Fire Breather

Once upon a time, a gigantic rampaging dragon and a human woman fell in love. The product of their union was Duncan, a Half-Human Hybrid. Though they divorced, Duncan's parents share custody. He spends most of his time trying to fit in at school despite his obviously draconic features, and when with his dad he is tutored in the ways of becoming the next king of the world's Kaiju.

For real.

Fun fact: The character was originally supposed to be a member of the Young Avengers in the Marvel Universe and Duncan was to be the son of the alien dragon Fin Fang Foom, a foe of Iron Man.

An animated movie based on the comic premiered November 2010, on Cartoon Network from the creator of Aeon Flux.

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Tropes used in Fire Breather include:

• Action Girl and Action Mom: Margaret, in the movie at least. Flies jets, shoots, threatens Belloc and means it.
• Actor Allusion: Kenny looks a godawful lot like Zuko.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Kids at school sometimes foolishly persist in picking on Duncan despite the fact that he's a fire-breathing monster and his dad is ten times worse.
• Badass Abnormal: Duncan gets more and more abnormal and more and more badass as the movie progresses.
• Betty and Veronica: Isabel and Jenna.
• Big Damn Heroes
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Though Duncan looks mostly human, he eats coal rather than human food.
  • He apparently enjoys Twinkies though. At least, we can assume so as his mother packed some in his lunch.
• Bullying a Dragon: Literally.
• Captain Ersatz: Duncan's father, the dragon Belloc, is initially presented as a Captain Ersatz of Godzilla, but is later developed beyond that into the more traditional, Tolkien-esque ancient dragon of intelligence and greed who hoards treasure, then his backstory was revealed to be more in the line of Fin Fang Foom as he and the other kaiju are aliens.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Belloc knew he made the right choice to mate with Margaret.
• Coming of Age Story
• Cursed with Awesome: Orange skin and bullying aside, one can't help but wonder what Duncan finds so terrible about being inhumanly strong, impervious to extreme heat, and being able to breath fire... and this is before he gets his true powers unlocked.
• Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?
• Evil Laugh: The kaiju are very fond of this.
• Four-Fingered Hands:
  • Duncan plays this for laughs, asking the principal to "Help me out here. Exactly which one is "the bird"?" and showing the five fingered principal, his four fingered hands.
  • The animated movie gives him five fingers. As giving the horns is the recurring hand gesture of the movie, this is easy to notice.
• Free the Frogs
• A Glass in the Hand: Kenny manages a glass in each hand.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: Literally a few times. Also, "They're waterboarding Kermit (the frog)!"
  • Isabel flat-out calls the jocks "sphincters".
• Godzilla Threshold
• Gosh Dang It to Heck - Barnes is fond of this.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Somehow a woman became pregnant with a 60,000-pound dragon's baby. Duncan does not want to know how.
• Hopeless Suitor: Kenny to Isabel, and Isabel to Duncan.
• Hot-Blooded: Duncan.
• Hot Mom: Margaret definitely qualifies.
• Improbable Species Compatibility Duncan has claimed he does not even want to know how his conception was possible.
• Human Mom, Nonhuman Dad: Naturally.
• I Just Want to Be Normal
• If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him: Margaret basically said this trope as a reason why Duncan didn't kill the two Kaijus. Though he wanted to but his reason not to is because "it wouldn't change anything". Meaning that the rest of Belloc's subjects still wouldn't accept Duncan as their future king.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: "And orange you just adorable."
• Interspecies Romance: Naturally. Duncan's mom does try to explain this to him, saying "I bet you're wondering how you were conceived." Duncan covers his ears and tries not to listen. The Cartoon Network adaptation keeps that exchange.
• Jerk Jock: Troy plays it completely straight.
• Kaiju: Belloc and all of his rivals and subjects. They're even called Kaiju in-universe.
• Love At First Sight: Duncan towards Jenna.
• Love Dodecahedron: Kenny likes Isabel, who likes Duncan, who likes Jenna, who's dating Troy. In the movie Jenna and Troy have broken up.
• Magic Pants: So magic in fact that lava doesn't even singe them.
  • Except for the very bottoms, which quickly rise to mid-calf.
• Male Gaze: Duncan towards Jenna twice.
• Mama Bear: Margaret. She'll take on anyone who threatens Duncan. Including his father.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Duncan is the size of a normal human, yet has physical strength on par with a full-sized Kaiju.
• Never Heard That One Before:

Duncan: Kenny Rogers, huh? Do you know when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em?
Kenny: [deadpan] No. Not even a little.

• Our Dragons Are Different
• Papa Wolf: Belloc.
• Parkour: The chase scene in the movie.
• Shirtless Scene: By comparison, the lava does remove his shirt nicely, though Duncan is quick to abandon it whenever he starts fighting.
• Shout-Out:
  • Kenny Rogers
  • The way several of the kaiju move throughout the film is similar to the old Godzilla films.
  • Belloc is the King of the Monsters, or Godzilla.
  • One of the unnamed monsters that makes a brief appearance when Belloc names Duncan as his heir bears a definite resemblance to Death Pisaro.
  • The two villainous kaiju are named after biblical demons (Astaroth and Abbadon)
• The Starscreams: Two of Belloc's subjects are not pleased with their king ordering them not to harm any humans. But mating with one is the last straw.
• Stock Scream: Used during the school chase scene.
• The Talk: Barnes tries this in Volume 1 Issue 2.
  • It has a few details, but is cut mercifully short by Belloc's new security system.
• Three Amigos
• Took a Level in Badass: Duncan takes several over the course of the film.
• Ultraterrestrials: The Kaiju.
• Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World
• You Sexy Beast: Duncan