I wish this post was anything more than vindictive, but I'm sorry... how can anyone read a strip like this, and say to themselves, "Yeah... that was pretty funny!"

Likewise, how can any comic creator look at the finished result and say, "Yeah! That's a quality strip I made!"

Just checked OnlineComics.net's "Newest Comics" section, and one caught my eye: "Nerds and Co."

Listen to their OnlineComics.net entry description:

"Not an anime......Not a fanfiction......Not done by twelve year olds......Not about a video game created by a major corporation......Dare we say it's...original?"

How many webcomics can you think of that meet that criteria?

"Not an anime"? If anything, I guess they mean manga. Otherwise, they'd be talking about an comic that's japanese animation, and that doesn't make any sense.

"Not a fanfiction"? Webcomics are words and art. FanFiction is just words. Terrible, awful words, describing unspeakable acts against literature. True, a webcomic's textual content can be supplemented with FanFiction, but it still would need art to accompany it to be considered a "comic." Of course, with FanFiction fueling the comic's plot, dialogue, and the other word-side factors, it would be quite an awful comic. But, it'd be a comic all the same.

"Not done by twelve year olds." When I started making webcomics at 17, I was greeted with a lot of surprise when I mentioned my age. I take that to mean there aren't a lot of 12 year old webcomiccers out there. And, if there are, I'm pretty sure that explains from whence sprite comics spring...

"Not about a video game created by a major corporation." What the hell are they talking about? Do they have any idea what a webcomic even is? Or, did they just get wind of this newfangled "comics on the inter-web" thing, and started yelling at the screen with pencils?

Anyway, onto their archive. Most of their entries are pretty unremarkable, but a certain few caught my attention, and not in a good way:

(Real quick side note: Where the fuck are the "next" and "previous" buttons? Navigating the archive shouldn't be a fucking chore. I normally don't swear, but that's a pretty big peeve of mine, as I've realized. To not have a navigation system is like giving the finger to your readers. You can manage a nice flash menu at the top, Nerds and Co, but you can't fathom that people don't want to refer to your archive every time they want to peruse your strips? Way to go.)

"Divine Intervention"
I don't understand this comic. So, it's time to break a bad strip down:

If it's supposed to be an "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" reference, it's not. It's not the choice of the act, it's the choice of the choice. In other words, it's not the act of drinking that's in question... it's the presence of a certain cup to drink. That's how the reference has to be in order to work. The comic is flawed on a fundamental level, just on that alone. Besides that, where'd the cup in panel 4 come from? I didn't see him pull nor pour the glass. So where'd it come from? Magic...?

That, and Panel Five. Panel Six says he has "choosen... poorly." And yet, in Panel Five? GreenHat character has nothing but a look of ecstasy on both his body and soul's face. Choosing poorly looks like the best choice he's ever made, based on his expression alone. If he's happy to have made the choice, it's not a poor choice. Game over. Comic makes no sense.

"DAMNATION!"
No one understands irony. What's going on this comic isn't "irony," it's wordplay (and bad wordplay at that). It'd be ironic if the character said, "It's not like I'll go to hell for this!", and then goes to hell. It wouldn't be funny, but dammit, that's irony

"Who The Fuck Wants To Hear It?"
After dragging us through a rant/whine-fest, you reward your readers for bearing through it all with an uninspired, non-redeeming punchline? Great job. God forbid your comic is ever funny.

"Seriously, Good Luck With That..."
Tremendous laughter calls for more than just a scrunched smirk.

In all honesty, all this reviewing, ragging, and ranting was all for naught, because Nerds and Co's last update was March 17, 2005.

Although, you know what I noticed, going through their archive and reading the newsposts? About 4 times through the archive did the newsposts apologize for lack of new comics, and about 3 times did they announce "It's good to be back," signalling what I presume to be a return from an unannounced break.

Here's the thing: if your comic is 3 years old and only has 34 comics in the archive, and your last comic was just under a year ago? My advice? Don't bother submitting it to OnlineComics.net. Rather, just give up.

"Darkslayers", by Ernst Banen. Bad comic. I say this so quickly mainly because the archive is 12 comics long, I just re-read it, and I still have no idea what's going on. Something about a school...? Buried artifacts...? Vampires...? I really have no idea.

The comic's storytelling qualities notwithstanding, there's just one thing that really caught my attention... if you’re going to draw the bubbles in the comic, you may as well letter it yourself while you're at it. That way, you’ll know that the words will fit. Look at how he has to space the words in the last panel of that comic; he has to angle the text so it fits!

That, and listen to how he decribes it on his OnlineComics.net entry description:

"Tune in on the adventures of Jake 'Rainwalker' and his friends as they fight the demon Xenon."

“Jake ‘Rainwalker’”? That needs a last name. His nickname can’t just hang like that.

...

Alright, alright. Since it's still "young," with only 12 comics in its archive, it's a "bad comic" so far. Still means it's a bad comic, though.

Despite being listed on Online Comics .net, "Demithyst- The Year of the Beast," by Leonard V.Rawles isn’t a webcomic- it’s a series of flash animation movies. With a webcomic, you have the leisure of reading through the panels yourself. With Demithyst, the panels appear on screen at their own pace, forcing you to sit through an entire animation of boredom.

It’s like the worst of both worlds of comics and movies. The long, drawn out pacing of a bad movie, and the horrible, monotonous dialogue of a poor webcomic.

I'd talk about the CAD animation, but Kristofer Straub, of Checkerboard Nightmare, says it all more more articulately than I could ever hope for:

"The animation is pretty good though, so kudos. But $30 per year, for a four-minute episode, twelve times yearly? That's like paying for cable for a full month, but it only works for 45 minutes and then never again. Is the sliver of Ctrl+Alt+Del's audience that will buy into that going to support the cost? I'm afraid that it will.

'But Kristofer, would you deny the man his success?' I can't. I really can't. But the thing that gets me is, Ctrl+Alt+Del is Penny Arcade's subject matter, with PVP's pacing, skinned and stuffed in a guileless, hamfisted humor vacuum. That last bit is sheer opinion, but I think the first two hold up under scrutiny.

I've used the following example in the past. Once, when the World Wide Web was new, there were a ton of people using America Online. Remember how AOL didn't even have a web browser? Well, their advertising at the time was strongly "you want the internet? AOL is the way!" AOL was presenting itself as the whole internet. And it was kinda working -- the other options at the time were these dodgy little local outfits. Most people probably didn't even know they existed.

But everyone I can think of does know Penny Arcade, does know PVP. Ctrl+Alt+Del has somehow found an audience -- an enormous audience -- that thinks CAD is the ultimate gaming comic. Perhaps the only gaming comic. That's an incredible position to be in.

I just have no idea how it happened. Ctrl+Alt+Del exists completely outside the webcomics continuum, in some other dimension where it impossibly works. And no one I know understands how CAD managed it. Because I mean... read it. Normally I wouldn't hurl this much invective, but we're not really talking about a webcomic here anymore. It's a corporation. Or at least wants to be one.

P.S. How classy is it that CAD, a gaming comic, links to its own children's charity, but the pan-webcomic relief effort Child's Play has never been mentioned there? Is there a conflict of interest? Is this a goddamn race?

P.P.S. "But Kristofer, aren't you just jealous of CAD's success?" Of course I am. That's my goal too, every webcartoonist's goal I think. I mean, I'm jealous of Bill Gates too, but I see how he worked to build that empire, so I respect him more than a guy who walked backwards into his fortune playing the goddamn slots."

The only thing I can add is I can't understand how a webcomic with such bland punchlines, ranging from threatened violence to actual violence, gets such great visit numbers.

Just look at some of his recent comics:

He just tries oh so hard to be funny.

Yeah, we've never seen this joke before.

Ha ha! Boobs. The female gamer joke certainly hasn't been played out. Oh no, not at all.

At the kind of popularity Buckley claims to have attained, CAD should have moved past these sort of jokes months ago, at the very least.