Carzorblog

2009-10-05T13:06:00.002-05:00

Audio jokes don't work in a silent medium. You'd quicker think he has a speech impediment before you'd think he was quoting a song lyric.

This also stands for any time a character hums, like so:

"Dun dun dun dundeedun dundee dun."

If you get that, congrats. If not, stop doing this in comics.

2009-09-23T22:36:00.004-05:00

The real joke in this comic is that Batman thinks Vitamin C fights cancer. That, or Kris Straub is an alternative medicine kook.

For the record, it doesn't.

2009-09-01T00:13:00.002-05:00

Pfft, you call that in-comic animation? THIS is in-comic animation.

And to a lesser extent, this.

2009-07-11T00:36:00.004-05:00

A unique phrase used twice becomes bland.

2009-06-24T01:09:00.002-05:00

I feel like I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't offer this up. Here's my latest comic:

My own critique:

Panel1: Still not convinced they're at a party. I think I copped out by not drawing a little more detail.
Panel2: This is probably the most successful panel, but the perspective is off in the three scooters.
Panel3: The black background is too minimal. If I ever do it again I'd some plants and trees illuminated by the fire, and maybe even pull out a bit to show more particpants. Right now it just looks like the two characters in the foreground.
Panel4: Too plain. I think there could have been a better way to frame this.

2009-06-18T00:37:00.004-05:00

Circle versus Square, like Dinosaur Comics, is burdened with the comic's balance: art and writing. When working with 2-dimensional characters, literally, the dialogue can sometimes be a bit bloated. However, there's a clarity in the writing that shines through, smoothly introducing new characters and carrying through storylines. Shine on, CvS.

2009-06-18T00:24:00.002-05:00

I wish you could give Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down for comics like comments on YouTube.

2009-06-16T02:47:00.002-05:00

The middle panel of this comic is nigh-incomprehensible. Way too much visual noise- add some color or decrease the concentration of lines.

2009-04-07T13:04:00.003-05:00

I once criticized Penny-Arcade for deviating from video game comics with "Cardboard Tube Samurai" installments, but now I realize as long as I'm not paying for it they can do whatever they want, especially when they look this gorgeous.

2009-02-09T02:53:00.002-05:00

I'm really diggin' on PvP's shades of gray and halftones. Very digital newstrip-y.

2009-02-06T16:54:00.002-05:00

Oh boy, I can't wait to see if today's Least I Could Do will feature characters looking either smug or more smug!

2008-11-14T00:25:00.007-05:00

The latest Fanboys suffers from Cliff Syndrome, where the background doesn't extend far enough to convey a sense of depth, instead looking like it takes place on the edge of a cliff.

A great example of Cliff Syndrome can be found in the now-defunct webcomic "The Green Avenger":

If you took that same panel and viewed it from the direct side, it would look like this (w/ simulated camera):

So how do you fix it? Just add some deeper background elements so you don't see the sky touch the ground.

This:

To this:

2008-11-13T22:55:00.000-05:00

This is great.

2008-11-08T02:36:00.003-05:00

Dynamic character poses make a talking head strip funny. Body language is a major part of conversation.

This:

Versus:

The latter comic (and related advice) were shamelessly taken from the Something Awful thread dedicated to "fixing" CAD. If you want to read over 100+ pages of analyzing, critiquing, and ultimately improving CAD, click here.

2008-10-30T21:56:00.003-05:00

Hm... something seems off.

Fixed.

2008-10-30T21:50:00.001-05:00

This is not funny.

2008-10-16T15:52:00.003-05:00

The latest PvP reminded me that I never understood what the phrase "Prisoners of your own butts" meant.

I am an idiot and I need someone to explain it to me.

2008-10-01T01:18:00.005-05:00

I feel that as Ramsoomair's characters become more and more "chibi-ized" (ahem) he's losing the ability to create dynamic poses. They all seem to assume a rather... well, fetal positioning.

Here's a panel from his Team Fortress 2 comic:

Here's a panel from Katie Tiedrich's guest comic, same game (even his characters)

Now when's the last time you've seen Hello Kitty do anything besides stand there?

2008-09-24T12:24:00.003-05:00

Married to the Sea is the LOLcats of public domain illustrations, but with better grammar and wit.

2008-09-21T12:30:00.008-05:00

Menage a Three: the art's so good but the situational humor is very repetitive.

We get it, they're in your face.

2008-09-18T22:51:00.002-05:00

There's no statute of limitations on snarky web-comic posts, are there?

This? More like this:

Ha-ha, existentialism.

2008-09-18T22:51:00.001-05:00

I thought this seemed familiar.

God damn I've been reading PvP a long time.

2008-09-13T20:33:00.004-05:00

Misfile character Emily's major conflict in the plot is about as interesting as trade disputes in the Star Wars prequels.

2008-09-13T16:32:00.001-05:00

I never could bring myself to utter "webcest" (it just don't roll of the tongue) but I did catch myself saying "garbage butt" the other day.

2008-09-06T01:44:00.003-05:00

It always struck me as odd when Mitch Clem's "My Stupid Life" would open with Clem performing standup, leading to the comic. Then it hit me:

Both comics and stand-up are used as a way to re-tell funny stories to an audience. So when you have a comic about stand-up it's like comedic reverb; telling the story of someone telling a story.

Would the dialogue from the standup panels be better served as captions over the existing action? Is opening with a panel of stand-up anything more than a "hey look at me I'm also a stand-up comedian" attention grab?

2008-06-13T12:11:00.004-05:00

Get it? By putting the tiny controller in the drawer, it's not him tidying up, it symbolizes him putting away the dreams of being a father.

2008-06-12T09:26:00.006-05:00

Ctrl-Alt-Del, champion of uninspired punchlines and hollow characters, has attempted to show it can handle drama. "Attempted" being the key word.

Lilah, static girlfriend-character of Ethan, silly comic relief character, has become pregnant with Ethan's baby. The news came as a shock, but through as series of strips about as exciting or interesting as a real relationship talk with a girlfriend, they've come to accept this fact.

We pretty much all knew there'd be no baby. PvP pulled the same stunt a couple of years ago, only they got through it without talking us to death. Their story gave us a twist, took on an edge, bringing us deeper into the character motivations of possible-father-to-be Brent Sienna.

Okay, back to CAD. Ethan and Lilah are having a baby, right? Then this happened.

I'll give kudos in that Buckley had the event transpire suddenly and without warning, just as something real like that would. However, this is coming from CAD. It releases strips like this. A miscarriage storyline is venturing into dangerous, unexplored territory. You can't just shove readers into it.

Lo and behold, the strip has become a punchline in of itself. Bigger Than Cheeses had a field day, Cyanide and Happiness even took a jab, and here's my personal favorite:

What I find interesting is Buckley continued the storyline for two strips, and then sort of stopped. The latest two strips since then have been unconnected, the last of which a pin-up (pin-ups being another word for "filler"). I wonder if he's rethinking his decision to have a miscarriage of a storyline in a gaming comic? That's probably reading to far into it, but really... what the hell?

Ah, heck, here are some more (pulled from BtC):

2008-02-27T17:29:00.006-05:00

In case you were curious, yes, the insane can draw. That's the case with Chidi Okonkwo's NSFW comic "Single Female Alien (S.F.A.)," which should instead be named "Author Disturbingly Flirting With Own Characters (A.D.F.W.O.C.)," because that's all that happens. Chidi's omnipresent narrative voice is in every comic (that isn't filler) goading the female characters into exposing themselves, which Chidi probably thinks is character development. And when they, fictional characters, don't comply? He threatens to kill them.

If you put a pencil in the hands of that crazy homeless person muttering to themselves, this is what you would get.

What's worse is Chidi's art. After reading through the whole archive (and perusing his deviantart page) I'm pretty sure this is the internal dialogue Chidi had in deciding to be an artist.

Chidi: Hey, I want to draw boobs!
Common Sense: You know, you also have to draw the rest of the body convincingly for that to work.
Chidi: Pssh, whatever, everyone will be so distracted by giant boobs they won't have time to notice I don't know how to draw!

Gorgeous.

2007-12-27T12:51:00.001-05:00

God Mode, by Raven Perez, is about games or something. I can't know for sure because I was distracted by giant cartoon boobs being the real punchline nearly every strip.

The non-boob strips are the real filler.

2007-12-24T16:49:00.000-05:00

Obvious problem with sprite comics #227: close ups.

Is that a white Master Chief or television static?

That snap was pulled from from "Rules of Engagement"... a sprite comic concerning the franchise crossover of "Halo," "Star Wars," and "Aliens," which carries the same intended seriousness as Star Trek vs. X-Men.

Serious business.

2007-12-14T08:53:00.000-05:00

"Rooster Teeth Comics," brought to you by the guys who made Red vs Blue, is a comic about the guys who made Red vs. Blue. Punchlines are as standard as jokes get. Setup, deliberation, punchline. No real surprises, no clever wordplay (aside from a pun or two) and the characters are very basic archetypes.

The comic reads like it was commissioned. "Hey, we need someone to make a comic about us because we're really funny, and we think a comic about us would be equally, if not moreso, funny."

One thing's that's nice is its humor is genuine, not self-important. The comic is out to make you laugh, not to make a cheap buck (although you can buy the Rooster Teeth Comic collection "Year One" online! A great buy for Christmas!)

2007-11-27T07:58:00.000-05:00

Gotta give up for Ornery Boy... he's utilizing Flash in a way that not many other comics have. He's including "flash-y bits" in certain panels; because Flash is used for animation, comics can insert animated bits into their comics. Ornery Boy is doing just that and doing an amazing job. It's a testament to what makes webcomics different/better than print comics.

2007-11-26T17:25:00.000-05:00

I know it's passé to hate on CAD, but I mean... that's the punchline?

Really?

"I know a guy who knows a guy" isn't a punchline... it's a blank space, a placeholder for the author to replace upon thinking of an actual joke.

Examples:

"Eh. I once knew a security guard for a costume store named 'Nappy.'"

"Eh. Turns out my closet adjoins a highschool drama department. Who knew?"

"Eh. Turns out to be a PI, you don't need disguises to investigate cheating spouses... just a parked car and a camera"

"Eh. Just in case I need to change my name and address. Fast."

"Eh. Those "one per customer" coupons are a gold mine for a man with a thousand faces."

Oh sure, they're not all winners, but at least I'm trying

2007-09-23T12:54:00.000-05:00

What can I say? When he's right., he's right

2007-09-13T11:38:00.000-05:00

In terms of artistic quality, the bottom of the barrel for webcomics are CG-posed comic, action figure-posed comics, and sprite comics. There are exceptions to "all three, but utilizing each successfully requires a bit of imaginative thinking that isn't common at the bottom of said barrel.

In terms of writing, politically-themed comics can be a tough sell. They're either too heavy-handed to do anything but preach to the choir, or so light-hearted they might as well not even make a political strip.

Taking Stock, by "Mapaghimagsik" is a politically-themed CG-posed strip. But it's not all that bad.

The writing is actually pretty engaging. The first strip is pretty heavy-handed in its metaphor, but the later comics redeem it. Taking Stock seeks to educate the reader on events, point out logical fallicies, and it's basically not this (thanks, Shmorky). However,in specifically describing itself as a political strip, Taking Stock would do well to avoid character driven strips that have no political nature in them. The humor, so far, has only fallen flat; you keep waiting for that politically-laced punchline that just isn't there.

The art shines the most when it's drawn by hand. The cel-shaded effect has its charms, but it's not going anywhere fast. It seems like most CG-posed comic artists do so just to avoid the labor of drawing. Drawing by hand has a tremendous learning curve, wherein comics look leagues better with each new strip. I would definitely like to see more "drawn" strips like the one linked previously.

2007-08-28T13:36:00.000-05:00

We are the Cretinoids, by Drew Larster and Jon Klister, utilizes the type of humor you'd expect from a comic that sustains the Pirate vs. Ninja fad: ordianary and immaterial. Cretinoids employs a small cast of characters most likely based on the author's circle of friends, a conclusion drawn from punchlines that range from simple to simply unfunny, a surefire sign of inside jokes. An example of which is "Coast City Comics," in which the trio run from a Comic Shop which then explodes. After the pyrotechnic display, one of the three, with a smirk on face, exclaims, "Heh... sorry. I divided by zero."

With the character's self-assured smugness, you know "dividing by zero" has happened before. With no precursor comic in the archive to provide an origin, the only way the line has been said before must have been amongst his friends. It's the same situation with the "titty punch" running gag.

Punchlines tend to have this level of mastery. Violence and swear words have their place in comics, but more often than not they're used as placeholders for cleverness and wit. Then, when the author really, really wants a joke to work, he completely contrives the situation. Last I checked, the correct spelling is "Pita" and "pitta" is a type of bird.

... that is, unless the joke was that they were selling actual Pitta birds. But if that was the case, I demand a bird in a bun. Otherwise, I'm going to transition from one food to the next- "pizza" to "bird" with no visual cue is a tough sell.

Of all things ordinary in the strip, the art is a step above a typical web comic. It starts off plain, but the artist quickly comes into his own and, a few androgynous females and lard-laden Wonder Women aside, can draw fairly well.

We are the Cretinoids shows the promise of being excellent someday. It has a spark of ingenuity every now and again, but those comics are overshadowed by the problematic strips mentioned above as well as hordes of random art weeks, making one wonder if it's a comic or a deviantart gallery. With the infrequent updates (one every month, just about), though, it's going to take quite a while for improvement to show.

2007-08-25T23:18:00.000-05:00

This was a comment from Scott Christian Sava, the author of Dreamland Chronicles, regarding my previous post.

"Ha ha!
I'm glad you enjoyed the page!
At least you understand it's much better to read in book form. I couldn't read this on the web...but somehow people do.
Go figure.

Thanks for checking in though."

Dangit scott! How can I be an angry webcomic critic when you're so nice about being criticised? You're making it hard on me, is all.

2007-06-25T15:42:00.000-05:00

An addendum to Tuesday's post:

Yep. Boy, I'm really glad to tune into today's Dreamland Chronicles to witness five, five, panels of a helmet being put on a guy's head. Nope, no way could you have done that in less without sacrificing the action-packed, edge-of-your-seat, can't-wait-to-see-what-happens-next pacing that keeps me coming back for more.

2007-06-22T18:28:00.000-05:00

If you want to read one of the funniest comics from 5 years ago, you can buy a CD filled with the comic's archives and plenty of bonus materials. But you better hurry up, CD sales stop on June 30th.

The comic I'm talking about?

Mall Monkeys

Mall Monkeys purchase page.

2007-06-20T22:38:00.001-05:00

It may be a dead comic now, but reading through the archives of Everyone Drunk But Me is like being hugged. This comic for some reason exemplifies that feeling.

Have I written about this comic before? I can't remember. No matter.

2007-06-19T07:39:00.000-05:00

God dammit Dreamland Chronicles, if you're underwater you don't fall, you sink. She'd slowly float down, or better yet, swim away, not plummet to her doom.

Dreamland Chronicles has a few good ideas and a lot of long, drawn out action sequences. He inists on showing you every single little detail in an action sequence, killing the pacing for the webcomic and frustrating readers who can't believe they tune in day after day to only to get updates with an inkling of action/plot progression.

The reason for this is because Dreamland Chronicles is primarily in book form. You can buy them and then flip through these unending action scenes with a turning of a physical page, not the loading of an immaterial browser (and subsequently the wait of days and weeks).

2006-12-19T01:52:00.000-05:00

Written by the clearly non-English speaking Carina Nor, Just Mortal is "some strange comic about an angel and a demon getting on each others nerves." True to its self-description, Just Mortal follows "Wilya Tengware," a demon, and "Jacob Ilmarin," an angel. And with names like that, you know the author means business.

The story starts off simply enough- Wilya (demon) and Jacob (angel) are immmortal enemies who made the mistake of fighting too much. So, both Heaven and Hell ruled for them to live together for 100 years. Aaaaaaannnnd let the laughter begin.

What the comic lacks is simple enough- any sort of drama. The fighting that caused the duo to be punished? The fighting that resulted in (grammatical errors hers, not mine) "more damage to heaven and hell, then all the the angels and demons have managed in a whole century"? is supposedly the super-horrific ability to wilt flowers, hurl puffs of smoke, and light trees on fire. Heaven and Hell must be joint-operated by Smokey Bear for this to be a big deal.

That aside, the comedy of the series is supposed to come from the duo's natural discrepancies. However, their alleged polar differences result to little more than civil disagreements or bland violence. I say "civil" disagreements because so early on in the strip the two share a bed after little more than two rows of dialogue exchange. No yelling, no fighting (disregard the "after a long fight"... if it wasn't drawn, it didn't happen)... it's supposed to be an angel and a demon living together, right? Nor later tries to express their animosity towards one another through physical violence but her inexperience in drawing keeps her from capturing any sort of energy. All the violence is flat and uninteresting. I think what Nor is trying to do with her interpersonal drama is what Eric Nault does so flawlessly with his characters and dialogue (not to mention his strip involves a female demon too!).

The plot is very "how do you do"-ish. They, the two supernatural characters, find jobs easy enough despite their origins and appearances. The people that the angel and demon meet care very little for the fact that the duo are theological in origin. Instead, they see it, accept it, and move on. Granted, it's a comic strip, but without any sense of reality there's no way to be interested; if no one notices nor cares that the characters aren't human, there's no way to relate to the strip's world.

The art is fair enough. Like all beginning artists, Nor will improve over time. What really bugs me is the speech bubbles. Nor changes the text to fit in the bubbles rather than the other way around; what Nor should do is create bubbles large or small enough to envelop the text. The end result is a headache after having to read through text squished to size 6 font or being stretched out to make 3 words fit in a bubble made large enough for an English paragraph.

All in all, the characters could stand to be fleshed out, the logic of the strip could use some tweaking (and by "tweaking" I do mean "utterly realizing that the real world isn't that stupid and simple"), and by god Nor needs to find an English-speaking spellchecker. Second panel of this strip. "Doorseller"? Nor means "Door to door salesman," but since she doesn't have a perfect grasp of the English language, mainly due to her residing in Norway, she wouldn't know the difference.

2006-11-27T12:47:00.000-05:00

Been a while, huh? I'll keep it short and sweet.

Remember when Ctrl-Alt-Del released its animated series? Remember when PvP started making "PvP Alive/Blaminations" as a satire of the whole idea of charging your fan base for a contrived animated series?

Well, looky looky.

2006-10-31T16:07:00.000-05:00

All good things must come to an end, or certainly that's the case for Concerned: The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman. I didn't want to believe it was going to end, but the current (and apparently second-to-last) comic tries to say it as definitively as possible.

It's an odd prospect for a webcomic to have a definite end like that. Most webcomics tend to sprawl out and end when the creator loses interest. It's very rare for a webcomic to say "The End"; even comics that work towards an end usually give up not even halfway through.

Either way, it's a well-done ending. Although it has humor the whole way through, I doubt anyone could argue the tone in the (second-to) last comic is anything more than somber. You'd think I'd be more prepared for it ending... the author mentioned it was going to end eventually and tried to say in no uncertain terms it wouldn't continue past Half-Life 2's story. Not only that, but the very name of the comic is "The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman."

Still, I'm going to miss it. One of the comics out there, and now it's over. What'll fill the void? If anything, this opens the door for any other Half-Life humor comics. Just hopefully not this one.

2006-10-02T08:41:00.000-05:00

Al Nennig, of Tree Sprocket, is taking a break, and I say good for him.

Hey guys, sorry to say this, but I'm going on hiatus until November.

I know it sucks, but I really need a break. I just had a bunch of schedule adjustment type things come up in my life, and it results in me losing my normal comic-making day in favor of working, so I have to get used to the changes, re-charge for a while, then come back BETTER THAN EVER!!!

Don't worry though, Tree Sprocket is not dead, and I promise I will be back at the start of November. In the meantime, I will still be around on the Forum.

If you have any Tree Sprocket guest comics, or were thinking of making them, I'd have no problem putting them up during the break, just email them to me.

Speaking of guest comics, I've got one coming up on Fade Resistant later, so I'll post a link when thats up.

So I'll see you guys in a month and a half. If you're looking for something to read while I'm gone, try Fade Resistant, Starslip Crisis, Comet7, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, Real Life Comics, Carzorthade, or Ugly Hill"

While I love the comic and would want it to update every day, webcartoonists have lives too, and sometimes they take precedence. But, Al Nennig handles it perfectly. He posts why he's taking a break, when he's coming back, and posts some comics with a similar humor for readers to keep themselves occupied while he's away.

Rather than force out strips just to meet the deadline, Al's taking initiative and being honest with your readership. While it's true that the majority of readers tend to be casual and will delete the bookmark at the first missed update, the readers that matter (the ones that really love the strip) will thank him. Kudos, Al.

2006-09-11T10:13:00.000-05:00

Just a quick post for this week.

Tree Sprocket, by Al Nennig, is one of my favorite comics. But, it needs to update its newspost more often. While the comic itself always updates on time, the newsposts have been considerably neglected as of late. Although his most recent comic came with a newspost, it was only a sentence long; the last update before that was August 28th.

If you update the newspost as much as the comic, which Tree Sprocket used to do, people will come to expect the same consistency out of the newspost as well. Even if you make no claims of the newspost's importance or schedule, people begin an association similar to Pavlov's dogs. Eventually, to update the comic and not the newspost leaves readers feeling only half-satiated.

A newspost satisfies in ways a comic cannot- the two complement eachother. The comic provides a dose of abstract humor and the newspost grounds the reader back into reality by perhaps talking about where the comic idea came from (while not ruining the joke), or maybe pointing out a "happy-accident" that occurred during the comic-making process. Alternatively, the newspost might become something of an unofficial blog where the author offers a tiny morself of information about their personal life. Not so much information as a LiveJournal (god forbid) would present, but just enough to give the reader some sense of who it is that's making the comics; the author begins to sculpt a personality of their own outside of their comic.

It doesn't take much to update the newsposts with the comic. A simple blurb about the comic itself (while avoiding the temptation to explain the joke or point out how funny the punchline is), and/or a tidbit on the author themselves, answering questions such as: did they have a good weekend? What'd they do? Any cool songs they've heard recently? Movies? Anything. Just give us something.

2006-09-04T21:22:00.000-05:00

People are quick to complain about Sprite comics, but when's the last time anyone's given them much thought?

Sprite comics come in two flavors: humor, or story. Humor, in the sense that they’re mainly dick and fart jokes, and story, as in they try to tell a serious narrative. Neither work because sprites don’t have a great range of artistic variability.

People that make sprite comics are most likely individuals that have an idea, something that they have their hearts truly set on; they want to tell a story or tell jokes, but they feel they don’t have the artistic ability to achieve it. Therefore, they’re willing to resort to one of the lowest common denominators of web cartooning.

Just listen to this comic’s description:

Legacy of Light: “No one was left who could remember how it had happened... how the world had fallen into darkness. At least no one who could do anything about it... no one who would oppose the robots, none who would challenge their power. ...or so Dr. Wily believed.”

This is not a bad pitch for a comic. It sounds like the author is really trying to tell a story, something that’s gripping and real.

But, then you read the comic and the typical panel looks like this:

Are you serious? That’s the character “drinking himself into a stupor”? It looks more like he’s drinking ash out of a burlap sack.

Now, if Legacy of Light was actually drawn it could separate itself from MegaMan just by a few degrees… something that would allow readers to gain something of an appreciation for the world the author’s trying to write in. However, because they’re using sprites from the game itself, the most the author can hope to bring to the readers is the slight nostalgic feeling of remembering how they beat Bubble Man with only 3 health left back in 2nd grade.

I was going to write a detailed paragraph on the “humor” side of sprite comics, but then…

I realized there was no humor to speak of.

As a side note, no sprite comic should ever move for a close up.

Ever.

Sprite comics are not bad because of their stories or jokes. Well, not the former, anyway. It’s that the medium Sprite authors are working in isn’t suited for their aspirations. They need to move on, and find something better. They need something where they have a greater control over their characters, environments, and angles… all the sorts of variables that allow for a freedom that making comics with sprites deny. They need to upgrade.

Of course, the best way to do that is pick up a pencil and learn to draw, but failing that the next step up is to start using Garry's Mod. Comics made using the Half-Life 2 engine are in the exact same camp as those made using Sonic or MegaMan sprites. Both use a game as their “art,” and both are made by those who want to tell a story or craft jokes. There’s considerably less comics made using Garry’s Mod than Sprite comics, but they do exist. Apostasy (link goes to Yahoo download site... comic only available as a .zip) utilizes Gary’s Mod to tell a story in a manner akin to a graphic novel.

For humor, there’s the always-referenced (and personal favorite of mine) Concerned: The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman.

However, that’s not to say that making a comic by manipulating a next-gen game is a surefire way to make a good comic… it all depends on the person behind the controls. If you have a terrible sense of humor, you make a terrible comic. Simple as that.

2006-08-14T23:40:00.000-05:00

A Fairly Twisted Reality, by Trebor Almasy, is an incredibly flawed comic. If it’s not the art, it’s the writing. If it’s not specifically either, it’s a one-two punch combination of both. Almasy’s art is heavy on the black lines, and his writing is either constructed so consciously offensive that he forgets the punchline altogether, or the joke is so basic and simple that the punchline is hard to find because it’s so obvious.

Critiquing the art is especially difficult due to the author’s insistence on “re-drawing” earlier entries in the archive as “Special Editions” (or “SE’s” in the title of the archived strip). On the one hand, who wouldn’t want to replace the earlier, poorly-drawn-by-comparison-to-the-newer-stuff comics with the updated art? But on the other hand, a typical web cartoonist’s art is constantly improving, so trying to replace earlier art is a Sisyphean effort, as the comics you redraw end up as older art you’ll eventually want to replace again: there’s simply no end in sight. Instead, Almasy is better off concentrating on the latest strips and letting his past serve as reminders of how far he’s come.

Since his old, middle, and new styles are so intertwined, I may as well critique them as they come. Almasy has a big problem with necks, seen prominently in what I assume was his beginning art style. The characters necks are nearly the same thickness as their heads. And yet, he has yet to have a single bodybuilder in his comic. While the neck size improves with his latest style, you can see in his newer comics, the “bodybuilder neck” shows itself when he tries a flat, profile view of the characters.

In other art problems, Almasy joins the ranks of early Christian and Byzantine artists in drawing children as tiny men. That, and I found it interesting that although his art typically his art improves with his later styles, but he did a better job drawing a vagina in his earliest style than he did when he was farther along.

While the art improves along the course of the comic's archive, the writing does not. On the very surface, Almasy’s writing suffers from some really simple spelling and grammar problems. For example, it’s confounding how he spells “Abstinence” correctly in this strip’s title, but not in the strip itself!

But, that instance pales in comparison to this comic. Go on, read the first panel. I’ll wait.

Finished? Good. Almasy? Would it be so hard to do a quick re-read of your own script before you upload the comic? You’re making the dumbest of mistakes, like using “to” instead of “too,” and forgetting r’s for “your.” This is simple stuff!

Spelling and grammatical errors aside, Almasy’s strips come in two flavors: extremely convoluted, or stupendously simple. And then, sometimes the comic comes flavorless, without any punchline at all.

Then, when it's not specifically the art or the writing's fault, there are some severe technical issues with specific strips. Hell, “Johnny Thunder” could be a CSI episode with its biggest problem: the exit bullet’s trajectory doesn’t align with the entrance wound.

There’s only one reason for this… another shooter. Actually, more likely he wanted the bullet to leave between the eyes, but if he did that the bullet would only skim across the top-most part of the skull. But, if we went for the more satisfying “back of the head” shot, the bullet would exit the mouth, which isn’t as picture-esque.

It’s really sad that these techincal problems weigh down these specific strips so much. Take this comic, for example. I like this joke, I honestly do. But in the last panel, with the truck so prominently displaying its logo/slogan, it distracts the reader from the punchline, splitting their attention from the far funnier matter at hand, which is the man being run over. Sure, trucks have logos. But with the way the logo’s so far up in the front of the truck (as opposed to the middle of the truck, which extends past the panel), it’s painfully obvious Almasy wanted to weigh down the strip with another dildo joke.

I could go on and give more attention to more flawed strips in the archive, but I think you get the picture. While it's clear from the archives that Almasy's art is getting better as he goes along, his writing has not improved. Jokes are inherently flawed in their structure and payoff. He has great ambitions in his ideas, but they often fall flat in that he doesn't think out each comic's logistics before comitting them to paper, so to speak. Almasy would be best to read through an archive of a more successful "professional" strip, be it in print such as "FoxTrot," or online like "PvP." While they might be bland to his tastes, their jokes have a very clear structure with a definite set-up and punchline, something AFTR lacks severely.

2006-08-08T11:54:00.000-05:00

Midnight Gamer, by Richard Dunn, is a machinima comic that utilizes Sims 2 as its “art,” so to speak. The jokes, although solid in terms of set-up and punchlines, are altogether bland and predictable, the sort of faire average comics churn out their first years. However, the two most noteworthy features of the comic is that it uses Sims 2, and that nearly each comic comes with a half newspost, half commentary blurb.

Using a game’s graphics as the “art” of a comic is only as effective as the person pulling the strings. For every Concerned, there’s a “Half-Life: The Lost Host.” It all depends on how well the author can manipulate the game to execute the writing, and likewise have the common sense to not write past the game’s technical abilities, which is where “Midnight Gamer” has most of its issues.

In particular, panel 3 of this strip is where Machinimation (for Sims 2 in particular, anyway) reveals its shortcomings. In Panel 3, the character is expressing incredible disdain for reading spoilers to a movie. However, the character making the exclamation simply sits placidly with his hands at his sides, with no visible emotion whatsoever. Because there’s such a schism between the two, whatever humorous effect the creator was going for is lost.

Likewise for this comic. Characters are playing cards at the table, but Sims 2 apparently doesn’t have the capability for that. Instead, the author copies and pastes flat images directly onto the comic, either because he doesn’t know how to skew or doesn’t recognize the difference.

As you can see, there’s no sense of perspective. Cards would be flat against the table, not standing upwards at an angle that perfectly faces the camera at all times. I mean, it’s Sims 2, not Doom.

Technical troubles aside, more particularly bothersome are the newsposts (which are more commentary than anything else) that accompany each comic. Commentary’s a hard thing to do: talk too little, and you might as well say nothing at all. Say too much and you either end up explaining (in as many words as possible) a self-explanatory joke, or come off as a self-congratulatory prick. It’s a fine line, really. I’ve only seen a few comics add commentary to their comic, and even fewer do it well.

But, "Midnight Gamer" chooses to, and it falls in the camp of giving background info for self-explanatory jokes. Here’s a snippet of the commentary for this comic (at the bottom of the page), for example:

“I do really enjoy comic books, and yes, I DO know the difference between Marvel and DC.”

This is a trap that beginning webcartoonists fall into. In naming the main characters after themselves and their friends, authors are restrained by how they portray both themselves and their friends in the comic; with a real-life person to base the character off of, they sometimes feel the need to explain away any discrepancies. To relate all that back to the original commentary snippet, yes, we know. We’re sure that you, Richard Dunn, are well aware of the differences between the two comic book companies. Why, that’s such a laughable mistake it sounds like the action of a character… in… a comic strip.

Comics starting off with main characters named for themselves and their friends have a particularly difficult time finding their voice, especially when they try to treat the characters as themselves instead seeing them as actual “characters.” Having the commentary available really lets you see into this kind of mindset because every time you read a joke that’s fairly humorous, you have to read a disclaimer like this:

“This comic came from a conversation with a friend. However, it is not the same conversation, as I’ve changed some of the dialogue to make for a heightened comedic effect.

I hope you will forgive me.”

Other strips’ commentary adds insight to the author’s view of his own comic:

“I haven't actually gotten very many comments, or indeed, any comments, about the strip's lack of focus on gaming, but it's been on my mind.”

… proooobably because you don't have many readers, if any at all. At least, certainly not a large enough number to include the small majority that would contact the author to begin with. That’s a big problem with commentary that addresses a non-existent audience. You make predictions and assertations based on what you imagine your audience will say, but when and if they ever do show up and don’t behave the way you think they will, you’ll probably come off as presumptuous (go figure).

More than that, reading the commentary gives you an idea of the kind of kick using Sims 2 gives for non-artists:

“I am proud of many of the things I have done as the creator of Midnight Gamer, but I do not think anything can surpass Darth Jimmy.”

I think we’ve all played the Sims at this point, haven’t we? You know, where character creation is as simple as choosing a head and a body? I find it rather pompous of Dunn to be so taken by the pairing of the character “Jimmy’s” head to the Darth Vader body. They’re just skins. All you did was put a Sim together, parade it around, and take pictures.

“Midnight Gamer” isn’t immune from its own share of smaller technical difficulties as well. Dunn doesn’t quite have the hang of bubbles, for one. In these three comics (the first panel in middle and the second panel in the latter), the incorrect positioning of the bubbles causes the audience to read the bubbles in the incorrect order.

Typically, in a western culture, people read from the left to the right. Here’s a nifty guide on how to place bubbles in such a situation:

Regardless of which character says it, you’re going to read bubbles “1”, then “2.”

Then, there's logistical errors. This strip is first in the archive, and this is second. However, the first strip is based off a situation that the second explains. Switching their places in the archive would clear up this trouble.

After that, is there a particular reason why the “i” after the “D” is capitalized as well? It seems more likely Dunn can't spot that he held the "shift" key a bit longer than he intended, as the same capitilization trouble appears where he "signs" his name in nearly half the archived comics.

And finally, while this isn't a techincal difficulty, I find it rather odd for "Midnight Gamer" to have a Fan Art section in which the only art is contributed by the creator of the strip. Is he that big of a fan of his own creation? Well, good for him I say.

2006-07-24T20:43:00.000-05:00

"One Small Step," by Joe Kandra, tells the story of a man thrust into space via a modified Minivan. After crash-landing on an alien planet and being befriended by its inhabitants, the main character, Doug, is off to explore the galaxy.

The honest and simple art style, reminiscent of "Absurd Notions" with a hint of Peanuts, does a great job executing the absent-minded plotline. There’s not too much thought in the plot as it's more "just for fun" than anything else. OSS is almost the opposite of the similarly-themed "Freefall," which takes great labor in constructing a fully-functioning and logical universe of space-travel and alien worlds, interwoven with a matching sense of humor.

However, OSS's biggest shortcoming is that it builds its founding moments from more homages/references than originality. The minivan blasted into space and time due to a Flux Capacitor, from Back to the Future, in the engine. Doug, once on the alien planet, is outfitted with Nano-Translators, which are essentially the BabelFish from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Later, Doug's minvan is modified to include a "Dimensional Portal [...] built into the door," which makes the minivan "bigger on the inside than the outside," ala Doctor Who's TARDIS. Following that, the aliens give Doug a guide to help him, with the cover "Don't Panic"; the book is not "the Hitchhiker's Guide" (as Doug mentions the cover is a "nice touch"), but is simply another reference. In fact, the comic seems to buddy up to Douglas Adams (most likely for whom the main character is named for) altogether, with the aliens expressing their admiration for the man.

Most of these references were accompanied with an admittance of the reference ("Just like Dr. Who"), which is acceptable, but with so much of the story relying on references to other, more famous people's, stories, what can Kandra call his own? Rather than being original and coming up with his own ideas to achieve his own story, Kandra instead relied on plot devices to get the character from point A to B as quickly as possible through more familiar source ideas. An occasional reference isn't anything bad, but the whole beginning is derived from others' work.

For example, was giving the engine specifically a "Flux Capacitor" necessary? Plenty of science fiction franchises include time travel as part of their plot. However, they think of their own ways to achieve the same effect. The Flux Capacitor is there in name only... why not explain it away by saying something like, "The engine transverses the Space/Time membrane as a means of reaching faster-than light travel. Therefore, the vehicle has access to Space and Time travel."

It's all sci-fi throwaway mumbo-jumbo, but at least you'd be able to call it your own.

2006-07-17T15:52:00.000-05:00

As the old story goes, a guy goes to a doctor. He says to the Doctor, “Doc, it hurts when I do *this*”

The doctor replies, “Well, don’t do it.”

Jin Wicked, author of autobiographical comic “Crap I Drew on My Lunch Break,”, seems to have had nothing but trouble since she quit her job in December 2004 to focus on Crap as a means to support herself. Here’s a small part of a longer newspost from a few months ago in which she explains a brief hiatus:

“[…] this past year has also been extremely hard on me. I've had animals get sick and lots of vet bills, numerous recurring computer problems, lost a lot of work time due to events outside of my control, had to deal with health problems, bank problems, you name it. I've also had a lot of necessary expenses incurred as my business and websites have grown. So right now I am in a fair amount of debt, and I'm trying to realistically decide whether this comic is worth the frustration and amount of work I put into it vs. my situation. I am just slowly sinking. Adding to that fact a very vocal minority of readers who seem intent on ruining the enjoyment I get out of this, and I'm seriously having to evaluate the future of this comic. I want to keep working on it, but if the main thing I'm getting out of it is a few jerkish readers continually pissing me off, and owing my soul to credit card companies, there isn't much point.”

That was posted as part of an explanation as to why she wasn’t updating with new comics. The hiatus came to pass and she started updating once again for a brief period of time. However, several weeks ago, she removed everything… comics, website, and all. In its place was an explanation of why, including these reasons:

1. I need a break from everything involved with comics, including the website and all that comes with it.
2. I am working on private commissions, I have a sick pet, and am trying to get ahead on many upcoming bills.
3. This website has affected me to the point that my heart (palpitations) is acting up all the time. I am not well.
4. I want to quit. Shutting down the site for a month is a compromise because I know many people enjoy it.
5. If this does become permanent, the books will be available for your archive-reading needs.

You should make comics because you want to make comics. If doing something you don’t want to do is causing you pain, especially physical pain…

Well, don’t do it.

2006-07-10T11:50:00.000-05:00

Just like last week there was a comic with a Penny-Arcade art-style and a Ctrl-Alt-Del humor, this week there’s a comic with a CAD art-style and a humor that can’t be enjoyed by anyone.

"The Lotro Files," by JJ Maitland, is a comic that sets out to satire the gaming community around the Lord of the Rings Online game, as well as the game itself. One thing I was interested in seeing was how much humor they could pull from the franchise… they call themselves “The LOTRO Files,” and have thusly dedicated themselves solely to Lord of the Rings. Because of their name, they can’t have access to the otherwise wealth of information that non-specific gaming comics have. If they make a joke about another game besides LOTRO, they’re no longer the “The LOTRO Files”… they’re “The LOTRO Files… and some other comics that don’t have anything to do with LOTRO.”

Every time one of the LOTR movies came out, the webcomic community would be flooded with Golum/Precious/”the One Ring” jokes… and that’d be it. Since that was all a casual observer would be interested in and understand, I wanted to see what kind of LOTR-specific jokes TLF could pull off, since their intended audience would most certainly more fanatic about the series.

Before I start off, let me point out that one of the worst things a comic can do starting out is to draw a woman, poorly, and then draw attention to it. This comic has that woman as the banner atop every page. Yes, that’s a woman. Supposedly. When I first saw it I thought it was a Rob Liefeld MS Paint rendition of some sort of LOTR troll, or orc, or whatever the hell it is.

It’s hard to sell “sexy” when you can’t draw.

Anyway, onto the comics. Since there were only eight in the archive, it was a rather short read and easy enough to include them all in the critique.

1: “And So It Begins”
With an ending line like, “Oh crap, here we go again,” it’s actually a fair way to start a comic. And even though the first comic has a “the One Ring” punchline, it could either be a ploy to pull in readers with a familiar joke, or an unintentional foreshadowing of the quality of jokes to come.

2: “Patience My Pet”
Who is Patience? Why would kidnapping it be a threat? Or more than that, why is the line funny? The “Kidnap Patience” threat in the middle is entirely nonsensical until you get to Comic 7, and even then it doesn’t make much sense.

After that, the comic ends in another “precious joke.” Is it because the author is trying to break readers into the LOTR franchise with another (well, the same) familiar joke? Well, since the “Patience” reference isn’t explained until Comic 7 (unintentionally, no less), probably not.

3: “The Hunter”
Of all the comics that make no sense… this is another one of them. There are three panels and I cannot grasp what the joke is. The first panel really tries to push the idea that the character needs to be quiet, with words like “silently,” “stalking,” and the phrase “not making a single sound.” The second panel is a glowing-green arrow flying away. The third panel is the character remarking on that the arrow is glowing green and how he is going to stay calm about it. What the fuck.

I don’t get it. The joke he’s setting up would be that the second panel would be something to ruin the silence the character is trying to maintain, followed by a remark of dismay as the third panel. Normally, I’d applaud Maitland on not being predictable, but I’d like to think that for every red-herring setup there’s some line of logic behind it. It’s more like he lost track of what the joke was along the way and just wrote about what he was doing.

4: “The Regiment Calls”
Another golum/precious reference. That is all.

5: “The Voice of… Reason?!”
Aside from the main character redrawn in a robe (with his hands still in his fucking pockets… in a robe), the entire comic consists of paragraphs of “dialogue,” and may as well have been a forum post and not adapted to a comic. The comic attempts to justify itself with a humorous turn of events in which the main character speaking these paragraphs of text is beaten to a pulp by those he was just insulting. But, when the “pulp” looks like a pile of red Play-Doh protruding with pipe-cleaners like some half-assed third grader “free-time” project, it’s hard to find the end result congruous with the main character the pulp was supposedly “beaten from.”

6: “Please Do Not Feed the Trolls”
LOTRO players travel into a dark cave, where the lights go out and they’re violently murdered because the lights are out. Now, are the lights out because it’s a reference to a quest in the game, or are they off while the characters are attacked because the artist knows he can’t draw the attack sequence?

What’s even more frustrating about this comic is the first and last panel. What does either a Donut or Earl, from “My Name is Earl,” have to do with anything? Are they thrown in because they each have something to do with the game? Or is it because the author was eating a donut and had just caught a rather engaging episode of “My Name is Earl” and did a darling little tribute because of it?

To his credit, though, he did draw this red… orange… armor-wearing monster-thing. I actually can’t make heads or tails of what it is but I do know there’s a mouth in the middle.

7: “That’s Not Patience”
Another mysterious “Patience” comic. From what I can deduce, “Patience” is the goldfish in the last panel, and received its name from the phrase “Patience, my pet, ” which was the title of comic 2. In itself, it’s actually a somewhat-clever pet’s name. However, the characters make jokes saying they’re going to “do” things to Patience, like “kidnap” or “tickle” it. Are these phrases on their own? Are they puns? Can you tickle or kidnap other virtues, like “honesty” or “creativity”? Does that make sense to anyone?

Since I can’t figure out why this joke keeps popping up, I can only gather that it’s an inside joke amongst the author and his friends, and that perhaps Patience is a real pet of theirs. But the strip makes no effort to present the joke in a way that the average reader (even if they’re the central LOTR community they’re shooting for) could somewhat understand and possibly find funny, instead leaving the audience stranded and confused.

8: "Races of ME Part1: the Dwarves"
There’s really not a lot of humor in this comic. The bulleted jokes don't have that much "punch" to them, especially since they aren't very well represented. A "stupidly" large axe looks rather, well, stupidly small. The "beer gut" looks more like the rotated half of an end-parenthesis.

Even though it's supposed to be the main character as a Dwarf, It would’ve been nice if the creator drew the main character as a Dwarf entirely from scratch, instead of “dressing up” the character's template in an attempt to achieve the same effect. Doing so would've certainly taken more time, but it really would have brought out the characteristics the bulleted points remark upon. However, since his artistic abilities haven’t exactly been the most remarkable, it's not especially surprising.

***

Of course, it’s clear that “the LOTRO files,” as a comic, was made as a lark. Being that it’s hosted on a “LOTR Roleplayers” website, there’s a very good chance it was created by one of their forum-goers, and upon completion was hosted by the server. Since I found this comic three months ago, and it hasn’t updated since then, there’s three possible explanations:

1) The “webcomic fever” ran its course after the 8th comic.

2) His ideas overshot his ability to draw. Since his style is directly copied from CAD, and because all the characters were dressed-up from a single template, he’s probably lucky he was able to draw anything at all. Hell, the “orc-woman” at the top’s face was probably copied from stock art, which would explain why her breasts, by comparison to her visage, were so lackluster.

3) Maitland ran out of material, realizing there’s not much more to be said about Lord of the Rings Online.

2006-07-03T10:48:00.000-05:00

Random Moments, by Kristian Correa, provides exactly that: disjointed comics ending in one unseen event after another. Yet, for all the “didn’t see that coming’s,” not one comic out of over 120 did I find appealing in the slightest.

Initially, I didn’t understand why I didn’t find this comic funny. Then I figured it out.

Random Moments is the bastard child of Penny Arcade and Control-Alt-Delete. Their art is unmistakably influenced by Penny-Arcade, and their humor, whether they know it or not, smacks with CAD-level “punchlines” (and by that, I mean the lack of). Rather than craft a joke, Random Moments instead resorts to none-too-clever insults, uninspired violence (or threats of), or an abstract sentence to stamp a conclusive “The End” onto the strip.

RM prides itself on the “random moments” it’s named for, but after so many “hilarious” non-sequitors, you start realizing that there’s no real humor behind them. Hell, the “random moments” ruin most of themselves out of their sheer inanity.

The comic takes a lot of art cues from Penny-Arcade. However, whether or not RM realizes it is unknown. They make references to PA, but not on the subject of the similarity of the art. All the same, after seeing Gabe’s art transition and improve over the years, to read what is essentially a PA art-clone is to let yourself down after every strip. “Hey, this looks pretty good… except that I’ve already seen it improve in Penny-Arcade.”

Random Moments simply has no idea how to execute a good strip. Here are examples of RM comics (bad), and other comics with similar jokes, but with better executions (good):

Old game jokes
RM: "Goodwill Goodness"
PA: "Call Upon Holy Might"

The Unemployed
RM (panel 3): "Monkeys Love Ben"
Medium Large: "(untitled)"

Random creature attacks
RM (panel 4):"Monkeys Love Ben"
PA: "Arthropodal Adventures"

To get into more detail, here are some specific entries that caught my attention:

"A Daily Shower, an Effective Spermicide"
I don’t understand this comic. Three characters are all doing their own thing. Character A is using the toilet. Character B, 20 miles away in another shower, is wanking. Character C is supposedly made to resemble Alex Guiness in his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi. Then, Character A flushes the toilet, Character B orgasms, and Character C yells out Guiness’s famous line, “it’s as if a million voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced,” all the while blocking the water coming from the showerhead, insinuating the water has suddenly spiked in temperature.

I don’t have any clue what happened. The comic is relying on the idea that all the events are “Coincidence? I think not.” But how are the first and last panels are connected? Is Character C in Character A’s restroom? That’s the only way Character A’s toilet flush would impact Character C’s shower temperature. And yet, there’s no mention of Character A’s and C’s interpersonal housing relationship, nor could there be within a singular stand-alone 5 panel strip. All the same, there’s no connection between Panels 1 and 5, rendering the whole comic confusing on such a basic level.

"Voted Out of Reality"
Out of 6 panels, 1-4 are spent with a miscellaneous “extra’ character listening through headphones to a Beyoncé song in the library. I don’t exactly know what the “click” sound is supposed to mean, but I think it’s that the extra character is rewinding the song to hear to the same chorus over and over. In the 5th panel, a random African-American woman runs into the frame and snaps the extra character’s neck, while one of the strip’s main characters, present all along, watches in horror. Ignoring the 6th panel punchline, which is dull enough, the strip fails for two reasons. One of which is that the random African-American character that ran in to snap the girl’s neck was Beyoncé herself, supposedly. However, because the Author’s artwork is crude, the famous Beyoncé was indiscernible from any other character. Besides, why would Beyoncé be upset with a character listening to her song? I don’t understand it. Honestly, if it had been a random character running in the comic would have be much more comprehendible, as a random character carries with it far less dependencies on logic. Hell, it could’ve been anyone but Beyoncé for the strip to make sense.

The second reason it doesn’t work is because music doesn’t work in comic strips. Songs in strips don't work for the simple reason that the average reader can only go on text and lyrics, making it that much harder for the average reader to understand a joke heavily dependent on sound, which for its obvious reasons cannot be rendered in text alone.

"Mind Wanderings"
When I first read this comic, I thought it was funny. Of course, that was before I read the last speech bubble. In the comic, Character A is interviewing a man. The man’s words become phased out as the strip progresses, as Character A’s imagination is running wild, and the end result is that the man turns into Raphael, from the Ninja Turtles. What sparked this? Was this another pure "random moment," or was there something I had missed? Indeed, when I went back to the beginning of the comic, the man’s name was “Raphael.” Having to go back to figure out the comic might sound laborious, but instead, it was a refreshing change of pace. This was one of the few comics that didn’t try to hammer itself into your head for you to get the joke. Instead, I had to decipher a joke, making the effort enhance the comics humor.

But like I said, I hadn’t read the last speech bubble. Reading that last bubble, I realized the joke doesn’t hammer itself into your head… it kicks you in the fucking face to make sure you understand why it’s supposed to be funny.

Featuring Never Before Seen Characters!"
How is the second panel character a ghost? Because he has small splashes of purple goo around his hat? How does that make him a ghost? Then, the 3rd panel consists solely of a closeup shot of the female characters breasts.

What.

There is no point to this strip. It starts off as a parody/takeoff/whatever of VH1s “I Love the 80s” series, almost in a direction of “Please stop making these series VH1,” but then the strip loses track of its own thoughts and ends with breasts.

Why.

Is it because the author’s proud of his own art skills for him to render bosoms in a digital cartoon strip? Is it because the character of Kris is based off of a friend and this is same vague inside joke between them? The strip doesn’t explain a damned thing and is better off not existing.

"How Every Porn Starts"
If the last panel of the previous VH1 was a celebration of his artistic ability to draw female breasts, he may want to hold off on that.

"A Night Out With the Fruit of the Loom Gang"
Can’t think of a funny way to end the strip? Use the Family Guy method and end with a character expressing a desire for mind-altering substances!

"Family Friendly"
So much set-up, so little result. The strip is ruined by how the final panel is clearly a blown-up gif, which clashes entirely with the cartoony style the author’s working in. The clash between the two removes the reader from the strip entirely with the realization that the strip is only a strip.

"Special Bonus Comic"
Likewise the same case for the next strip. Hey! No need to put effort into drawing something… just use an image from the internet and save yourself the precious time it would take to run a decent comic!

It’s especially worse for this strip since even the arrows in the 4th panel have a pixellated quality to them.

"People Watching"
Second panel. Stolen line from Futurama, or Futurama homage? You decide the fine line.

"Golfing Buddies"
… the fuck? Two comics in one archive slot, the second of which being a diced-up and re-pasted version of the first. And isn’t it great how the cyborg character’s head plate switches from his right to his left side? Yeah, it’s not obvious you took the last panel of the first comic and reversed it to become the first panel of the second comic. Oh no, not at all.

***

To be fair, after the "Golfing Buddies" strip, it seemed as though RM reached a point where it wanted to be. The art was certainly improving (although still too PA-heavy to really be something to remark upon), and the jokes progressed logically from “setup” to “punchline” (unlike "A Daily Shower, an Effective Spermicide")… however, no strip really caught my attention nor would I call any of them actually “funny.”

If you like CAD, you’ll probably enjoy this comic. That’s not an insult nor an attempted witticism, it’s merely truth. Their humor styles are very similar, and it’s probably for that very reason I don’t find it appealing in the least.

2006-06-18T21:25:00.000-05:00

Here's a webcomics twofer!

Gone With the Blastwave
16 comics in, and it's already #10 on Buzz. Holy crap. Where'd this comic come from, again?

From what I hear, it was linked by Ctrl-Alt-Del, hence its sudden popularity. I suppose enough incoming visitors stayed to vote in droves and bring it up the list. But! Thankfully, the strip's not without its merit. In fact, it's really quite good. With a setting similar to Post-Nuke and a humor style reminiscent of Red vs. Blue, GWtBW makes for quite an entertaining read. This strip especially gave me quite a laugh.

Cheshire Crossing
Call me a sucker for crossovers, but the idea of Dorothy from "The Wizard of Oz," Alice from "Alice in Wonderland," and Wendy from "Peter Pan" all being brought together for purposes yet to be revealed really piques my interest. Although I must admit, the more period-correct "League of Extraordinary Gentleman" (another crossover comic with a similar premise) has sort of spoiled me. While it's possible that Dorothy and Wendy could meet, being that their respective books' publication dates (and thus their own time periods) are set around the early 1900s, how can Alice be involved if she's from 30 years prior? It's best not to ask questions, because altogether Cheshire Crossing is very promising. While I don't much care for Weir's art style (for as enormously shapely as he draws his women, they sure look tremendously unappealing), the writing keeps the characters interesting and dynamic enough to keep reading, with bits of situational humor thrown in to sweeten the deal.

Oh, and it has Mary Poppins.

2006-06-12T15:28:00.000-05:00

Here’s the latest Rockstar Weekend strip:

Here’s a comic script I wrote 3 months ago, appearing as it was the day I wrote it:

Chris: I’m telling you, alcohol lets a person really be themselves!
term: No, it doesn’t. If a person is who they naturally are without any foreign chemicals invading their body, then that’s who they are.
term: If they’re acting without any inhibitors, then that’s the person with inhibited inhibitors. It’s not really them naturally.
Chris: You stupid… shuddap.
term: Are you drunk right now?!
Chris: Ysno.

The two share nearly the exact same punchline. Of course, perhaps it’s a punchline that’s been shared with comics (or punchlines in general) from before, but all the same, the two are very similar (especially with the presence of an "s" in front of the Drunk's final word).

Am I claiming that Rockstar Weekend somehow delved into my Ideas.doc file and stole my idea? Certainly not. Rather, I’m pointing out that two people, entirely separated, can come up with nearly, if not exactly, the same idea.

Case and point: below is a Bizarro strip, which appeared in the Sunday funny pages September 2nd, 2001:

Here’s a strip from Marbles, dated March 27th, 2006:

Is five years long enough for the Bizarro strip to sink into the backs of the Marbles’ creators’ minds and allow them to subconsciously rip it off, or is this another case of unfortunate similarity? Certainly there are some who'd be quick to claim that Marbles is stealing Bizarro's ideas since the Bizarro strip inarguably appeared first, but I'm sure Marbles doesn't even know that Bizarro exists at all.

All the same, since I know about the Rockstar Weekend strip, I can't use that idea of mine. Not in its current form, anyway.

2006-05-25T11:49:00.000-05:00

A good while ago , Erik Shoenek returned from a hiatus from Loserz, and in the process forcefully injected his comic with a heavy dosage of anime/manga (or whatever the hell the term is for the situation) influence, which you can see from before the hiatus, and after the hiatus. He’s removed noses, enlarged the eyes, and further unbalanced the head/body ratio. While rough in the beginning, the strip has, for the most part, maintained a steady style to it. However, in the most recent strip, the awkwardness of the forced changes show themselves. Shoenek simply hasn’t figure out how to work mouths in. Oh, I know what he’s trying to do. Repository of Dangerous Things worked with a similar style of mouths for a single panel of a strip, afterwards never using it again.

From that, I can only gather it’s hard. All the same, when I see the mouths Shoenek uses, all I see is a girl with the bottom of her face missing, and another girl with a beak.

And in the last panel, where he definitely tries to inject the chibi-style of “peg arms” anime enthusiasts seem to love, I see this:

2006-05-09T06:32:00.000-05:00

OnlineComics.net Quickies!

City of Roses
When you have to scroll past a banner half the size of a typical comic to even read the comic, it’s not even worth going through the archives. Pass.

Johnny Crucifix
Although visually loud and hard to follow, Johnny Crucifix definitely has a plan to it. However, with so few comics, I’m not quite sure what that plan is.

Rachel the Great
This comic classifies its art as Manga/American, but it is lying through its teeth. It’s only one of the two, and I’ll let you figure out which. I’ll give you a hint: It’s manga. That being said, I can’t make heads or tails of what the hell's going on in it.

Finity
I could bear this comic much more if it weren’t for the ever-present pop up ads and talking advertisements. I read its entire archive of 11 comics, and I have no idea what happened, but that may be the point. If you can make sense of it all, I don’t envy you.

Basic Wage Kids
If Archie and the gang formed a band, they'd be the Basic Wage Kids. Really, the comic should be called "Basic Joke Kids." Reading this comic makes me really wish Nothing Nice were making comics again. Jesus.

Chronicles of Salterre
Damned furry comics. That aside, the comic’s poor art is counterbalanced with a successful execution of an interesting story in an anthro comic. No yapping talking anthro heads here. Yet.

Polo Sur
¿Que?

It's a sad day when the furry comic is the most interesting of the bunch.

2006-05-07T19:43:00.000-05:00

Old news by now, certainly, but Scary Go Round has once again switched to hand-drawn art (the first switch having happened in August '05, and the eventual return to vector art taking place in November '05).

When this, the second switch, occured, I was disappointed, as the current storyline revolved around a return to the "Land of the Dead", which is the SGR version of the spirit realm, and was first introduced while Allison was using Illustrator to make comics. Because of the vector art, Allison pulled off some pretty amazing effects and visuals. Knowing that because he'd be using traditional pen and ink to illustrate the same "trippy" Land of the Dead this time around, he wouldn't be able to use the same finesse.

Of course, that's probably the exact reason he's switched to pen and ink. At first I thought it to be John Allison growing sick of vector art once more, which was the reason for the first switch (he further describes the reason for the first switch in its corresponding August '05 SGR Blog post. Considering the second switch occured after a week of guest comics, a typical sign of webcomic artist/creator burnout, it seemed as though Allison was simply sick of creating comics by computer, and wanted to return to drawing the art by hand out of sheer desperation to keep the desire for making comics going. However, in looking at the storyline, the second switch takes place when the character planning to visit the Land of the Dead "dies," and Allison is using the difference in art to illustrate the transition between realms, just like how the Green Avenger used nonpolished pencils to illustrate the separation between consciousness and dreaming. Not only that, but Allison's most likely using hand-drawn art to do new things, as to use Illustrator would be retreading the same territory; by using pen and ink, he's essentially forcing himself to innovate.

2006-03-17T13:52:00.000-05:00

Kurtz is really trying his hand at storylines lately, and he's very self-conscious about it. The previous story involved the cast of PvP traveling back in time to Medieval days and meeting the cast of Kurtz's older strip, "Tales By Tavernlight." I enjoyed it immensely, but he wrapped it up quicker than it took to set everything out in front of the audience; it was over before it really even started. I thought that was simply how he wrote it, but his newsposts say otherwise:

"I don't think I've ever done a story arc that lasted a whole month before. I really had high hopes for it, and I think that ultimately I fell short.

I wanted to re-introduce everyone to the gang from "Tales by Tavernlight" because I'm going to be making new stories with these characters as a backup feature in the PvP comic book starting with issue 26 (I think). Paul Southworth is going to be handling the art chores on these shorts. So I kind of had the characters on my mind.

I started to panic when I realized this thing had been going so long and ended it a little quicker than I had hoped. I wanted to reveal that it was Sam who turned everyone in to the templars, and not Binwin. Sam was too jealous about Brent's new bardic abilities.

I also had a strip where Maximillion could not see the Delorean. Because like Max of the future, he can't see anything based in fantasy. And back in medieval times, technology is fantasy.

Meh. Anyway...I hope this thing wasn't too boring."

Boring? Considering Kurtz's one-month storyline would've taken a 1x a week comic an entire year to finish (and there are comics that accomplish the same in that amount of time), for a 7x a week schedule, it's hard to be bored by a storyline. It's a real shame Kurtz didn't finish it the way he wanted to... that decision is already starting to surface in later newsposts (emboldened is the important part):

"I've avoided making posts about this because I hate explaining strips. I hate explaining jokes and concepts. They come across better on their own merits than if you try to explain it out. But people are sending emails. I got three phone calls today. So I'm obviously doing a poor job of getting this across clearly. It's time for me to try to clarify

First things first: Skull is real. He's not imaginary or a figment of the PvP staff's collective imagination. He's a real troll that's been around for 500 some odd years. He used to know Sam and Moe and the guys back in Medieval times. And now in 2006, he knows he staff of PvP.

Other people besides the staff of PvP magazine can see Skull. I always enjoy playing with what people THINK Skull is. People have mistaken him for a gorilla and a dog in past strips. But people can see him, with varying reactions. When Skull was on jury duty, everyone in the courtroom could see him.

Max can NOT see Skull. He can not see Skull because Max is all about Max, and the idea of a big troll just doesn't fit into his world. His brain just blocks Skull out because taking that in would mean accepting a reality beyond his narcissism I guess. But Skull is there. Skull could punch Max in the face and Max would probably feel it. There are a lot of "ifs" and "buts" about the whole thing that would be fun to explore in the strip in the future.

So Max can smell Skull's fart in the coop because he came into that smell outside the context of Skull. If Skull walked up to Max and farted, he probably wouldn't smell it. He might pass out from it and never know why. Because his brain is blocking it all out. I dunno. Again, that's the fun of writing PvP. I have to deal with those situations when I write myself in that particular corner.

Sonya, Max's sister, is the OPPOSITE of Max. She is so good hearted and cares so little about her own interests, that she can't see bad things about people. She can't see the outer shell of Skull. She is oblivious to the fact that he's not a person, but instead a big fat blue troll. She only see's what's in his heart.

If I had not chickened out of the time travel storyline, I was going to show that Max of the past could not see the Delorean. Because in Medieval times, technology is fantasy. So Max back then would never be able to see an ipod or a delorean. But I never got to that.

I hope I didn't ruin things more by trying to explain things out."

I should mention that the Time Traveling storyline happened first, and the Troll Fart story happened afterwards, and the previous reproduced newsposts correspond accordingly; the e-mails and phone calls Kurtz mentioned receiving occured during the Troll Fart storyline, which leads me to wonder if he received any similar sort of feedback mid-Time-Traveling-storyline, which may have been the reason he ended it so suddenly?

Despite the several e-mails and phone calls, I'd wager that those confused are in such a small minority that Kurtz might as well forget about them entirely. Then again, that would only fly if he was doing PvP for himself... with money worked into the picture, he practically has to worry about the minority. For Kurtz to subsist on wages earned from PvP, it has to make the most moolah; to do that it has to be accessible to everyone. What if those left scratching their heads are also the ones who open their wallets for PvP merch? Well, then Kurtz is in a jam.

Kurtz's concern is understandable, but I think it's a paranoia that's costing him good stories and solid pacing. With him ending the "Back in time" storyline prematurely because of fear of reader boredom, who knows how that attitude will affect PvP in the future? What if this attitude popped up in the middle of Jade's pregnancy scare storyline? When it first began, I thought it was simply going to be about anxieties about becoming a father; instead, the storyline delved into far deeper territory, asking questions about what it's like to be a father, and how it affects your life and the relationships you take for granted. What if instead of following through, Kurtz instead opted to place a quick cap on events, worried that the subject matter was over the audience's heads, and get back to throwaway gag humor which is also undoubtedly the most accessible?

2006-03-05T10:25:00.000-05:00

I'm doing an internet radio show! It's called Sequential Segue, and you can find more information about it over here.

2006-02-07T00:58:00.000-05:00

Penny-Arcade's anxiety over creating a strip worth $20,000, which is the amount of money someone paid at a 2006 Child's Play auction to be in a Penny-Arcade comic, is understandable. However, for that much money... couldn't Penny-Arcade have given that person a line or two? Or hell, maybe let them have have the punchline? They only paid, gee, twenty-thousand dollars. If I donated that much I'd expect to my representative character's facial expression to at least change noticeably within the strip:

This isn't the first time Penny Arcade's dropped the ball on a charity "be in a Penny-Arcade strip" comic... nearly the same time last year, Penny-Arcade released this comic, which was the result of a local Star Wars group pooling their money (1,200 dollars) at the Child's Play auction for 2004. And, as a result, Penny-Arcade released a single-paneled talking-head strip, with Gabe and Tycho doing all the talking. The people who donated the money? They got to stand in a single-file line, smiling at nothing, wearing the same easily-drawn stormtrooper outfit (with the exception of one Jedi). Every standee has the same smirk on their face... except this guy:

I can only imagine him to be thinking, "$120 for this?!". Penny Arcade may have well just called the category "Your Face Here."

I do see how Penny-Arcade could be reluctant in giving the philanthropist(s) dialogue or action in the comic... placing words in their mouth or making them do something they, in real life, might never do could possibly cause a conflict, and be a sore stain on the purpose of Child's Play. Even still, if it were me, I'd like to think that my presence in a PA comic would not detract from the normal humor I'd come to enjoy and respect, affecting the quality of the strip simply because I had to be in it.

On the other side of the fence, If someone donated $20,000 to a charity for me to put them in the strip, I would have them steal the goddamn show. I would show my appreciation for their generosity by really trying to be innovative, making a strip that would be memorable and give the benefactor the spotlight, as opposed to simply placing their caricature in an atypical setup and have the typical main characters pussyfoot around the joke.

I know it's for the benefit of kids across America, and that the charity should be the focus... but I didn't even donate the money and I feel cheated.

2006-01-28T15:07:00.000-05:00

Joe and Monkey has a book out, and even has a foreword by the author/artist of Medium Large (which Zach Miller, the creator/author/artist of JaM calls "basically the most flattering thing ever written about Joe and Monkey"), which I find pretty impressive. However, I think JaM's humor has sort of pewtered out. In the beginning the strips had an unspoken sense of ludicrity behind them, placing the characters in absurd situations without a second thought, whereas now the characters feel as though they're in a rut, each having the same general set up, and the same general ending.

What made Joe and Monkey so excellent and exciting when it first appeared was the presence of "Kleptobot." Not neccesarily the character himself, but the ideas that went into his character and the essence he encompassed. Kleptobot was a robot who stole things. That's it. But the idea of such a creation- a robot constantly trying to thwart the heroes, Joe and Monkey, into stealing their money or possessions, added such an absolutely absurd dynamic to the strip that the result was comics that seemed to be operating on an entirely different plane of thought; each comic was like you missed the beginning of the story, but you could gather enough of what was happening to enjoy it all the same- even more so, as not knowing the beginning made it that much more of a challenge to interpret, and that much more rewarding when you figured it out.

If you read the first five strips, and the last five strips, it feels... different, doesn't it? It doesn't have the same voice. I wouldn't go as far to say it has lost it's voice, but certainly... the voice has changed.

It seems that as strips pressed on, Joe and Monkey degenrated from the idea of Joe and Monkey, delivery partners in a strange world of thieving robots and tangent thoughts, to pop culture commentary, all the while becoming more and more inwardly focused on Joe, with subplots dealing with his family and living situations. I find this change striking and most disheartening- Joe and Monkey was a breath of fresh air in the typically stale world of webcomics. But to see Joe insulting someone as specific and dated as Kevin Federline- the same Joe who at the beginning of his "career" delivered Kleptopbot into an unsuspecting Cleveland- is downright depressing.

That's it, isn't it? Pop culture commentary comes a definite shelf-life.... with J&M giving such punchlines, eventually, it's humor will only be as funny as it is nostalgic. However, hang-gliding robots with ambiguous intentions are timeless.

The very first post of Joe and Monkey explains it all:

JaM of course appeared first in my previous (and somewhat current, though not so much) comic, No Pants Tuesday. In them I found a formula for funny that 70's television had already discovered. That being, Monkey + Delivery Boy = laughs. However, this was never enough to motivate me to create more JaM comics. That took a 4 am ride home from Perkin's.

See, I had been planning on making JaM with Nothing Nice To Say's Mitch Clem. But we had never gotten it off the ground, and basically scrapped the idea. One night we were hanging out at Perkin's, shooting the shit and generally enjoying ourselves. Before we knew it the sun was about to peak it's shiny skull over the horizon and we were getting mighty tired, even after several cups of coffee and soda. Anyhoo, we hopped in Mitch's Civic and started making our way back to the ol' neighborhood when we began talking about Joe and Monkey. Somewhere along the line Mitch had a cosmic breakthrough and came up with a name, Kleptobot.

Oh man, you have no idea how hard we laughed at that name. It was the kind of funny that you only get on the highway at 4 am after dining at Perkins. We immediately began coming up with situations to put Joe, Monkey and Kleptobot in. After creating about five of these situations we decided that there was no way in HELL that we weren't going to make this comic. We decided that we would both make a comic a week, and post them on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and that's how it would be. But that's not how it turned out.

The long short of it is this: I created the design of Kleptobot, roughly referencing Futurama's Bender, Diesel Sweeties' Red Robot, and Black Hole's Maximillian, and we were off. While Mitch was creating some great comics (about nine in total) I began out-producing him and soon had 26 to his 9. That meant I didn't have to do anything for a half a year. Well, I wasn't about to do nothing for that long, so I began making more, and more, and more. At the same time Mitch began work on the Coffee Achievers, a spinoff of NN2S (and a fairly brilliant one at that) and we both decided that it would be best if I just took over JaM completely. So I took over, continued hammering out comics, and decided that the best way to show them would be seven days a week. That way my impatience would be kind of quelled, and you, the reader, would get a dose of Joe and Monkey every single day.

So here we are now, months after Kleptobot came into being, the original art style will change, as you can see from looking at the first comic I produced and the top banner, but the formula is still the same. Monkey + Delivery Boy + Evil Robot = COMEDY GOLD.

JaM owes it's very existence to Kleptobot. Although the name of the show may be "Joe and Monkey," Kleptobot is irrevocably part of the holy trinity that made it so amazingly unique and different in the first place; forgetting his essence resigns the comic to repetitive tedium, only holding small glimmers of originality that were so abundant in the beginning.

2006-01-04T22:49:00.000-05:00

Latest VG Cats strip: Comic #180.

Latest VG Cats strip's accompanying newspost:

"Alternative title "Sad hobo in the snow", only kidding Fred. No joke this week just a character send off. Unless you find homless freezing to death funny. I hear they pee to keep warm. Ha-ha, incontinence."

It's a "character send off"? The hobo character is certainly dead by the end of Comic #180... by "character send off," does Ramsoomair mean that the Hobo is dead for good?

VG Cats is absolutely a humor comic. Prior to #180, there has never been an attempt to cross over into any other genre. Why does Ramsoomair feel the need to kill off a character? True, the "Dr. Hobo" character hasn't been used for about 43 comics, but even still... with neither character development nor insight backing him, the emotional punch of what would otherwise be a very meaningful, well-crafted farewell is lost. What's the point of devoting all that effort to a minor, rather pointless character in a comic whose humor mainly consists of shallow, disposable punchlines?

2005-12-31T23:27:00.000-05:00

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!"

2005-12-17T12:01:00.000-05:00

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.

2005-12-14T02:43:00.000-05:00

"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.

2005-12-11T15:12:00.000-05:00

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.

2005-12-04T16:11:00.000-05:00

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.

2005-11-29T10:04:00.000-05:00

I interviewed Nicholas Killewald, and you can read it on the Webcomics Press website!

I suppose the interview is a bit long, but that's because I have never been satisfied by short interviews. They always feel like just when they're starting to ask the interesting questions, the interview ends.

2005-11-20T09:49:00.000-05:00

I’m getting mighty sick of Butternut Squash posting their news where the comic is supposed to go. Yes, we get it. You don’t have a comic for today. Fine. But if you’re going to post as to why the comic is late, don’t take away the current comic from the main page, to be replaced with text. Even an old comic is more visually stimulating and less disappointing than textually proclaiming the lack of new update, and making sure we're crystal-clear as to why you haven't delivered. Making the newspost where the comic is supposed to go projects the creators as overly-apologetic for the lack of new comic.

Not only that! Listen to this part of the “newsnoncomic”:

“once again a new guest strip has arrived in our inbox from a lovely fan wanting to lend a hand - check out her contribution amongst others in the bns gallery!”

And! And then! Listen to their actual (2nd) newspost!

“some lovely fans have decided to pitch in due to the lack of updates - check out a guest strip and fan art in the bns gallery!”

For god’s sake, put the guest comics up on the main page, instead of that stupid “newsnoncomic”! Do you not understand what a guest comic even is? It’s a comic… by a guest. Meaning! The whole point of its existence is to be shown to your audience, as though it were a normal strip! The guest comics aren’t doing any good for you if they’re just collecting dust in your out-of-the-way “bns gallery”!

When people show up to your site, and especially to the page where a comic is usually posted, text is nothing more than a let-down disappointment. I can’t understand BNS's logic in redirecting people to their guest comics, which they even cite as a means of keeping the comic afloat.

Of course, then again... look at some of the guest comics in their “bns gallery.” Yeah, I’d be hesitant about putting some of those up, come to think of it.

Ohhh, lord, and there's a CTRL-V comic in there. Don't even get me started.

...

If you make a CTRL-V comic, kill yourself. I'm absolutely serious.

Something new and better

2005-11-19T09:33:00.000-05:00

I do believe I've abandoned Livejournal altogether for my webcomic-talking purposes, though you can still go back and view my previous entries. I'm thinking of copying and pasting them into blog posts, but I don't know. We'll see.

Anyway, to start things off right, here's a comic that caught my attention on OnlineComics.net: Sawlogs, by Rick Smith.

Here's the premise of the strip, as it appeared on it's OC.net entry:

"Sawlogs is a comic journal of my dream life. I have been keeping a dream journal off and on for the last fifteen years - here are some of the dreams in comic format."

I myself kept a dream journal up until... 8th grade, I believe, and let me tell you, that thing contained some weird stuff. Reading Sawlogs brings back a lot of memories. Each comic contains the feel of a dream, in that "things aren't making sense but just keep moving" sense that dreams seem to always have. A perfect example of what I mean, and most likely one of my favorite entries, is "Turning on a Buried Light Switch."

Probably one of the most interesting things about Sawlogs is how the top right corner of each comic contains a "Dream fact," which more often than not provides insight into the innerworkings of the comic it's attached to.

But, the comic does have it's drawbacks, most of which lie in the way in which it presents itself. Number one, it's not so much of a comic with an archive, but someone's blog page, with each post containing a hosted image, which just happens to be the comic. That, and the links to the full-sized comics don't always work, so it detracts from the frustrating experience that is going through the "archives" in the first place.

Although I do like it, I don't really get the sense that Sawlogs is a webcomic. Like I said previously, it just feels like someone's blog page, hosting their comics. Without a navigational system, with "forward" and "back" buttons and whatnot, to peruse the archive, it's hard to really get a feel for it. And without that, Sawlogs feels like nothing more than a flight of fancy, a comic without commitment.

He does have a book available through Cafépress, but I've never taken a Cafépress store seriously. And besides, the book only contains the newspost (text) entries. No comics. Where's the fun in that?

I'd suggest Keenspace or Drunk Duck (the latter being a last resort, anyway), but the comics wouldn't be the same without their accompanying newsposts. Otherwise, a website structured like Bigger Than Cheeses, with each strip entry maintaining it's respective newspost, would be the best sort of organizational system. But, seeing as to how he's hosting his comic on a blog, it seems likely he doesn't know PHP, let alone HTML coding in general.