ridley's Bar.
• Happy Fun Ball: The "Super Happy Fun Slide": Enemies slide down into a hidden deep-frier, and are then served as meals in the adjacent bar.
• Halloween Cosplay: On occasion some of the characters dress up for Halloween.
• An Ice Person / Freeze Ray / Kill It with Ice: Samus uses the Ice Beam as a weapon.
• Idiot Savant: Kraid. Although mostly an idiot, Kraid has a superb memory. Not only does he know the exact number of bricks in his miniboss room and the exact number of pogs that he owns, he named them all and, even though they are virtually identical, he can tell them apart to the point of recognizing a pog by name when he found it broken.
• Long Runner: The series has been running strong since 2002.
• Macross Missile Massacre: With Missiles being Samus's only powerful weapon, she resorts spamming missiles at things/people that annoy her or make her greatly snap.
• Milestone Celebration: Usually this means either Zebeth gets blown up or booze is brought out for partying. Though there have been a few subversions where drinking is denied as a result of Samus's actions in the comic.
• No Fourth Wall: An interesting case. Although nobody (except Kabutroid) knows that they exist in a comic strip, the characters are aware that they are fictional, and that the entirety of the planet actually exists on Kabutroid's server (which still uploads with a 33.6k modem and has a lot of glitches). This even drives the plot at some points, like when they were stuck mid-transfer in an FTP client when Kabutroid had computer problems, and directly afterward when he had to install Linux, leaving Samus and Kraid stuck wondering what was going on.
• Only Sane Man: The Space Pirate newcomer is serving this role, seemingly being the only Space Pirate-affiliated character in the entire comic who actually remembers that they have any kind of mission or organization (as opposed to Ridley, who's opened a bar, Kraid, who just gets drunk and chases Samus around (not necessarily in that order), and Mother Brain, who hasn't really been doing much of anything lately). Naturally, this ended with him getting killed off unceremoniously by Samus because she was bored and hungry.
• Overly Long Scream: This comic.
• Pit Trap: A recent Running Gag has Samus falling into these all over the place.
• Playing with Fire / Kill It with Fire: Ridley has a fireball attack.
• Rage Against the Author: Being all-powerful has it's problems when you don't make your characters happy.
• Running Gag: Kabutroid slicing the top of her chair off every time she waves her scythe arms around.
  • Nearly every bonus comic strip involving the anniversary of the comic's creation involves Kabutroid destroying the planet, whether it's by blowing it up, crunching it, or even Dividing By Zero.
  • The Big "NO!"'s! by nearly everyone at least once.
  • Kraid flirting with Samus in every way possible, which results in Samus blasting him with missiles in retaliation (or threatening him to do so at other times).
  • The pause button rarely works as intended, meaning the characters often keep doing what they were doing when Kabutroid tries to use it.
• Saved by the Awesome: One example is when Samus is under threat by Ridley of having no alcohol entirely due to having three Metroids stashed in the bar (and other things), she invents ice cream to get rid of the Metroids. Ridley then considers this awesome act enough to forgive her for all past transgressions.
  Ridley: No, but seriously... this particular... noun and/or action of which we speak is SO great, you are hearby absolved of any and ALL prior issues.
  Ophelia: Seriously... I'm STILL amazed by the aforementioned subject in question.
  Ridley: Indeed.
• Schedule Slip: Sadly, Kabutroid has been busy with Real Life more often than not lately, which results in perhaps one update a month.
• Shout Box: You can chat with other fans of Planet Zebeth. Kabutroid sometimes posts and responds to people in the shout box too.
• Snarky Non-Human Sidekick: Kraid as of late especially after being threatened or blasted by Samus.
• Snowball Fight: Something Kraid wants no part of since winter set in on Zebeth.
• Some Call Me "Tim": The hilarious Trabnagian tribe, the members of which all have ridiculously long names. The first one to appear introduces himself shortly as Syracuse, and his real name is Syracuse von Alfredo Jacobson Smith de Sanguine Jones the eighth of the Trabnagian tribe. And that's shorter than average.
• Spot the Imposter: Samus fights against a backup copy of herself from a ZR388 save file. During the battle, the scene cut away to Kraid watching trying to figure out which Samus was which.
• Tempting Fate: Lampshaded by Ridley here in the clearest way thought of.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Crocomire Hunter is the Butt-Monkey in his spin off comics which involve him studying or wrangling native creatures of Zebeth and foreign creatures from Super Mario Bros., all of which end with him being maimed, broken, burned, and everything else that can cause him pain. However, one comic strip has him finally facing down the famed Crocomire and he manages to subdue it without getting hurt at all.
• Unishment: When Samus fails to care about Kabutroid's birthday, she gets turned into a Zeela as punishment. Of course, she ends up enjoying it, as it finally gives her the means to escape the rest of the cast for once, but of course Kabutroid can't allow that and changes her back into Samus as a punishment for enjoying her punishment...making being turned back into her original form a type of Forced Transformation itself!
• Webcomic of the Game: Parodied with the ZR388 arc which covered Metroid II: Return of Samus.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Way back before there were even 100 strips in the archive, Kraid spun a tale of his early life, which involved eating a lot and mutating before admitting it might have all have been a sewer gas hallucination. The scene then cuts to Ridley, implying he knows the truth of Kraid's origin. This hasn't even been hinted at since then.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: Type two. After a bribe from Samus, Kraid threatened to wrench and devour the souls from those unfortunate enough to touch Ridley's alcohol supply. In the very next comic and later lampshaded by Samus here.

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