Fill In the Blanks

I'm sure some of you have heard about "Blank Label Comics." Because I sure haven't.

Blank Label Comics is what 6 of the most mundane Keenspot cartoonists decided to leave and join up together called themselves. I've honestly never read any of their comics because they looked boring. Well okay, that's not true. I've been reading Checkerboard Nightmare since summer 2001, back when it was good.

Lately it has been selling out, though. Not in the traditional "Large-breasted, scantily clad women" kind of way, but it really has been less about making fun of webcomic fads and more about parodying the latest nerd pop culture item. For example, Straub recently did an arc parodying Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That's not why I read CxN. I read it to see Straub make fun of sprite comics or authorial self-insertions, or comics that sell out by introducing large-breasted, scantily clad women. I was kind of leery when Straub started coloring Checkerboard Nightmare, but "fuck it," I thought, and let it slide. And now Chex has been reduced to a cookie-cutter "zany" character with Lyle being the average straight man.

Straub also started a new comic just for Blank Label, something about a spaceship museum. Museum spaceship. I don't really know. It doesn't look very interesting.

Also under Blank Label's banner is Brad Guigar who draws Greystone Inn, a comic strip about a comic strip (or so I've been told). The character he chooses to use as a logo for his comic? A large grey looking thing. BOOOOOORRINNNNNNG. I'm not gonna click that.

Brad Guigar also has another comic featured on BLC, Courting Disaster. This comic is basically a bunch of immature sex jokes, or else its a bunch of very obscure sex jokes, which only three people get and these three people have to explain it to everyone else. Skirting Disaster also features a mug shot of brad down at the bottom, which shouldn't be associated with sex, otherwise everytime someone feels aroused, they'll picture his face and BAM! Impotency. Don't even go to Courting Danger.

Going down the list, next we have David Willis, who draws It's Walky!!!!! and Shortpacked: Comics for Tots!!!!. Willis must be really excited about his work, using all of those exclamation marks. The image link for his comics on BLC? An extremely indifferent-looking girl. Exciting. For all those exclamation marks, he picks the most bored looking character to represent his work? Real genius, that Willis. This is why I don't read his work. He did an April Fool's joke where he claimed his wife miscarried. Which isn't so much a clever prank as it is an elaborate, yet disgusting spin on an April Fool's joke like:
"Hey my brother died."
"Oh, I'm sorry, you have my condolences"
"HAHA NOT REALLY APRIL FOOL'S SUCKER"
I also hear Willis has a tendency to date his fans. That's kind of creepy.

Next on the Blank Label label is Paul Taylor. He, unlike the other Blank Label cartoonists, only draws one comic, Wapsi Square, a comic about large-breasted, scantily clad women. I tried to read this comic once, but I felt silly when I realized the protagonist was 60% boob. I dunno, I just got this whole "Cathy meets Buckles" vibe from it. Twenty-somethings, single women, blah blah blah blah blah.

Moving along, we can see Paul Southworth's contributions in Ugly Hill and Krazy Larry. Unlike the rest of these, I'm actually kind of maybe interested in reading these. But not so interested that I actually DO read them. It's in the "maybe when I'm extremely bored" column. The problem with this is that if I ever have Internet access, I will have access to loads of content capable of entertaining me, so I won't be bored enough to read this junk. I'm not exactly inclined to read comics about ugly or crazy people, being neither of these myself.

Last, we have Steve Troop's Melonpool, which, as far as I could tell from the old Keenspot newsboxes I saw about it, is basically a space version of Gilligan's Island. Like the rest of these comics, I've never read it, so I couldn't tell you what it's about. But the characters I've seen don't really look like they have a lot of character depth or breadth. Like little blips on a radar screen, they can usually be taken down with one or two Patriot missiles. And I certainly don't want to read a comic about characters who only have one facet.

Seperately, these 6 artists would have barely retained enough readers from leaving Keenspot to bore a couple thousand people each. But when they combine their resources, they can mundanely bore each other's fans, too, raising the total number of bored fans exponentially. And the features seen on the BLC main page? Boring. Next time I need to be bored out of my mind to out-bore someone in a boring contest, I know where to go.

Blank Label Comics: Your One-Stop Shop for Mundane, Droll, Uninteresting Comics!