North 40
Comic book miniseries from 2009, written by Aaron Williams and illustrated by Fiona Staples. It could best be described as "magic hillbilly superheroes fight Cthulhu."
It starts off with a couple of high school kids in a small town getting an eldritch spellbook through Interlibrary Loan. They read it, everyone blacks out, and when they wake up, the county is cut off from the rest of the world, and half the folks have been turned into monsters. Some people use their new abilities to do evil, some to do good, and some just focus on trying to live their lives as normally as they can.
Tropes used in North 40 include:
- Animal Eye Spy: Luane, a waitress at the diner, is able to see through the eyes of birds, squirrels, and cats. She can also control them to some degree, and she's prone to fainting spells whenever an animal she's possessing gets killed.
- Body Horror: So many characters, ranging from serious villains to everyday folks in the background.
- Cool Old Guy: Sheriff Morgan.
- Deep South: Conover County seems to be set in a generic version of the South.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?
- Extra Eyes: One of the customers in the diner ends up with eyes all over his forehead. Miss Sparks insists he's a demon, but he just wants his cup of coffee.
- Flight: A number of characters get this power, but Wyatt Hinkle is the most prominent one.
- The Fundamentalist: Miss Sparks, who runs the diner.
- Goth: Dyan.
- High School Dance: The dance turns into a bloodbath when zombies invade and the monsterized classmates start tearing them to pieces.
- Humanoid Abomination: So very many characters.
- Humongous Mecha: Local junkman Denny Pittman starts building them.
- I Love the Dead: A bit of a reversal. Jenny is in love with Bradley. She dies and gets turned into a zombie. She pursues him to the point where she corners him at a dance and makes out with him.
- Lovecraftian Superpower: Almost everyone has one.
- Mass Super-Empowering Event
- Nigh Invulnerability: Wyatt Hinkle and Dave Atterhull.
- Older Than They Look: Marguritte De Vris and Sheriff Morgan.
- Our Zombies Are Different: Jenny is explicitly stated to be different from the other zombies -- she raised the rest of them from their graves, and she's far tougher and more intelligent than they are.
- Playing Against Type: Writer Aaron Williams is best known for more light-hearted comics like PS238, Nodwick, and Full Frontal Nerdity.
- Powered by a Forsaken Child: Denny Pittman's giant robots all have severed, screaming human heads as their power sources.
- Super Strength: Dave Atterhull
- Sinister Scythe: Amanda Walker carries one around.
- Tome of Eldritch Lore: The book that gets the whole story started.