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My Recent Posts · (09/21/07

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Your Webcomic is Bad and You Should Feel Bad

This has already been referred to a couple of times elsewhere on the board, but it could have its own topic.

It's a blog that finds bad webcomics, and explains why they are bad.

And holy crap are they bad. He covered the well-known CTRL ALT DEL and VGCats, but I don't even know how he managed to find some shit that's as bad as he's found.

My Recent Posts · (09/21/07

Good, the internet needs a voice like this to be widely recognized.

My Recent Posts · (09/21/07

preach it brotha!
TESTIFY

My Recent Posts · (09/21/07

He hasn't done Hobbes favorite, Questionable Content, yet, though.

But even that doesn't seem nearly as bad as that Shredded Moose, Hookie Dookie Panic, Single Asian Female... I never would have imagined stuff that bad existed.

He also covered Sluggly Freelance. I don't know if anyone remembers this, but I'm pretty sure Miyamotolover was always proselytizing for that strip. I gave him the benefit of a doubt and checked it out, but ... My reaction was something like, "Why is this even called Sluggy Freelance? Why is there so much text? What is supposed to be going on? Why is it not funny?"

Apparently, it's one of those strips that requires a ridiculous amount of commitment from the reader -- forgot about it if you're not willing to read hundreds of strips from the very beginning -- for little pay-off. That was my impression from it, but this guy actually forced himself through some of it to report that back to the rest of us: "It's not like the "New Viewer's Guide" is anything but "well, just read the archives" peppered with quotes about how good Sluggy Freelance supposedly is."

My Recent Posts · (09/21/07

Crawl and 1OOO wrote:
I don't even know how he managed to find some shit that's as bad as he's found.

Some people in the comments recommend him stuff. Now, how THEY found out about it is another question.

I wonder why nobody has mentioned how much Dominic Deegan looks like an animized Harry Potter.

My Recent Posts · (09/22/07

He hasn't done Hobbes favorite, Questionable Content, yet, though.

Honestly, I'd be okay with him never getting to it at all. It almost seems good compared to some of the fish he's frying.

My vote for worst webcomic is one I wouldn't know about if I didn't go to High School with the guy who writes it, he pretty much begs me to look at it whenever I'm unfortunate enough to end up in a conversation with him (which hasn't happened in a long while, thank god). I would be tempted to submit it to this blog except that it's mostly unknown and I think it's best it stays that way, even if all the attention it gets is negative.

I won't subject you guys to it, either. Looking at it is really just a waste of time.

My Recent Posts · (09/22/07

What I think is hilarious are the number of people in the comments who are prudish about his cursing.

It's like...grow up!

My Recent Posts · (09/22/07

I don't get Bob and George. The guy wants to start a webcomic, but apparently he has no ideas for a webcomic, so the first few strips are, "Hi, the comic isn't ready yet." WTF?? Aren't you supposed to FIRST have ideas and jokes for a comic, and make some comics, THEN post the comic online?

FO said that it'd be like if you bought a CD, and track 1 was just the band saying, "Uh, sorry. There was supposed to be a song here, but we hadn't written one. Maybe there will be a song by track 2. Or if not, I dunno, maybe by track 3 or 4."

Another thing about humor is, It never hurts to add a joke to something. If you want something to be funny, go ahead, add a joke!

I think people get the idea that NOT adding jokes to comedy is some avant garde, clever, extra funny thing. It's not. It's not creative at all. They've been around forever. The most famous joke in the world is an anti-joke. (Why did the chicken cross the road?) The thing is, they're not funny.

My Recent Posts · (09/22/07

Bob & George is the only one of the comics reviewed on that site that's made me laugh so far. I wouldn't say it's gutsplitting hilarious, but I do find parts of it amusing. There are a few things about it:

- The Mega Man comics are definitely better than the "original" comics. The "original" comics scream, "I wanted to make a webcomic, but had absolutely no ideas for one." Don't get me wrong. In the right context, I can find self-depreciating humor funny (like when Conan O'Brien makes fun of sketches that go awry or how cheap their props are), but usually there's more to it than just "I'm sorry, but there are no jokes here."

- It helps to read a handful of them at a time. Out-of-context, I didn't find that "refrigerator" joke funny at all, but when I went back and read from the beginning and it was one in a long string of jokes, it seemed a little funnier then.

- You might just need to have the right sense of humor to find certain things funny. It seems the writers in that blog really hate self-insertion jokes, and admittedly there are times when it's abused, annoying and/or intrusive, but there are times when I have gotten a laugh out of them, too.

- Some of the strips would be funnier if they'd get to the point sooner. I mean, I can almost imagine thinking it's funny that everyone wants out of the comic, so they're going to kill the Author to end it, but that particular strip takes way too many panels and too much dialogue to get it over with.

My Recent Posts · (09/22/07

i wonder if it rates sexploitation webcomics. how can any one hate sexploitation, unless it comes with viruses and herpes?

My Recent Posts · (09/22/07

Well, okay, Single Asian Female made me laugh, too, but for the wrong reasons.

When I looked at the first SAF comic he linked to, I thought that it couldn't be for real and that it was probably taken out of context - It's possible to have a character who thinks the way she does but without actually believing in it yourself. Other people in the blog comments thought the same thing, but after looking at the rest of the comic, the whole thing is like that. It's vaguely like the Law Toons in the sense that it would seem too off-the-wall to be meant to be taken seriously, but apparently, it is.

My Recent Posts · (09/23/07

One of the criticisms I've noticed that blog getting is, "You must secretly like those webcomics, otherwise you wouldn't be reading them." That reminds me of those videogame arguments that go, "You must really like that game if you played all the way through it."

That also reminded me of something weird about that blog that was criticizing webcomics for being anti-feminist: One time he posted a single comic strip (from what webcomic, I don't know) in which a guy is at his computer reading webcomics and complaing about how bad they are. Then in the last panel, somehow he admits to secretly liking them after all.

The problem is that it was posted to the blog with absolutely no commentary, so I have no idea why it was posted. Even before I ran into trouble at that site, I thought it was strange. It seemed to imply that:

Everyone who's ever criticized a webcomic secretly likes it. It couldn't possibly be because that's how they really feel about it, I mean, if they're reading it, they MUST like it. Not only does that argument fall apart for all the obvious reasons, but another problem with it is that you don't have to be intentionally searching out webcomics to eventually be exposed to them. There are millions of ways it can happen - if one is posted to a site or blog (just like that one), or to a message board post, or sent to you in an email (I get them at work sometimes!). But if you don't find it funny and comment on why, it means you secretly liked it? WTF?

But wait! He's criticized webcomics, too! So by posting that comic is he admitting that each time he criticizes one, he secretly likes it? Or does he think he's special and he's the only one who's ever criticized a comic without liking it? Or did he post it ironically, believing that the comic and its message were stupid? Without any commentary or explanation as to why it was posted, I don't know.

My Recent Posts · (09/23/07

It's an argument for retards. At this point, I don't even think it's worth rebutting. (Much like Hypershadwo)

My Recent Posts · (09/23/07

Who the fuck wants to read all this shit?

The person who writes that comic is also a complete lunatic:

Solomon is hiding because he is a coward who enjoys belittling other people from behind a safe veil of invisibility. His is like many sites on the internet, who mock and insult while lacking any courage to own their own words. In public, these cowards would not dare to say the same things, because they know full well that someone just might come after them, knock their yapping blocks off, or in a worst case scenario, go to their house one night and kill them.

My Recent Posts · (09/23/07

Yeah, that argument annoys me, too. I've had it used against me, and the greatest part is that it was used by someone who was also posting under a pseudonym. Sort of like that time I got told at the Game Pond that I had an "enormous ego problem" by someone who self-admitted that he wanted the entire community to revolve around him.

It's also a very "noobish" argument. No one in the early days of the internet complained about that, and everyone back then was smart enough to know why. But "Internet 2.0" has created an influx of morons who do nothing but post in blogs and/or on message boards, and couldn't make a real website if they put all 3 million of their hive minds together, let alone a good website, and yet they feel they're entitled to define the rules of the internet.

Other observations:

Some of the webcomic artists who have been called out for ripping off the art styles of Penny Arcade and Ctrl+Alt+Del defend themselves by saying, "I've always drawn like that. If you looked through my old sketch pads, you'd see that it's true."

Dude! Then prove it. Just scan some of your old sketch pads and put them up! Also, I wouldn't have as big a problem with the "it's not bad art, it's a STYLE" defense if it weren't for the fact that they all use nearly the same exact style! When it's first used, it's a style, after that it becomes a trend (or a cliche, as Crawl calls it.)

Another thing I found out indirectly through that blog is that Ctrl+Alt+Del is a commonly-hated webcomic. It's really strange. It's like Maddox in that everywhere you look that it's mentioned everyone claims to hate it, yet somehow it's still extremely popular.

My Recent Posts · (09/23/07

Another thing about the "If you read through all the strips, you must like it!" arguement is that if the critic didn't read through all the strips, those same people would say "You can't judge the comic if you haven't read all the strips!"

Again, like how in video games, people will say something like "You can't judge LEGO Star Wars until you've found and unlocked everything!" or "You can't call Yoshi's Story the easiest game ever until you've found all the Melons and collected all the coins!"

I think Crawl mentioned this in that "Favorite Comebacks" topic. Here it is.

My Recent Posts · (09/23/07

Even if they've always DRAWN that way, that still doesn't mean they need to use Photoshop the same way to make the final product look finished. I think it's the final sheen on those strips that makes them look the same more than the line style or whatever. There ARE other webcomics out there that don't have that Penny Arcade sheen.

On the subject of facial expressions, which has come up before, I think this comic is a better example of using facial expressions well:

The facial expressions in that strip are very subtle. I mean, they have to be: The gangsters in frame 2 can't let out what they're really thinking. But they're still clear. And the other good thing about the facial expressions is that it ties into the joke. The look on the characters' faces is as big a clue as anything as to what's going on in and the joke of that strip. The Gun-Tron strip is another one where a look on a character's face is the clue that lets you "get it".

My Recent Posts · (09/23/07

Crawl and 1OOO wrote:
It's an argument for retards. At this point, I don't even think it's worth rebutting. (Much like Hypershadwo)

I sometimes think a good slogan for this forum would be, "If you have an opinion, chances are, we've already debunked it."

My Recent Posts · (09/23/07

He also covered Sluggy Freelance.

The other thing about Sluggy Freelance is that it's impossible for me to think about it without subconsciously calling it "Sluggy the Unshaven".

My Recent Posts · (09/23/07

I accidentally called it "Sluggy Unshaven" earlier today.

A webcomic some people who were mistreated by Tim Buckley (of CAD) created to make fun of him:

http://www.hockeyzombie.com/assbathcomic/daily.php?date=040101

It's mostly strips of him smiling at his reflection in things.

My Recent Posts · (09/23/07

Flying Omelette wrote:
I accidentally called it "Sluggy Unshaven" earlier today.

A webcomic some people who were mistreated by Tim Buckley (of CAD) created to make fun of him:

http://www.hockeyzombie.com/assbathcomic/daily.php?date=040101

It's mostly strips of him smiling at his reflection in things.

Hey, if you guys want to check out the comic I was talking about earlier, it would appear the guy took out a giant ad for it on the right side of this webpage.

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Your Webcomic is Bad and You Should Feel Bad

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