Todd and Sandy went to the Dark Room, where Wenuka showed them all his toys. Todd and Sandy missed their sales quotas. Cold-Blooded Torture: Todd and Sandy were distributors for Wenuka's company.Church of Happyology: Astrid Mueller, a gothic fiction turned self-help book author, and her many followers.It looks like a lethal trap for a struggle or staged suicide but he's actually warning her that she'll need a weapon and putting all of them in one easily-accessible place for her.

Chekhov's Gun: A demon fixes all the sharp objects in Chloe's house point-up in her bathtub.

Body Surf: Demons can exist unto themselves, but possess human bodies for their own amusement.

Anika Wells is abducted and subjected to malicious surgery, causing the left half of her body to wither to uselessness over several years.

One possessed man physically rearranged the skin of his face with no tools of any kind.

Also his left hand is shifted into a second right hand.

Michael Parks' bones (most of them) are snapped as he is tied into a human pretzel.

Perhaps the worst was Dwight Fennister, who tore off his own genitals and packaged them. While possessed by demons, several individuals engage in gruesome self-harm.Body Horror: Half the horror of this horror series derives from this.Artificial Intelligence: According to one demon, the engine of the Clean Room is 'more like a pet', implying limited self-awareness and agency.Chloe also gets access at the end of issue 12. It's implied that this is due to her massive following dedicating all their resources to the cause, voluntarily or no. Arbitrarily Large Bank Account: Astrid Mueller and her organization have almost unlimited wealth at their disposal Astrid herself owns multiple custom-built high-rise apartments in cities around the world and a literal mountain.His Single Tear speaks to a conscious mind within, aware of his torment, but powerless to address it. And I Must Scream: the Pony Man has been surgically rebuilt to have a face and head resembling a horse.As Chloe looks into the foundation's workings and gets closer to Astrid, she discovers that it has a grander purpose.Ĭlean Room provides examples of the following tropes: It tells the story of Chloe Pierce, a journalist whose fiancé commits suicide after becoming involved with the works of Astrid Mueller, a mysterious author and leader of the Honest World Foundation, a cult-like organization. Gail Simone, From an interview with Comic VineĬlean Room is a Vertigo Comics series written by Gail Simone.

Powerless Against You by Gail Simone