Webcomic / Suicide for Hire

Suicide for Hire is a mature-rated Furry comic by Rafael Medina about two teenagers, the extremely enthusiastic sex-obsessed fox Hunter Ravenwood, and the chain-smoking highly paranoid mouse Arcturus Winrock (who also has a homicidal split personality), who help other people kill themselves, often in a highly karmic way.

A typical story arc follows a standard formula:

• Someone who would like to kill himself for some insane reason finds Hunter and Arc.
• Said someone tells them his story and why he wants to die.
• Arc tries to talk him out of it until he says or does something that convinces Arc that he's beyond redemption.
• Hunter plots their client's Karmic Death.
• At the last minute the client changes his mind but Hunter ensures that he follows through (yelling "Nonrefundable" to a jumper or throwing Arc's shoe at him if that doesn't work for example).
• Later Hunter and Arc usually find a brief article about their client's gruesome suicide.

More plot-significant arcs are more complex and don't always follow that formula, though the client always dies.

Found here.

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This webcomic provides examples of the following:

• Adults Are Useless: Why they haven't been caught yet.
• A Good Name for a Rock Band: An occasional running gag.
• And This Is for...: Arcturus and Hunter's Roaring Rampage of Revenge on Ty
• Art Evolution: The author said in an interview that his drawing style changed so much that one of the earlier characters wasn't recognized when they returned later in the comic.
• Art Shift: Crudely-drawn cartoons are used in a flashback sequence to demonstrate how feebly the character is lying.
• Artistic License – Religion: Hunter (and therefore, presumably, the author) seems to be talking about the entire Christian faith during his rant against the religious right.
• Asshole Victim: Most of the people who hire them.
• Ate His Gun:
  • Hunter shows you what not to do.
  • In a later comic, it is done the right way.
  • And here we learn which ammunition to use.
• Author Tract: He really hates lying. (Link is to part of the second arc IN A ROW to contain an anti-lying Author Tract.) Also the part with the pregnant woman they refuse to kill.
  • This actually induces a bit of Values Dissonance within the comic as well. For example, no one was especially upset when a girl claimed to have had sex on her grandmother's gravestone, but they were all absolutely scandalized to find out that the event never actually happened. Granted, this came out during a massive reveal of just how much she'd been lying to everyone, but the fact still holds that within the comic, dishonesty is apparently worse than desecration.
• Badass Adorable: Arcturus. C'mon, look at those big soft Puppy-Dog Eyes of his!

• Berserk Button: Arcturus has several.
  • Arcturus HATES fullscreen.
  • Also, Arc's distinctive coiffure is not a mullet.
  • Nachos are a touchy subject, too. Especially abominatchos.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Arcturus is a fairly decent guy till you piss him off.
• Birthday Hater: Arcturus seems not to like his birthday, trying to sneak out of the house to avoid his parents.

• Body Horror: The result of a botched Shotgun in the mouth.
• Bolt of Divine Retribution: Hunter refrains from pointing out St. John was called "Christ's Beloved" and that there were no female apostles because; "I like having both arms and not getting struck by lightning" during his epic chewing out of the local Not-Westborough Baptist Church.
• Break Them by Talking: Hunter sometimes does this to people who piss him off, while he's inflicting serious pain.
• Carnivore Confusion: Lampshaded by the author in a side note for a comic where Hunter and Arc were discussing milk. "You know of any species of wild animals that not only nurse after infancy, but from a source not even of its own species?" note: "To anal-retentive assholes like myself: you know what I mean. STFU."
• Catchphrase: Hunter likes using "quityerbitchen" on Arcturus whenever he starts complaining.

• Confusing Multiple Negatives: Apparently when Hunter was 13, his father tried to ensure that he would be straight using porn: "By the way, I don't not want you not watching not channel 169 when we're out of the house."
• Costume Porn: Arcturus and Hunter wear elaborate outfits, and so does this girl, apparently.
• Country Matters: the end of the confrontation with the "Religious Wrong".
• Crapsack World: It seems that people only manage to succeed when they're complete assholes, not to mention that the police are apparently useless and clerks at gun shops barely check IDs.

• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: The way most of their customers go down, which is why most of them try to chicken out halfway through.
• Depraved Homosexual: One arc features a gay waiter who makes a crude sexual advance on Hunter and then threatens to stalk and rape him after he refuses. Right after Hunter chews out a bunch of Westboro Baptist Expys. It should be noted that the writer tries to make sure that the "Depraved" part of this character is not linked to the "Homosexual" part; while beating him up, Hunter explained that he understood that most homosexuals were not like this. Within the comic's universe Hunter was probably wrong: keep in mind that most of the straight characters in this comic are just as bad if not worse.
• Domestic Abuse: Tybalt Montlet is an absolutely classical textbook example.
• Driven to Suicide: well, look at the comic's title.
• Enemy Without: It's unclear what exactly Xero is, but it is clear that he was formed from Arc's dark side and is practically a separate person.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • The boys apparently don't like to harm women unless they're clients. Under the rules of SFH, they don't accept clients under 16 and don't plan suicides that result in the deaths of a third party (they reject a pregnant customer because of those rules).
  • For all his sociopathic tendencies, Hunter has a self-enforced guideline of only killing people who come to him to be killed. Unless they prove to be too dangerous to live or REALLY piss him off.
  • Altair keeps several guns in his truck to clear traffic in order to make deliveries on time, but he's modded each one to be non-lethal.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Arc and Hunter deal in over the top Karmic Deaths in the form of assisted suicide for those that wish to die.
• The Faceless: Arcturus' parents, also Hunter's.
• Fridge Logic: In-universe example mixed with Lampshade Hanging: Xero explains. Presumably it's going to get explained eventually.
• Gilligan Cut: Here
• Gun Twirling: Hunter does this. When Arcturus tells him to stop, he says he has it under control; and nearly shoots Codename Rudolph in the head just seconds after.
• Going Commando: Hunter.
• Gollum Made Me Do It: Xero apparently takes over to some extent when Arc is on the job, but it's unclear exactly how much of Arcturus' behavior is actually him and how much is Xero.

• Guilty Pleasures: Because of what it's about, few people will admit to reading it.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Hunter's explanation for his actions against the homophobic protestors. Justified in that it's a conversation between two adolescent boys.

• High Turnover Rate: One time Arcturus quits Suicide for Hire and gets a job at a ball park concession stand where the customers are particularly idiotic. He lasts four days longer than most people before snapping and trying to strangle someone.
• Human Resources: In one comic Hunter is doing a report on Utilitarianism and suggests that the penalty for offenses as minor as speeding should be to get ground up into protein shakes that are then fed to hobos who are then lured into a hospital so their organs can be harvested.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: Arcturus Winrock and Hunter, to each other and at different times.
• I Call It "Vera": Hunter's guns, "Bop" and "The Idiot Magnum".
• It Tastes Like Feet: Lampshaded in a non-food example. Hunter comments that a scorpion sting feels like someone put out a cigarette on his foot, and when Arc asks him how he knows what a cigarette burn feels like he uses Arc's cigarette to provide a comparison.
• Karmic Death: Most of the deaths that Hunter and Arc arrange, such as a frat boy who felt responsible for his friend's death by alcohol poisoning drinking methanol and then being set on fire.
• Kill It with Fire: After Hunter's... alone time. The strip above also counts.

• The McCoy: Arcturus sometimes drifts into this.
• Moral Myopia: Xero points this out to Arcturus. To be specific he makes fun of the fact that he feels bad about helping a terminal cancer patient die but not feeling bad for killing a lot of stupid teenagers.
• Mugging the Monster: At one point, a gay waiter keeps pestering Hunter and won't take no for an answer. This is a bad idea.
• Murder, Inc.: Arc and Hunter are essentially a two person version of this who kill their clients.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: Used only in the Frat Boy arc so far, as after his suicide, a detailed record of all the threats and harassment heaped upon him surface (and result in a heap of lawsuits between the two warring factions).
• Never Speak Ill of the Dead: Arc and especially Hunter avert this with many of their clients. Hunter especially seems to think most of them deserved their gruesome fates.
• Non-Mammalian Hair: Altair Annunaki is probably the most visible example.
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: Some rather well-endowed avians are shown at various points.
• Not Listening to Me, Are You?: On one page:
  Arcturus: Came back for my books, mom. Leaving again.
  Mom: Mm-hmm.
  Arcturus: Gonna be gone all day.
  Mom: Mm-hmm.
  Arcturus: I set the bathroom on fire an cut open the couch to hide my secret heroin stash.
  Mom: Mm-hmm.
  Arcturus: *Sigh* So good to know I'm cared about...
• Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: Averted. Hunter, in his own deranged little way, believes in God; pointing to the hilariously over-the-top and completely accidental death of a militant atheist at a church (hit by a busload of nuns through a bulletproof window, through the sanctuary, into the belltower to be impaled upon a spire, and then has his face eaten by pigeons) as the cause. At one point, he delivers a scathing "Reason You Suck" Speech to a group of Heteronormative Crusaders for discarding the parts of the bible that they don't like while using the exact same book (Leviticus) as an excuse to outlaw same-sex marriage, pointing out the severe Values Dissonance of the Old Testament-while giving some of the same arguments a preacher would about keeping a weather eye out for poisonous doctrine.
• Pizza Boy Special Delivery: Altair.
• Police Are Useless: They do try, but circumstances tend to conspire against them.
• Punny Name: There are a few, including Tybalt and Rosaline Montlet. Tybalt is a cat.
  "What do you want?"
  "Good king of cats ... nothing but all of your nine lives!"
• Right Behind Me: A rather amusing part of one client's story.
• Running Gag: "NONREFUNDABLE!"
• Schedule Slip: Hardly any update since November 2011
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Arcturus (Sensitive) and Hunter (Manly)
• Serial Killer: The rare form that gets their victims to seek them out.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: A lot of the character dialog consists of this.
• Shout-Out:
  • There's quite a few to the band Megadeth.
  • Several to Resident Evil (the author is hopelessly in love with RE4).
  • "City saved: Star Fox team does it again!" [1]
  • There's a shoutout to A Clockwork Orange here.
• Singing in the Shower: Arcturus sings "I'm So Cute" by Frank Zappa.
• Stalker with a Crush: Autumn came to Suicide for Hire after the guy she was stalking publicly discredited her, and the Depraved Homosexual waiter mentioned above threatens to stalk, rape and kill Hunter for rejecting his offer to hook up.
• Strawman Political: The religous right tend to be depicted like this, such as in the "A Day in the Life" arc where Hunter tricked an anti-gay protest into admitting that not all of the bible applied to modern life, and this strip.
  • And who could forget this
  • Arguably this "parody" of the health care debates.
• Strictly Formula: Every arc ends with someone dying in a horrible manner.

• Suicide as Comedy: Not as often as might be expected, mostly just in one-shot comics.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Lampshaded during a very talkative fight scene with a sidenote reading "If you think this is too much dialogue per action scene, feel free to send e-complaints to [e-mail]."
• Tastes Like Purple: here
• 30 Minutes, or It's Free!: Hunter's friend Altair is a pizza delivery boy, and ensures he manages to keep to the time limit by getting Hunter to ride shotgun, literally.
• To the Pain: Hunter describes his plans for each client's death to them as they occur, usually in great detail.
• Unfortunate Names: One of their clients was named "Jeremy Laramie" (that wasn't why he wanted to die actually), and another one was a reindeer they referred to as "Codename Rudolph" who later turned out to be actually named Rudy.
• Unusual Euphemism:
  • "What the turtleshirt is this?"
  • "Oh muffin dandruff..."
• Unsound Effect: All over the place. With the abovementioned rapist-wannabe waiter, we have "Big honkin' BOOT!" and "Big honkin' BOOT! The Sequel!", but there are dozens of others.
• Villain Protagonist: Both of the main characters, though mostly Hunter.
• Visual Pun:
  • Autumn's Karmic Death. She told a number of lies to get the object of her affection. Her death? She was forced to spill her guts.
  • The choice of some Funny Animal species, such as Hunter's former priest Jethro being a sloth.
• Wall of Text: Some of the clients just won't shut up. It does tend to flow better during an Archive Binge.
  • Often Lampshaded when the client finally stops talking and Hunter and Arc are shown reading porn or playing Russian roulette or getting lap dances.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Hunter, sometimes. Other times he drops the "Well Intentioned".
• Wicked Weasel: The Depraved Homosexual waiter who harasses Hunter is clearly some kind of mustelid, though his exact species is unclear.
• Wish-Fulfillment: Oh, don't even try to deny it.
• Wondrous Ladies Room: once Hunter remarks that a ladies room is "clean enough for neurosurgery".
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Hunter claims that "I draw the line at the unwarranted violent abuse of the fairer sex". But that doesn't stop him from accepting female clients, or from carrying out the most gruesome death seen so far on one of those clients. Evidently he doesn't consider his job "unwarranted".
• Yandere: Autumn is a classic example of the type.
• Your Head A-Splode:
  • Hunter's "Idiot Magnum" has this effect on people, as do shotguns in the mouth.
  • Arc actually uses the words "head a'splode" in reference to dunking "Rudolph's" head in liquid nitrogen.

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