The Year In Review: Best... Worsts of 2008

It's hard to believe I'm still posting on this stupid blog about terrible webcomics. I had originally planned on losing interest sometime around October, but unfortunately I had by then accrued a list of comics to review that was longer than my list of known aliases. So I kept reading awful webcomics and writing down my less-than-professional opinions, and before I knew it, it was the end of the year. I decided that I should make a top 10 list of the worst comics reviewed on anti-snark this year, but after I realized I had only been reviewing for half a year, I shortened it to the top 5. What follows are not just the worst comics, but also the worst responses to my reviews, as well as the worst interview subjects of the multitudes I had interviewed. So without further ado, here are the 5 Best Worsts of 2008.

5. Hijinks Ensue
I don't recall when I first found Hijinks Ensue, but I do remember that my inital reaction was basically "Oh look a ripoff of Movie Comics." After reading more, though, I realized that I had been far too generous. The jokes revolved around moronic television shows and idiotic films, and consisted entirely of nerdwankery.

Visually, it reeks of unoriginality and shameless copying of character designs from more popular webcomics. While this is a common occurrence among terrible artists, usually it isn't so poorly done that you start feeling bad for the ripped off. Whoever said "Imitation is the greatest form of flattery" never experienced the insult that is being imitated by Joel Watson and his rusty, mechanical drawing hand. Perhaps if Watson had a life that didn't consist of sitting on his butt watching television and movies, he'd learn how to give more life and originality to his drawings, but the chances of that (like the chances of Steve Jobs creating something that nerds won't blindly purchase) is slim to none.

The art managed to be utterly reprehensible, despite the fact that the cartoonist uses a Cintiq tablet. There's a reason for this, of course. A great tablet will not make anyone a better artist, no matter how expensive/Mac-friendly it is. Joel Watson is one of the greatest offenders of the "Tools Make the Artist" crowd, which is why Hijinks Ensue receives the award of "Worst Application of a Cintiq Tablet" and is #5 of our list of 2008's Best Worsts.

4. Dead Winter
After four weeks of reviews, I wanted to try something new, so I asked Dave Shabet of Dead Winter if he would bless me with an interview about his terrible zombie webcomic. As I recall, his exact words were "get away from me you skeevy pervert." I tried for over an hour to change his mind but in the end, he wasn't going to budge. I had sunk so many resources into the interview questions, that cancelling it would have meant the end of Anti-Snark, so I came up with a bold solution.

Since Dave Shabet was too good to answer a few questions, I decided that I would answer them as though I were him. I tried to give readers what I felt was an accurate representation of Shabet and his work, but about halfway through answering my own questions I remembered that I had no readers so I felt pressured to jazz the interview up a little bit. The result was an inconsistent personality that I had created for him, and the whole thing was really unbelievable. This is why I have decided to present Dead Winter with the award for "Worst Interview" and placed it fourth in 2008's Best Worsts.

3. Bizarre Uprising
I had added this amalgam of retarded anime tropes and terrible plots to my expanding queue of cannon fodder sometime in September, but every time I looked at it, I decided it wasn't atrocious enough for me to review at that time. When I finally forced myself to take a shot at it, I hoped merely for an underwhelming article as a result. After prodding through the archives, however, I was amazed at how astonishing, how truly horrendous, how utterly ridiculous the plot truly was.

Here's a synopsis: A teenage boy finds out he has magic vampire powers, and begins training with some off-the-wall school mascot that is a pig or something. He gets into fights with people far more experienced than he, only to defeat them because he believes in the heart of the cards or some equally tropish anime facet of his personality. Girls begin to swoon over him for no reason other than he's the artist's fantasy-insert, and even goes so far as to turn a lesbian straight. After one of his ex-girlfriends is shot from 100 yards with a pistol and killed, we find out that the mascot vampire trainer is actually the main character's dad and also that he is the king of vampires. We also learn that Jesus Christ (our one Lord and Savior) is a vampire, and he begat all the other vampires. Meanwhile, the protagonist's best friend seduces the hero's unusually hot and not-at-all parental mother (I'm sensing some disgusting incest fantasy by the artist) AND his girlfriend, then cries foul as he is unconvincingly male-raped. This male-rape subplot extends for nigh on 5 years before it finally concludes unsatisfactorily. The hero does some boring crap that is not even interesting in the slightest, and the reader is left wondering if he missed something in the middle or if the writer simply failed to include some quantity of important details (hint: it's the latter, and that quantity is in the triple-digits).

Needless to say, if you love reading terrible webcomics just to gaze at the ensuing train wreck, none other will satisfy you better than Bizarre Uprising. I only wish I had reviewed it earlier in the year, so I could hope to see some troubled reaction by the creators, who feel it acceptable to only produce one page per week, despite the troubled writing and the sloppy, amateurish artwork. Bizarre Uprising recieves the title of "Worst Webcomic of 2008" and ranks third among our list of the 5 Best Worsts of 2008.

2. Webcomics Beacon
During the month of September, I reviewed the Webcomics Beacon, a terrible podcast about webcomics, as well as the webcomics done by the hosts of the podcast, in order to illustrate that these people should not be doling out advice about webcomics. Shortly after, one of the hosts noticed the review of his comic and decided to take offense, posting predictable rants about how he couldn't believe anyone would spend their time being negative towards webcomics. It's just inconceivable that anyone who enjoys reading these pieces of trash would rather point out the negatives rather than the positives!

I figured he'd quit there, but to my surprise he continued his tirade on the actual podcast itself. He refused to link the big bad review and didn't even give the name of the website, because he didn't want any of his five listeners to give any pageviews to me, since I make so much money off a single page view. I never figured anyone would take my amateurish scrawlings so seriously, so I was quite surprised when I heard what ol' Fesworks had to say. Essentially, he is upset that anyone would bother giving a negative opinion of his work, since he's clearly just a hobbyist and not a professional, and how he gets upset when people are giving professional comic advice, which is not so useful to those who comic for the hobby of it. Of course, this is just code speak for "I want to draw comics but I don't want to put any effort into getting better at it!" Any real hobbyist would still want to put effort into improving his skills so that he could get better.

By devoting so much attention to what was really just a half-hearted negative review of his webcomic and podcast, Fesworks and the Webcomics Beacon crew have earned the title of "Worst Tantrum of 2008" and secured second place in our list of 2008's Best Worsts.

1. The Floating Lightbulb
Our number one spot on the list of worsts goes to the blog that inspired me to return to Anti-snark in the first place. The Floating Lightbulb is a webcomic blog that updates nearly daily, where cartoonist Ben Gordon attempts to give advice to budding cartoonists, thereby elevating himself in the arena of webcomics. Unfortunately, his advice is generally not backed by anyone's experience, and is inspired solely by Gordon's perception of what cartoonists should be doing, rather than anything that might actually work. Gordon is fuelled by his massive ego, tenuous grasp on reality, and fragile self-image.

Often posting lengthy diatribes about websites that do the same thing as one of his many other websites, claiming redundancy and inefficiency, Ben Gordon is quick to write off the webcomics.com guys as some sort of evil corporate empire. Unfortunately what Gordon fails to realize is that his own attempts are shoddy, amateurish and unusable, and ANY attempt to do what he's done is automatically going to be better. Gordon clearly wants to be a webcomic bigwig, but until he can improve the quality of his writing, website organization and comic skills, the best he can do is inflate his standing by acting bigger than he really is. This is why Gordon has been awarded the "Worst Attempt at Being Relevant" and is our Best Worst of 2008.

I hope that reading this has been an adequate time-waster and helped you kill a few minutes. Let the staff of Anti-snark know of any terrible webcomics or webcomic-related sites that you know of, so we can continue to bring you the same hard-hitting journalism next year.

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Bizarre Uprising: Manga That's Just Not Good

You Have Entered Webcomic Hell (There is no Webcomic Heaven)

The great thing about the Internet is that it has afforded thousands of Japanophiles easy access to their beloved animes and mangas. Wait, did I say "great thing"? I meant "terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad thing." Most nerds and geeks these days have an unhealthy obsession with animes and mangas to the point where anything that does not come from Japan is utter trash. However this does not thwart their attempts at making their own "manga-style" comics. They will trace, copy and reference their favorite artists until they're blue in the face, but no matter how much they try, these amateur cartoonists will never gain a fraction of the skill utilized by their inspirations, which is already a pretty low bar most of the time. Occasionally, one of these Junior American Manga Artists will take their hobby past the point where most give up (6 pages), and wrongly consider themselves talented.

Bizarre Uprising (NWS for Nerdy Sex Vampires) is a terrible comic aimed at 14 year old boys who want to be Japanese. Plagued with Violence, Sex, Vampires, and the Inability to Expand a Plot Point Cohesively, it is the quintessential interpretation of Japanese mangas by American readers. The story follows a nerdy 16-year-old boy named Mitsu as he tries to make it through high school with his nerd friends, while somehow getting to bang all the girls he ever wants. Oh yeah, he's also a vampire who hates other vampires because they want to kill all humans and fights them a lot. This is certainly a new and fresh story that has certainly not been told anywhere before.

A V-V-V-V-V-VAMPIRE!

Although Mitsu serves as the primary author-insert, with his fancy vampire powers and ability to seduce lesbians, but his two friends work well as author-inserts, too. Mitsu's best friend is an overweight, virgin hypernerd who is more obsessed with his animes than actually learning how to talk to a girl. I'll give you a hint, it's not by doing this. The other friend is an ex-nerd turned hyper-sexy womanizer who has casual sex with every girl in the high school. His trainer is the school's mascot, some kind of bizarre pig thing, who turns out to be his father, who turns out to be the King of Vampires. Never mind how ridiculous that sounds, I merely ask, "Why a pig?" Well, this is clearly the influence of too many episodes of Invader Zim.

The writer for Bizarre Uprising needs some practice. A lot of it. He has a tendency to miss connecting crucial plot points. Most points are danced around, and when the action comes along, it's skipped as often as possible, resulting in a confusing and easily misunderstood plot thread. Fortunately it does not dwell on any point for too much time, dragging it out, but Bizarre Uprising fails to completely expand an event sufficiently, which is generally just as bad. Leaving your readers scratching their heads is hardly what I'd consider effective writing. With an update schedule as sparse as "once a week" you need to make sure that every update is used to its potential.

Artistically, Bizarre Uprising is bad (though not as bad as most of the other subjects I've covered, I only threw up a little bit). Character designs feel like the strange hybrids of Generic Anime, Jhonen Vasquez, and Walt Disney. All figures have a tendency to lean to the artist's right, which is indicative of a lack of structure, form, and refinement, and basically just means that the artist sketched everything out in an hour during gym class, and then inked during lunch. A little bit more effort in the pencilling phase could correct the skeletal disfigurement that leads them to "lean to the right." The characters are also often plastered with simple-minded expressions, that betray deeper emotions to simpler ones such as "worried" or "happy."

Revelation: I'm In A Terrible Webcomic

There are massive splash pages between "chapters" (if you can really call them that, since they lack a complete episodic event) which wouldn't be bad if they didn't force readers to wait an entire week for the chapter to start. Manga has a strong aversion to uniformity, and Bizarre Uprising mimics this fact quite readily. Characters spend more time off-model than on, and the artist has an odd habit of pointing out who he's ripping off when he does it. Added to the fact that practically every female character looks identical, the constant shifting of body shapes and proportions adds to the confusion created by the writer.

I mentioned earlier that the writer has a tendency to skip the action, but it may be due to the fact that the artist just can't DRAW action. There is a concept known as the line-of-action that provides a clear indication of the action in a panel, and is a concept that this amateur artist needs to comprehend. Currently, all the action seems to drift up and to the right, or down and to the left. Essentially, I get the impression that there is a giant vacuum menacing the city just slightly off panel, and it's sucking everybody towards it.

Bizarre Uprising is pretty terrible, obviously. The problem stems from its intense desire to copy the Ancient Japanese Style of Manga. But is the style at fault here? I can honestly say that it is not. After all, a style is just a style. The problem is trying to start with a style, and then adapting yourself to it. True style develops from standard practice. Style evolves naturally, and forcing yourself into one only stunts your growth. Hopefully, these manga-loving Japanophile children will learn that style does not dictate quality, but rather that quality is entirely independent of style. Problems occur when you start emulating a subsection of comics, simply because you like the "style" (and they get a lot worse when you fail to even grasp the concept of style).

Note: I realize the site is blocked by some browsers and security software because it is so bad that it qualifies as "malware." I'll provide a workaround for those of you who wish to see this terrible beast sometime this week.
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Dueling Analogs: Babbling Cintiqs

You Said It, Man

An artist should never blame his tools for his poor work. Accepting that personal shortcomings lead to a less-than-perfect product is the first step towards improving him or herself. Conversely, an artist should never expect his product to improve simply by acquiring some special tool. The Wacom Cintiq tablet is often lauded as the pinnacle of webcomic artistry. Many webcartoonists will needle their readers for donation money to "make the comic better!" Unfortunately, if your ideas are crap, there is no magical tool anywhere in the world that will make it enjoyable.

Dueling Analogs is, first and foremost, a gaming webcomic. We all know how trite and overused that concept is, but let's humor the creator, Steve Napierski, and review it like a real webcomic, shall we?

Artistically, Dueling Analogs is atrocious. Most characters are traced (or "referenced") from some piece of official art, and photoshopped around into some weird, jerky, awkward pose. Any original character designs look goofy, bizarre, or otherwise disfigured. And did you notice that all his slimmer character designs always wear turtlenecks? I guess Napierski just has no idea how to draw a proper neckline, so he just hides it with someone's fat head or anything else to disguise a character's neck.

You Need a Cintiq For This?

Of course the artist's skills don't really matter much when most of the comics aren't even being drawn. A large portion of Dueling Analogs's archive is comprised of these kinds of comics; pictures of consoles being copy/pasted into the comic and treated as actual characters. This is quite possibly the laziest thing a person could do in order to poke fun at how a console is being managed. Additionally, Napierski seems to have a strong inferiority complex, since he has a massive tendency to post strips where he apes another cartoonist's artistic style (unfortunately he still writes the same terrible jokes). There really is no humor in copying another's art, and it provides a poor substitute for actual skill, so why does Napierski insist on these ripoff strips? My only guess is that he is dissatisfied with his work and uses these strips to fantasize about being any cartoonist with more skill than he has. These two types of comics comprise about half of the Dueling Analogs archive

But the iniquity of Napierski's art is amplified by his audacity to ask for donations so he can purchase the aforementioned Cintiq tablet. Since nearly 75% of his art is traced and/or photoshopped, one wonders why he'd need a tablet at all. The air of desperation reeks around Steve Napierski, since he believes that this magical device will make him a better cartoonist. Sorry Steve, but the truth is, you'll only get better through hard work and practice (and this doesn't mean just making more terrible comics!). Take an art class or three, Steve, and maybe you can be just like your many heroes.

The key to writing a decent gaming comic is to remain unbiased. Poking fun at everyone will make it a lot easier for anyone to enjoy the comic (this goes for political comics too!). Napierski does a poor job of hiding his Sony Fanboyism, which makes him sound rather defensive or desperate in some strips. It also helps to have a unique viewpoint on the subject in order to avoid repeating a joke the reader has already heard before. This joke has been repeated in so many forms that it has officially gotten stale. Please stop rehashing it, guys. If you can't come up with an original joke (or at least one that's not quite so stale) then perhaps you should rethink your choice of hobby.

Ripping Off Penny-Arcade Just Makes You Look Like a Tool

Other times, it becomes very difficult to identify just what Napierski is trying to convey. His inability to properly write a joke thwarts even the simplest strips, reducing them from "terrible gag" to "incomprehensible mumbling". He also has problems making the dialog concise enough to fit inside the panel. Solution? Just add speech balloons OVER the panel. It's the internet, who's going to know? Well I'm going to tell all of you that this is a crappy, inelegant solution. It is better to trim your script down so that it will fit than to just cram the words in any way you can. Why? People aren't going to want to read a novel just to hear a single terrible joke.

Dueling Analogs has fought tooth and nail to be at the bottom rung of the Ladder of Gaming Webcomics. Napierski has succeeded in this endeavor by placing other Gamer Comics above his own, through the act of giving them special references in his own comic. Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but at the end of the day you're still just ripping someone off for easy hits. Besides, copying their work is not going to give you some grand insight into the deepest secrets of art. It's just going to make you look like a sleazy forger. The answer to self-improvement lies not in acquiring better tools, but learning how to use the tools you do have properly. As soon as Steve Napierski learns this basic fact, the his Analogs will finally be able to win a Duel.

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Tally Road: An Infinite Number of Potholes

The Donuts Are a Metaphor for a Terrible Webcomic

Shortly after the popularization of webcomics, some moron decided that it would be a good idea to institute a purely voluntary rating system, much like the one used for television. Ratings for webcomics are incredibly useless since the only things anyone cares about is whether or not there are exposed genitalia. Additionally, the host of the content is required to evaluate it himself, and assign the rating he thinks is most appropriate. With no universal standard being applied, a rating is worth about as much as a fettuccine noodle without any Alfredo sauce. And then there is an even greater travesty. Some cartoonists actually create content and try to shoehorn it to a rating, which is entirely and utterly backwards from the original premise. Tally Road (by a man known only as Jinxtigr) is one of these comics.

The first thing you'll notice about Tally Road is that it is another furry comic. The second thing you'll notice, is that it is uglier than sin itself. These two details, combined with the very small "Web-MA for Adult Content," should give you pause. And I'm the one who has to review this for you. The main page is utterly devoid of details and features, which is great for keeping clutter down, but is terrible for actually navigating the site. There is no concentrated archive page, or even a summary of the plot, characters or setting, so readers are required to read through as far as they can stand to figure out what the stupid thing is about. The only things you will find on the front page is a comic, basic navigation links (first, previous, etc.), a link to something called "Library" (more on this later), a blog post and one of those annoying chatterbox things. It's all black on white, which is about as bland as a Nilla Wafer, but without actually being useful in any recipes.

Going into greater depth on the art, it's a wonder Jinxtigr thinks he could ever make anything worthy of a "Web-MA" rating.

Eww Gross What is Going On Here?

Anatomically, the characters are so over-simplified, so basic, that it becomes impossible to discern an arm from a foot, much less tell which way they're pointed. There are only two characters, really, a dog and a cat. All characters have only minor variations on these two shapes, and it becomes very difficult to differentiate two of the same species. Male and female characters are (sometimes) differentiated by an extra line across the chest to indicate a breast, I guess, but that is rarely sufficient to identify that they are actually different people. During the comic's only known sex scene (don't click on this at work, moron), I can honestly say that I didn't realize the characters were both male until I was on my fourth pass through the archives.

The plot is incredibly jerky and disjointed, with consecutive pages often not showing any kind of coherent relation to each other. Characters just pop in or disappear with no explanation or even any acknowledgement. The protagonists (?) were very quick to abandon their own objectives for those of another, and failed to even go through any kind of argument or bargaining. Such weak motivation leads to apathy from the readers. No one will ever want to care about a character who is so weak-willed that he can't even follow through with any single conviction. Any attempt to inject humor into the comic falls flat, usually because of poor timing, but sometimes it's just an irrelevant joke that isn't consistent with the form of the comic. We can assert that Jinxtigr is worse at telling jokes than he is at telling a coherent story, which is quite an accomplishment, considering how terrible the entirety of Tally Road is.

Under the aforementioned 'Library' link, you can find various scrawlings that Jinxtigr has attempted to pass off as short stories and webcomic reviews. I'm not a literary critic, but I think it will suffice to say that the short stories are terrible. As for the webcomic reviews, we must ask whether Jinxtigr has any moral authority to provide an opinion regarding other webcomics. Sometimes offering no substantial opinion on a comic, he feels the need to simply talk about it, and compliment it even though he has no understanding of it. Not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings, he offers only kind words to the comics he reviews, feeling some kind of obligation to promote it. Listen, reviewers, if you are always patting everyone on the back, you've already lost as a reviewer. Not everything is good, and if you claim that your subject is good when it isn't, no one will take your opinion seriously. If you like everything, no one will want to use your opinion as a gauge for the quality of comics. You don't have to be excessively negative, but fellating everyone who asks for a review is not going to earn you any respect.

So what is Tally Road good for? Other than poorly drawn guns, awful sexual puns, and anarchist furry sons, not much at all. It gives us an excellent argument against the act of creating content to fit a certain content rating group, and probably even voluntary rating systems in general. The correct way to approach a project such as a webcomic is to create the product you want, and if anyone actually cares then you can assign a content rating to it, or better yet, let someone else do it. As far as Tally Road is concerned, my only advice is to take a detour because this road is just one massive pothole. Read more→

Psychedelic Treehouse: Tips on Shoddy Craftsmanship, From the Expert Shoddy Craftsman

How does a webcartoonist improve himself? Practicing alone might seem sufficient to some, but without direction, most will just practice themselves into a hole. Rote learning can make you more efficient, but not necessarily better. There are websites which can guide an artist into developing his skills well, by giving good examples and exercises, and lead to a greater understanding of anatomy, and higher quality art. Likewise, there are aids for the writers out there who want to escape terrible characters, awful pacing issues, and atrocious plots. But aside from the art, what is out there to help you present your webcomic? I have yet to find a good site about webcomic production, but I am knee deep in bad ones.

Psychedelic Treehouse is yet another webcomic site by Ben Gordon, aka scartoonist, in which he attempts to combine information that he feels is useful to webcartoonists who wish to improve the business of their webcomic. The first thing anyone will notice, however, is the terrible page layout of PT. The first textual paragraph is a bunch of metatags, presented as a jumbled mess of phrases, some of which link to subsections of the site, while others do not. The purpose of this section puzzles and confuses me. It is an ugly site feature, and will repel users looking for a more professional site to give them advice. After this massive text chunk, Gordon gives two substanceless taglines, followed by a link to a useless "list" style website. By the time the reader reaches any true substance in the Psychedelic Treehouse, he or she is already fatigued by all the empty content they've had to wade through.

Down in the bowels of the front page, PT turns into a two-column format, with the left column being a left-justified list of various categories and subsections, with no organization or formatting cues. The right column is a centered list of site credits and contact links. The formatting wraps lines in odd places, creating lines with two words, followed by a line break. All the credits in the right column are chaotically arranged, and the reader's eye bounces all over the place, instead of following the list cleanly. The left side is only slightly better, with section titles and descriptions having various assortments of font styles and sizes, with very little consistency among either.

But what kind of substance does The Psychedelic Treehouse actually offer? Perhaps it is a diamond in the rough, an object of immense value with an ugly presentation. And perhaps Jesus himself will swoop down on the back of a giant rooster and smite all the terrible webcomics. The majority of sections found on the PT are simply lists of things. A list of webcomics, a list of webcomic collectives, a list of comic portals, blogs, publishers, award winners, podcasts, books, and commission-taking artists. There are even three whole pages of 'miscellaneous' link lists. The most useless of these 'lists' is a gallery of webcomic logos. What is the purpose of these lists? A collection of information is useless if the average reader still has to digest and analyze it himself. These lists are simply pure streams of data, with no evaluation provided by Gordon, thereby making it about as useful as a list of quantum physics equations to the average kindergartener. Ben Gordon is apparently incapable of giving the necessary commentary on the lists he provides, since he has not done so, but with the quality of his writing, I'm not sure I'd want to see it.

A few sections attempt to be more significant than just a meaningless pile of lists, which is what I'd expect from topics such as Site Design Tools and Networking, topics that Ben Gordon has obviously neglected himself. Of course, they're merely lists of links accompanied with a summary of the link, which I suppose is an improvement, but ultimately, it's not enough. Many subsections again devolve into mere lists. One section on Fonts is prefaced by an amazingly inaccurate assessment and analysis on the use of fonts, making the claim that "If you use an exotic font to letter your comic, many people in your audience will see whatever their search engine thought was the closest match." How is your browser supposed to alter the comic image to change the font used, I'm not sure, but Ben Gordon has asserted that it happens, and presented it as fact. The presence of patently idiotic statements detract from the validity of Psychedelic Treehouse as a webcomic resource. It also doesn't help that the font chosen for the page header is Comic Sans.

The remainder of Psychedelic Treehouse's content consists of extremely short 'essays' about webcomics (as well as interviews and reviews crossposted from his other sites). The problem is that these essays are written to push Gordon's concept of what cartoonists should be doing, whether he has any factual basis for saying so, or not. This checklist is full of minor and inconsequential things that only matters to Gordon, but he has presented it as a definitive checklist for new webcartoonists. The truth is, I'd trust his advice about as far as I could throw him. He puts more emphasis on how to make money from a comic, as well as shameless self-promotion than he does about any kind of substantial improvement in quality.

Ben Gordon provides very little ethos when talking about building a better webcomic site. His own sites are so jumbled, scattered, disoriented and downright terrible. Trying to pass his Psychedelic Treehouse off as an essential resource for webcomickers is laughable. It is essentially a Webcomic Junkyard: Massive piles of junk with a single potential nugget of value contained within. He makes no effort to sort the wheat from the chaff, and as a result his information becomes massive and unwieldy. Anyone looking to improve their webcomic should avoid this site like the plague, since you will waste more time digging for gold without a map than you will spend applying the useful advice to your own product. If Ben Gordon built this Psychedelic Treehouse with his own two hands, then you should think twice about turning it into a clubhouse; the shoddy craftsmanship will fall apart on you at the worst possible moment. Read more→

CAR: Ignoring the 'Check Engine' Light for 30,000 Miles (and Counting!)

There are millions of webcomics out there on the internet designed to appeal to niche markets and strange hobbies. No matter your interests, there is probably a webcomic that caters to them. Even if those interests are really dumb. But no matter how dumb the hobby, there are people who are really into these things. I guess maybe they seem dumb to me but these people really enjoy them so who am I to knock it? Or so I thought, until I met possibly the dumbest hobby-comic ever.

CAR (the author insists on the all-caps title of this abomination) is about driving around in a car. That is pretty much the premise of the entire comic. You can probably imagine the kinds of jokes that arise from car driving, and how Jeffrey Faden has managed to stretch this into 250 strips is mind-boggling. Granted, about half of them are about CAR ending or restarting; the joke has been used so much, it's collecting Social Security checks. As for other jokes, "WOAH MY CAR HAS A LOT OF BUTTONS AND SWITCHES!" gets dull fast. Driving like an old man isn't funny either. Basically there are two jokes about cars and they're both pretty bad already.

CAR reeks of the same technophilic MacFaggotry that rubs most people the wrong way. I know you think you're cool, Jeff, but no one cares about whatever gadget you got that provides marginal utility. An obsession with techno music is just an extension of technophilia, because people can act snooty and pretentious about obscure DJs that no one will ever hear, and they sound terrible anyways. If someone you know won't shut up about techno music, then they have also drunk the Apple Kool-Aid (that actually sounds pretty rad, apple flavored Kool-Aid) and you should probably cut all ties with them.

There is very little artistic difference between the earliest comic and the latest comic. Apart from the addition to gradient coloring, the characters look like strange amalgamations of old, cheap anime, and crude doodles done in the back of Freshman Lit. There is no need for more than one pose, since all characters are just talking heads used to further a dialog. And the characters have no consistent characterization, they are simply used arbitrarily to provide a foil to (or give aid to) the author-insert's wacky shenanigans. They are not people, but voices heard by the author that he responds to and interacts with. Essentially, there is only one character, and that is Jeffrey.

Despite grave reservations, I decided to track down Jeff Faden and ask him what, if anything, inspired him to keep coming back to this awful webcomic. Surprisingly, he consented to an interview. My most ardent readers will remember once before when I did an interview, the difference this time is that I'm actually interviewing someone else. So without further ado, I present a depressing interview with an unhinged individual: Jeffrey Faden, author of CAR.

Anti-Snark: CAR has been around for about 6 years; have you learned anything about comic making in that time, and if so, why haven't you applied it to CAR?

Jeffrey Faden: My greatest comicking education comes from Scott McCloud's timeless book, Reinventing Comics, where he leverages the power of the Internet as a content delivery medium that reaches consumers across the world and touches them with the magic of juxtaposed pictoral (or other) images in a deliberate sequence. I've learned, by studying that book, that you don't need to put forth anything with acceptable art, writing, layout, or sense of humor - what is more important is whether your webcomic is accessible to people in wheelchairs and fires off all of its JavaScript successfully. This is why CAR is valid XHTML and looks pretty much worse, and has less readers, than it did in 2002.

AS: God, that's pretentious as fuck. Now, CAR has been stopped and restarted 5 or 6 times. Why do you keep going back to the same failed comic instead of trying something fresh and new? Are you afraid of success, or just change?

JF: It's kind of you to suggest that success would be the result of future endeavours in comickery! Rather, I would see success as the total halting of CAR altogether, along with a pledge to never create another comic again. But just between you and me, I've got a secret - the reason CAR has no ads and does not advertise is because its revenue is more than taken care of by formerly Honda Motor Company, and now Toyota Motor Corporation executives who pay me large sums of cash for every frame in which one of their cars appears. (This is why I have made so many comics that repeat the same frame over and over.) Unfortunately, one reason for a 3-year hiatus is due to a giant legal battle with Honda in which I plead to stop making CARs, resulting in the reclamation of my actual car. Fortunately, this also resulted in the end of CAR, until I foolishly forged the same agreement with Toyota three years later. It seems as if I will be forever doomed to make mundane traces of the interiors of a Prius, passing a tedious process off as actual talent.

In summary, it's because I am very rich.

AS: Too bad you still can't afford any talent. Your art is sloppy and your writing is miserable. Which reminds me, why is it that there really aren't any consistent characters in CAR? You just seem to pick from a character design based on someone you know, and then write them in a way that you feel fits the comic. Are you just incompetent, or are the people you know really this inconsistent?

JF: Here's the process:
1. Person I marginally know wants to be put in CAR.
2. I decide I might as well, because I have nothing else to write about.
3. Person doesn't realize they've been put in CAR because I don't tend to keep up with people I've met in real life.
4. I use the character for a considerable amount of time and eventually twist their personality into an unlikeable, completely uncharacteristic mess.
5. Eventually the person notices they're still being used, and removes me from their Facebook friends list.
6. I pretend the character never existed; process repeats.

AS: That sounds like a load of BS. Have you ever considered attending a workshop on writing jokes or drawing people so they don't look like they have a genetic defect where they appear half anime?

JF: When it comes to improving my craft, I like to heed the words of my favorite contemporaries, Mookie and Absath - "if they're buyin', no use in tryin'." Of course, in my case, people aren't buyin', but I like to humor myself into thinking that they would if I cared enough to sell something.

Also, "Half anime" is probably the best compliment I have ever gotten.

AS: Who is your mechanic?

JF: Jesus. The Jesus that atheists worship.

AS: I don't think he's a licensed mechanic.

JF: That would explain the chorus of angels every time I turn on the air conditioner.

AS: Don't you know A/C ruins your gas mileage? If you really loved the planet you wouldn't use it. You don't hate the planet, do you?

JF: CAR still exists. Isn't that your answer?

AS: I'm afraid so.

As you can see, Jeffrey is clearly an imbalanced individual, who values his iPod more than his suspension. Making a comic about cars might not be a bad idea if you are focusing on maintenance or whatever (and actually know anything about cars), but if you're making a comic about just driving cars, you might want to rethink whether people consider you an interesting person or not. If your comic isn't interesting, then no one is going to read it, because it's just that dull. Read more→

Menage a Three: Betty & Veronica Give Archie Blue Balls

Sure, porn comics can increase your readership with the amount of horny teenagers, but what happens when you make a porn comic without any actual porn? Holding back might create an air of legitimacy amongst less-than-savvy reviewers, who might convince themselves that since there is no nudity, it's not actually a porn comic. This would relieve a sense of shame the creator might have about making such a comic since it's not really porn. "Pornographers are sleazy, creepy people, and that's not me!" they convince themselves. Well I regret to inform you that you are a pornographer, and you are sleazy and creepy. Blueballing your readers just makes you sleazier, because despite being ashamed of what you've made, you continue to make it, because you just love the attention.

Menage a Three is the tale of a poor virgin nerd whose old roommates turn out to be gay (and boning each other) so they are immediately replaced by two totally hot girls! It takes place in the deepest, darkest, dankest bowels of French Canada, which I guess is the home of the artist, Gisèle Lagacé, and I guess explains the title, a french term for a threesome, used only by pretentious yuppies who want to make sex sound classy. At any rate, the lonely nerd suffers a hilarious quantity of sexual frustration due to the fact that he'd rather read comic books and watch anime (and porn, and anime porn) instead of socializing with actual people and getting to know girls. Uh oh, I think I might have alienated some (all) of my readers.

Artistically, Menage a Three has been compared to Archie, with a hint of anime. It is full of traditional anime shorthand and tropes, like the bloody dork nose, sweatdrops, these bizarre rivers draining from eyes, little child versions of the characters for no reason, scribbles above the head of a frustrated character, the list goes on. Every strip is an homage to the honored Japanese tradition of abstracting every emotion to a mere symbol on the character's face. Obviously Giz knows her audience is primarily anime-loving virgins, some of which can only get off to anime porn, so she has added these elements to make them feel more comfortable.

The Archie influence is more than just in the art, however. Many of the goofy puns and trite sight gags are the kind of junk you would expect to see in Archie comics, except for the porno filter applied later in photoshop. The plots are generally mundane and Archie-esque, such as "Day at the Beach" or "Moving Day" where the biggest conflict is whether to eat chicken or hamburgers. The dialog is cheesier than ballpark nachos, and the characters act about as believably as Keanu Reeves. It's not really hard to put a sexually repressed nerd in a frustrating situation with two girls, so why not try a little harder to do it a little better? I guess the Gizzer isn't as committed to this concept as she wants us to think she is.

The characters themselves are very annoying. I don't mean "oh his flaws are so annoying, why do they put up with him." I mean "who could put up with this guy for more than a minute, his behavior is so irritating!" The large french woman, Didi speaks in Frenglish, often swapping between English and French at bizarre times. Speaking between two languages is a mannerism I have never seen done well, as the authors doing it have a tendency to just swap out words and phrases at random, without really thinking about which ones they're doing or why. A little research into this behavior would go a long way, but it's not really worth it, since it really adds nothing to her character other than "she's french." The scrawny "punk rock" (poser) chick Zii has massive boundary issues, and I find it hard to believe that she has gotten no reactions worse than rolled eyes, a shrug and an "oh Zii!" Her behavior is generally a subconscious desire for attention, and if you know someone like this, you know that attention-seeking behavior is always incredibly annoying. The comic book hypernerd, Gary, is a pathetic whiner who always looks like he's about to break out in tears. His inability to enjoy himself makes him a drag on everyone else and his constant protests make everyone want to leave him at home. These terrible characters are about as compelling as a documentary on French Canada, and they certainly make me wish I could just close the browser so I wouldn't have to read this terrible webcomic. Unfortunately, I have to, for your sake.

Menage a Three is a porn comic, without the pesky burden of actually having any porn. The premise of one sexually repressed guy living with two girls was more entertaining back in the 70s when it was Three's Company. I'm not being facetious, Three's Company is about twenty times better than Menage a Three could ever be, simply because it isn't ashamed of itself. Unlike most webcartoonists, Gisele Lagace has at least some artistic talent, but the fact that she is wasting it on this amalgamation of atrocities convinces me that she has no desire to become a great artist, and prefers simple stories for simple people. The Jizzer has given us a terrible webcomic, and expects to cash in quick with the promise of pornographic content, even though she has no idea of giving anyone anything more than a stray nipple. If you want a compelling character-based story wrought with sexual frustration, there are plenty of better ones out there that aren't just sleazy porn. And if you want porn, there's better places for that too. Menage a Three is simply the equivalent of trying to watch the scrambled channels on your TV. Read more→

Hijinks Ensue (In the Loosest Sense of the Term)

Terrible webcomics are fairly abundant on the Internet, but most are not worth my time to discuss here. Some are so commonly reviled that I believe ripping into them would just be redundant on my part, and others are so uninspired that it's obvious they won't last long enough to give me enough to really work with. It is truly rare to find a terrible webcomic with enough of an archive to give me something to work with, that hasn't already been picked clean by the other vitriolic webcomic reviewers around. I believe I have hit a veritable treasure trove, however, with Hijinks Ensue, a wretched hive of MacFaggotry, pop culture addiction, and one guy in the corner yelling "INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE!!" Well, maybe it does, but this is a particular set of "information" that we should keep locked in a hidden vault underground to forget about forever.

Artistically, Joel Watson is atrocious. H.E. looks like some sort of hideous amalgamation of the late Movie Comics and the abominable Shredded Moose (which I will probably save for another day). The artist clearly has no confidence in his own abilities, since he feels the need to draw young GENERIC FOX PRESIDENT with the goatee seen in earlier panels, so the reader knows who the kid is. Facial expressions are stiff and unvaried, while poses are robotic and jerky, giving the characters a sense of realism not seen since robots enslaved humanity. Because of the terrible art, this joke falls flat, since a casual reader wouldn't know the difference between this Eli character and the original, without close examination. The guy needs to study some anatomy, because no one's neck should stick out like this, nor should one's eyes be haphazardly bulging from one's head. Unfortunately, the art is not the worst part of this comic.

Putting the art aside, there is still plenty of terrible in this comic. The excessive addiction to television and movies is offputting, especially since there is rarely a joke about either that can be made funny by a webcomic. First of all, most of the shows enjoyed by nerds generally make fun of themselves by being so terrible. But when a nerd tries to defend these shows by appealing to some universal code of dorkery, it's not funny or amusing, just depressing. Second, if you can't stop watching a show because it has turned bad (or always been bad) then you deserve whatever misery you receive. Lastly, movie and television jokes often require that the reader has watched the movie or show in question, and if he hasn't, it is rarely funny. Also, you can't include spoilers in the joke in case people are intending to watch it, but haven't yet, so that cuts down on quite possibly a million potential jokes. Ultimately, a comic about movies or television shows is usually not worth it, considering that it often ends up being a very weak joke that few will get (or want). Because they are passive media, you can't make jokes about simple mechanics like videogames can do, and aren't broad enough to encompass a large portion of readers like current events tend to do.

But worse than the pop culture minutia, I feel, is the torrent of incorrigible MacFaggotry that permeates this webcomic like grease on a pizza. The worst thing about Apple products is the smugness that surrounds its consumer base so thickly that you could cut it with a dull knife. Apple fans have a tendency to treat Steve Jobs as the second coming of Jesus Christ, and every product he craps out as manna from on high. They admittedly acknowledge that they will buy anything Apple releases despite whether they really truly want them, especially when they know that a better model will be released a year or so later. Instead of waiting until the value fits the price, Jobsians will buy up everything and get angry about it later. And when a product with even remote similarity to an established Apple product is released, such as Microsoft's Zune, MacFags get extremely butthurt about people getting excited about an alternative choice to their beloved Apple, and call it such things as "inadequate," "second-rate" and "crappy."

And then there's a bizarre amount of hypocrisy. Berating Microsoft for their latest ad campaign where they show the diversity of PC users as being "off-target," while the Mac ads have become increasingly negative makes me wonder if people like Joel Watson can even compare something as transparent as an ad campaign, or if they simply follow the Apple party line. Harassing Wal*Mart for selling DRM protected music when the iTunes store is essentially nothing but DRM protected media is stupefying. Shifting blame to the manufacturer instead of the distributor with baseless accusations is the kind of selfish fanboyism I've come to expect from the MacFags out there. I could go for days giving examples of Apple fanboys attacking other companies for "reprehensible acts" while defending Apple for those exact same acts. Vista is too restrictive with respect to the consumer experience? Better defend Apple's restrictions regarding the consumer experience!

And what group of Applefans would they be if they didn't have a completely unnecessary podcast? I listened to one or two and all I can say is "ugh." It's basically an amalgamation of all the jokes they couldn't frame as a comic strip, as well as boring, detached-from-reality commentary, much like the ones that can be found under the comic strips. Who wants to listen to this terrible comic as a podcast after reading this terrible comic as a webcomic? Not me, that's for sure. And I'm surprised that a webcomic run entirely by MacFags has such poor site design. Framed with massive ads, the actual strip is always pushed over to the right, where, if you don't have your browser window full-screened, requires that the reader scroll over to read it. How irritating! There is an additional sidebar on the RIGHT side, under the comic, where Joel Watson begs for donations followed by another ad. Joel even considers this atrocious comic his full-time job, and wants to increase his income from it to self-sufficient levels. Hey, if you want to make a little more money, just add a few more ads! Separate each blog post with an ad, sell ads in your podcast, just make more of them!

If you want to turn comicking into a sufficient source of income, you should be prepared to churn out more than 3 comics a week. You're going to have to bust your ass to make a living in this world, half-assing a comic without decent art or subject material and hanging out with your friends in front of a microphone is not going to cut it. Streamline your frontpage so that it isn't absolutely burdened with thousands of links and ads. A minimalist site design would serve you well, especially considering your intended audience. As you are now, Hijinks Ensue, you are the most basic incarnation of "terrible." Oh, and what the hell is this? Simplifying a candidate like this is insulting not only to the candidate, but also your readers. Do you not think they're smart enough to make this kind of decision based on actual facts, instead of simply following whatever you say? Well maybe not, since they think your comic is worth reading. Forget I said anything.

Hijinks Ensue is a webcomic that I find to be very valuable, not because it has any redeeming qualities, but because it has none. A truly terrible webcomic like this usually does not have a substantial body of work for me to review, and when one does, it is often already well-known enough that I would essentially be beating a dead horse. This comic is basically the worst I have seen all year, and I appreciate it for giving me something to review. However, now that I have reviewed it, I kindly ask that these hijinks cease ensuing, because they are not at all amusing, just noisy and annoying.

Tuesday Addendum: Oh god I had spent so long working on this terrible webcomic that a few things I intended to mention failed to make it in, because by the time I finished the penultimate paragraph, I was already trying not to vomit all over my laptop.

The blog posts that accompany every comic page are so self-fellating, so auto-congratulatory, I wonder if Watson's head would explode if someone informed him that he is NOT the center of the Internet. They also end up inadvertently explaining the joke in case someone didn't get it (and wanted it in the first place). Lets face it, Joel, you're not that clever, so quit patting yourself on the back. Just stick to related topic links and pull your head out of the clouds. Oh wait I forgot that Mactards can't comprehend the concept of separating their ego from their writing. My bad.

One page in particular raised my ire, and it's something I have railed against before. Some webcartoonists don't grasp the concept of Services. You PAY people to do things so YOU don't have to. Even if it is something as menial as printing out your awful comic to glossy paper. If you don't like paying the service charge, then just roll up your sleeves, buy the supplies you need to do it yourself, and GET TO WORK. No one is forcing you to go down to Kinko's to print out a comic to sell to schmucks for an extra $10 in your pocket. It's not like you're even selling the original artwork. I guess all the idiots really do have too much money.

I apologize for missing these two atrocious aspects of this comic the first time through. I guess I'm going to have to start writing an outline down on paper beforehand to make sure that all my vitriol is fully expended the first time through. Read more→

Political Webcomics: More Baffling Than Voting for Pat Buchanan

In my opinion, the most patriotic day this year is November 4, Election Day. I enjoy the democratic process by casting my vote in favor of the most reprehensible candidates, because inciting suffering on the citizens of my county, state and nation is something that gives me a perverse pleasure. In honor of the upcoming election, I decided to take a look at what the world of webcomics has to provide in the realm of political comics. And I wish I hadn't.

The first one I looked at is one I had glanced over before: Right Left Center by the guys who also do Electronic Tigers. Since then, however, the comic has simply devolved into even more ridiculous political cartoons. In the latest comic, he has presented Democrat candidate Barack Obama as a skewed charicature of his actual views, sporting conflicting socialist and fascist strawman arguments, and the icing on the cake is a series of "citations" from right-wing sources which are already significantly misconstrued, and then he removes what little context is left. The previous page isn't much better, pushing the same ineffective talking points that have been on the table for months, and thinks they'll work this time. Of course, they're just the generic arguments made against Democrat candidates, so it's not like this Republican mouthpiece is spewing anything that hasn't be spewed before. The main problem with RLC is that it's just too damn wordy. Political comics have never been around to change anyone's mind; instead, they just need to poke fun at some recent political (or otherwise national) event and twist it into a humorous analogy, metaphor, or charicature. RLC fails at this with incredible swiftness, but since the primary demographic is racists and people who want to argue with racists, I'm sure they find the stiff, one-sided haranguement of Democrats to be amusing.

The next one I found was Keenspot's longest-running political comic, Sore Thumbz (the z is extreme), which was originally supposed to be YAGC (Yet Another Gamer Comic) but writer Chris Crosby hasn't played a video game besides those dang ol' Marty-o Brothers, so he uses it as a political mouthpiece. Like RLC, Sore Thumbz has a tendency to stretch a gag out way too long. Unlike RLC, it's not as bad as RLC. Still, it's not without a veritable gold mine of faults. The conservative mouthpiece is an obnoxious loud-mouthed business owner, while his liberal counterpart is an equally obnoxious large-breasted bimbo, and both are about as flat as Iowa. The art is really kind of sloppy, as these two characters will often change size and shape between pages and even panels, but the glaring flaw is the writing. Chris Crosby wedges a liberal joke into pages where it's really unnecessary, and pushes his left-wing character to always be correct. 99% of the time the conservative is portrayed as either a raving lunatic or a smug jackass, detracting from his emphasis as a serious counterpart and turns him into a mere comic foil. A better design for this setup would involve both characters being used equally, by which I mean using them whenever appropriate for a joke, rather than leaning on the left-wing jokes and ignoring the others.

But when it comes to forcing a joke, none does it better than Keenspot's newest addition, M. J. Offen's Politicomic. It's only been around for a month and a half, but has still managed to strike me as the worst attempt at political humor on the Internet. Actually calling it a comic is kind of iffy, since all the art is just photographs of the candidates after they've been shoved through a handful of Photoshop filters. In fact, if just playing around with photoshop is enough to get on Keenspot these days, maybe I'll give it a whirl. I mean, I'm sure I can come up with better jokes than McCain Kong. Of course we all know why this Obamanation ended up on Keenspot, and that's because Chris Crosby wants to give a leg up to all the liberal political webcomics out there, even if they don't really come close to deserving it.

Of course, a lack of art is not uncommon in webcomics, especially when politics are involved. Get Your War On thrives with nothing less than old clip art and a foul, sarcastic mouth. While it focuses on the Iraq War and the politics related to it, GYWO is not above discussing other political issues, like the economy, or various campaign bizarrities, and railing against the war and the Republican party has given GYWO a boost in popularity among moody teenagers and high-minded college students who consider it to be much more poignant than it really is. So much so that it has been modified into a series of animated shorts. The truth is, anyone can manufacture popularity through faux outrage and obscenity. Loud ranting is not funny, and sarcasm gets old after just a short while. A political comic without these things has a greater chance of being appreciated for its wit, rather than just being blindly followed by those too dumb or high to differentiate between quality and trash.

The last political comic I found before I got sick of looking is known only as The Pain (a reference to The Princess Bride, no doubt) which provides the same cynical look at current events as GYWO, except providing actual art. Actually, the art is populated by nothing but grotesque distortions of reality, like looking at life through reverse-beer goggles. The comics often carry a severe tone of pessimism and misery, interjected with wild bouts of mania, and I wouldn't be surprised if the author had Bipolar II disorder. Many of the scenarios presented aren't grounded in reality, but instead play up fantasies of anarchy, martial law, and apocalyptia, and the artist seems driven by nothing more than his most base desires, rather than any desire for social, moral, or economic reform, so his writing suffers from a lack of conviction to any kind of viewpoint other than selfishness. I guess that makes The Pain the perfect political webcomic for self-centered assholes who would rather wallow in their own misery instead of doing something about it, so I'm surprised it's not more popular than it is.

American Politics are generally about which human being the people detest the least, and can stand to vote for without hurling. Voting, like surgery, tends to require that the participant not eat for many hours prior to the procedure. Most voters don't even vote for their own interests, but rather some imaginary future version of themselves that doesn't actually resemble them at all. Regardless of who wins, I can expect that there will be plenty of moping around the nation, and I will revel in their misery. Additionally, I can expect to read a few comics complaining about America electing the wrong guy, from political and non-political webcomics alike, and all of this griping will be met with the same response: "Why didn't you try to do more?" Political cartoons have never been very funny, and political webcomics mangle the genre even more, trying to squeeze the blood of comedy from the stone of politics. If presented with a referendum to continue political webcomics, do the responsible thing: vote no. Read more→

HalfPixel.com: The Evil Webcomics Empire

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Electronic Tigers (Guest Starring The Ponz)

When leveraged properly, a popular webcomic can provide an ample source of income. A healthy mixture of donation incentives, merchandise, and publication can turn a successful hobby into a successful business venture. With enough spit, gumption, determination and elbow grease (spunk and grit don't hurt either), a skilled webcartoonist can turn their talents into a supplemental or even primary income. Thankfully, I'm not here to talk about people doing things the right way, but rather to lambaste someone for doing things in exactly the wrong way.

The Wrong Way to turn your comic into a cash fountain involves, among other qualities, impatience. Being impatient can lead an otherwise capable cartoonist down a path of failure, misery, and greed. I am talking in the general sense, of course; I wouldn't want to imply that the cartoonist behind Electronic Tigers is capable. Electronic Tigers is the worst kind of garbage: A gaming comic infused with heavily skewed political 'humor', mired in racism, fueled entirely by an asian with enormous bazongas. This 'hot azn' loudly and obnoxiously declares herself a virgin, solely for the economic benefits rather than her moral beliefs. These economic benefits extend to the creators, because for some bizarre reason, horny nerds find virginity to be infinitely more attractive than sexual experience. Therefore, Mika's virginity can be exploited in a myriad of ways to net cash dollars for her owners.

The average ET strip is really actually not very funny. The author fails so often to construct anything resembling a joke, and even when he comes close, the punchline often fails to be amusing. Instead the humor tries to spawn from "crazy situations" and "wacky character behavior" despite neither of these being taken to enough of an extreme that it approaches Chuckleville, much less Guffawston. It would also probably be funnier if it wasn't so incredibly racist.

As unfunny as the original Electronic Tigers was, it was decided a few months back that it just wasn't political enough. So once a week the ET brain trust releases a political comic known as Right Left Center or RLC, where the 'right' is represented as a calm, intelligent elephant, while the left is portrayed by a braying jack-ass of a strawman, which effectively reduces the viability of the 'right' viewpoint provided by the association. The strawmannery and flawed logical arguments were always a part of ET, but by separating the political commentary from the gaming comic, the creators hoped to make ET look less retarded. This didn't really work at all.

Recently, one of the Electronic Tiger handlers has fallen on hard financial times. Rather than putting his miserable comic on hiatus to find a job, and sparing me the discomfort associated with the mere knowledge of its existence, he has decided to prostitute his characters to feed his family. As his 'situation' continues, his political views become more and more vehement and vitriolic, as well as no relevance to reality, and instead of seeking employment, decides to argue his political opinion with his readers at length.

In an act of desperation, this creator has signed up with a company employing a Ponzi Pyramid Scheme (more commonly known as an MLM business) and actually has the gall to ask his few readers to throw their cash in under him. If any bite, then it will surely bite him when they can't even recoup their 'initial investment'. He then took some offense to Something Awful for flooding the comment page with arguments against MLM schemes (For some odd reason, SA users have an intense hatred for pyramid schemes, searching them out to quash them in their infancy) and also for registering their dislike for the comic while they were there. Retaliating against a massive readership spike simply because they were being negative is a great way to alienate them. Instead of insulting a group by referring to them as 'e-thugs' or 'cyberbullies' or 'digi-hooligans', an enterprising webcartoonist could easily find a way to turn a negative into a positive, and convert the haters into continued readers.

Converting a webcomic from a hobby to a job is not something that can happen overnight. It is a gradual process that takes careful planning and severe dedication. In desperation, resorting to exploitation, prostitution and pyramid schemes might turn a quick buck, but you'll end up shooting yourself in the foot in the long run. More self-destructive is a comic is created for the sole purpose of exploitation, prostitution, and pyramid schemes, as is the case of Electronic Tigers. If you want to see a decent gaming comic, there are plenty of better ones out there. If you want to see a decent conservative political comic, there are plenty of better ones out there. If you want to see pornographic, racist, or simply unfunny comics, again, there are plenty of better ones out there. Electronic Tigers is simply an abomination upon all of these genres, and serves no greater purpose other than the generation of easy money. Read more→

Count Your Sheep (Before They Hatch)

In order to reach the most number of people, one has to offend the least number of people. This is the cornerstone of print comics, where a slightly offensive comic strip is equal to about ten thousand letters to the editor. This is, of course, because newspapers are read primarily by the elderly, who get morally outraged over immigrants taking our jobs, even though they don't have jobs to be taken. Unfortunately, the younger generation often takes offense at unoffensiveness, which is why they turn to the Internet for laughs and laffs alike. And since the elderly can't use the Internet, webcomics don't require inoffensiveness for readership. Therefore, it's eternally baffling when a webcomic DECIDES to be inoffensive. This is the story of, among several others, Count Your Sheep.

CYS follows the saccharine exploits of a single mother, her 5-year-old daughter, and an imaginary sheep, a hallucination induced by sleeping pill abuse and mild psychosis as a result of a dead husband/father. Together, they engage in childish mischief rivalling Dennis the Menace, followed by the mother's stern disapproving gaze not unlike Hagar the Horrible's fat wife. There is also a lot taken from Calvin and Hobbes in terms of political and cultural topics, but the majority of inspiration comes from Garfield (post 1990s variation). Jokes about coffee, doctor's visits, monday mornings and sleeping all the time permeate the comic strip like marijuana smoke in the back of the Mystery Machine.

Even though he's inspired by some of the most prominent inoffensive comic strips around, Adrian Ramos still manages to fail writing a decent-yet-bland joke more often than not. Often giving punchlines that don't follow the premise, and others will suffer from a convoluted and strange set-up. Sometimes, the entire joke is just a massive trainwreck that misses its target and instead hits a busload of orphans. Others still have no joke at all. Most of Ramos's jokes fail to do their job of providing basic humor without the kick of edginess, and I have a feeling that adding in a sharp edge would still result in dull jokes.

When writing an overarching subplot for CYS, Ramos often neglects exposition and introduction to the narrative, and the stories end up feeling disjointed and sparse. I expect that this is Ramos acknowledging that he is incapable of coming up with a suitable joke to fit these situations, but rather than making a conscious effort and improving himself to counter his flaws, he avoids them and ends up with a story that's more threadbare than the carpet in a grass hut. Ultimately the plot isn't hindered by this emptiness, but it sure isn't enhanced, and it certainly isn't sufficient.

One thing that you might have noticed if you were astute is the predominant melancholic monochrome color scheme that saturates the site. Since it doesn't really cost more to print in color on the web, Ramos had to find a way to emulate this aspect of his newspaper inspirations without going the cheap route of simply not coloring his comic. The monochrome appearance creates the illusion of coloration, without giving up the newspapery feel of cheap production. The persevering blueness gives CYS a drab and monotonous overtone that makes it difficult to enjoy the sweet, simple humor as it's mangled for us by Ramos.

Count Your Sheep is as bland and uninteresting as any comic strip you'll find in a newspaper, only it has the added benefit of the low, low readership only found in webcomics. Adrian Ramos has a tendency to take the safe route when confronted with obstacles, and never challenges himself to improve his techniques. If he did, he might one day find himself between Gasoline Alley and Apartment 3-G, but until he does he will simply wallow in the mire that is the Internet, writing forced dialog and rigid catchphrases ("I should count sheep" isn't exactly going to sell t-shirts). If you want to be put to sleep, you don't need to count sheep, just read Count Your Sheep, and you'll be snoring before you can say "this is boring." Read more→

Something Positive: If You Don't Have Something Nice to Say, Post It on Anti-Snark

The majority of Internet users are cynical, untrusting, hate-filled piles of misery and mistrust. In theory, a comic full of characters who mirror this attitude (as well as paper-thin strawmen for them to attack with their rapier wit and superior intelligence) should be immensely successful amongst the misanthropes of the E-Zone. Something Positive has managed to build a comic on this premise, and promptly run it into the ground.

Devon, the author-insert, is a bastion of cynicism and sarcasm. Leading others down a sardonic path of self-loathing, and even converting a few mindless strawmen characters along the way, Randy Milholland fancies his Devon counterpart as a Sarcastic Jesus character, saving all the sarcastoids and defeating the forces of Happiness Hell.

Milholland has also managed to cut production costs by eliminating the Plotline Development Department. Instead, he simply re-runs the same 4 or 5 plotlines ad nauseum, merely recasting certain roles and fine-tuning dialog. Plot 1: Devon gets a new girlfriend. Plot 2: Devon finds out girlfriend is crazier than he thought. Plot 3: Devon gets involved in a play. Plot 4: Devon and Friends play a Role-playing game using 'zany' characters. Ultimately, each of these plots resolves the same way, so you really only need to read through the archive about a year before you've gotten all the plots read.

Milholland has caught on to this problem, but instead of writing new plots, he has simply beefed up his one-shot filler comics with a sizeable cast of 50 or so nitwits who were converted to the side of tolerability by Devon and his Sword of Sarcasm. This way, a reader will feel obligated to learn everything about each minor character by reading through the archive until he or she shows up as a blathering strawman, ready to be given character depth by Devon's divine influence.

Artistically, Something Positive is a stagnant marsh of fetid water. Milholland's characters are juvenile arrangements of facial features on the side of a lima bean, with the consistency of a bowl of banana pudding. The sarcastic, half-lidded gazes from smirking faces almost smarm me into a feeling of annoyance before they melt off their gelatinous skulls. From panel to panel the features are stretched and smushed before being redrawn. Minor characters are often hidden behind large glasses that obscure the otherwise expressionless eyes (expressionless because the artist has no idea how to convey happiness that isn't accompanied by smugness).

Perspective is a difficult concept for fourth graders, and Milholland is no exception. Most pages are framed with no spatial depth, and those that are try to keep it simple. However, occaisionally a few will slip through that make Guernica look like a technical diagram. Milholland is also terrible at drawing clothes, since everything he draws looks like it was tailored to fit Quasimodo (or Quetzalcotl, I'm not sure which). One thing is for certain, I won't be asking him to design my house or my wardrobe.

Sarcasm is fun. It lets you pretend you're smarter than someone simply by being indirect. Of course, there is a point where it gets ridiculous and excessive, and everyone gets sick of it. Something Positive has passed this point several times, each time stopping to ask for directions on how to get to "popular" (sarcastically of course). There is nothing we can do at this point to stop the sardonic juggernaut except hope that sarcasm is just a fad on the Internet, and will soon fall out of favor with the mindless sops who populate this dank corner of Cyberspace. The only positive thing about Something Positive that I can say is that it's not a comic that people feel the need to talk about a lot, since it's so offensive to my senses that the mere mention of it would induce vomiting. Read more→