Sarah Zero: Look for Our Ad in Cosmo Girl!

Welcome to the Contranet. Sarah Zero is an alleged webcomic that attempts to tell the story of a hideous sea mutant that has taken on human form and has assimilated itself into the human culture of piracy, white slavery and child pornography.

Sarah Zero is your basic terrible webcomic, at least on the surface. Most noticable is how every 'page' looks like a magazine ad for vodka. Word Art that doesn't say anything prevails, and by the liberal use of meaningless text, many readers may get the idea that in the world of Sarah Zero, words don't mean much at all. Dialog between characters is empty and riddled with buzzwords. These people do not talk like real people

A bigger problem is the artist's desperate unfamiliarity with human anatomy, as evidenced by these two fish-men. Any artist will tell you that before using stylized characters, as SZ is attempting to do, one must first have a firm basis in how actual people look. Without this established foundation, one will often end up with a human-gazelle hybrid. Even worse is that the title character generally does not maintain the same proportions from ad to ad, creating the sense that her bone structure is, in fact, gelatinous.

On the outside, Sarah Zero might seem like a harmless terrible webcomic. But a closer inspection reveals that it is a cry for help from a distressed individual. First we should examine Ace Plughead's irrational hatred for creators of webcomics that are much, much more popular than his (and deservedly so). Through the thinly-veiled persona of "bRYAN NORSOOMAIKXCD," Plughead attempts to drive home the point that these comics are nothing more than corporate gutter trash, and that more independent comics such as Sarah Zero should be Contranet Superstars. Also I find it funny that he doesn't know the name of the guy who does XKCD.

Plughead has also exhibited some strange attention-seeking behaviors: requesting criticism and then rejecting it, strange baby-talk, and enabling his detractors by constantly acknowledging them. He clearly would prefer to be hated than forgotten, and simply convinces himself that such hate is simply inspired by jealousy of his greatness, indicating a grandiose delusion. Arguments could be made that the artistic talent shown is indicative of hallucination or other negative symptoms, but seeing as I'm no psychologist I'm just going to leave it alone. Besides, if he truly were schizophrenic, Sarah Zero would be a lot more fun to read.

Ultimately Sarah Zero is an example of what happens when an advertising agency takes the brown acid and puts the rejected submissions on the Contranet. Unfortunately, the Plughead Ad Agency has so much emotional investment in this campaign that any dissatisfaction is just the uncultured opinions of philistines and plebians. But the truth is, Sarah Zero is simply ugly, slow, and bordering on psychotic. Whatever they're selling, I'm not buying. Read more→

CAD Edits: Improving Upon a Dada Masterpiece

If you've spent enough time with your finger up the ass of the webcomics industry, there are a few webcomics you've almost certainly heard of. Ctrl-Alt-Del is among the most popular, yet also most reviled webcomics around. Due to its anatomically uninspired character designs, abhorrently lazy writing, incredulously flat and static characterizations, and unyielding stagnation, CAD is generally accepted by critics as the most overrated webcomic in the history of the E-Zone.

It is therefore a popular maneuver by some to attack CAD for the sake of earning a bit of cyberkudos from the rest of the webcomics underground. By pointing out how obviously flawed CAD is, webcartoonists get the impression that they are somehow pointing out something no one has ever realized, and prepare themselves for the glory and accolades that can only come from beating the secret boss at level 1 with only a mop.

Also a popular endeavor, editing CAD strips to remove all dialog, or mix and match panels is, for some reason, considered the height of hilarity among CAD-hating enthusiasts. However this wasn't truly an epidemic until a recent abominable strip from Ol' Buckles, the notorious miscarriage strip.

I'll admit that this occurrence was mildly amusing for the first 10 hours or so, but once the people with senses of humor got theirs done, I realized that this was not going to stop anytime soon. Everyone and their grandma thought they had a hilarious angle on Buckley's latest atrocity, and they were going to share it. A month and a half later, they're still happening.

CAD edits ceased being funny the minute they were run into the fucking ground. I don't mean just editing the miscarriage strip, though. I mean all edits to any CAD strip ever has ceased to be the bastion of hilarity that many think it still is. Someday I hope people learn that memes like this really do have expiration dates, and like the "____ Movie" concept, become tired and dull especially when they weren't particularly hysterical in the first place. Read more→

Least I Could Do: Truth In Advertising

Least I Could Do is a webcomic that, for some reason, believes itself to be above the inherent nerdiness and retardation of being on the Internet. The characters are incessantly smug and have a hideous smirk on their face at all times. The comic uses scantily clad women to sell itself, but the disturbingly distorted faces really kind of ruin it. Of course most nerds on the internet are generally only interested in the poorly drawn boobs so it's probably not an issue.

The main character, Rainy Summers, is an author-insert who follows most of the rules about author-inserts. While most inserts are simply slightly cooler versions of the author, with better complexion and a girlfriend, Rainy goes all out: He is financially successful, gets laid, and has hair. The other characters are each a unique blend of nerd and dork, which does dilute the illusion the author has created about himself, and instead of being a suave, successful stud of a man, Rainy ends up coming off as a colossal man-child. And this is how we see into the actual dynamic of his life: He is a mentally retarded adult, and his 'friends' are his caretakers.

Most of the jokes are based on misogyny, but there are times when Sohmer feels the need to look down his nose at other webcartoonists. As you can see, webcartoonists are undependable scum, and invariably fail to update their comic at some point or another. Of course, Ryan "Stonewall" Sohmer fails to recognize that most webcomics are, in fact, recreational, so missing an update occasionally happens due to "real life shit" happening, and instead of making fun of their inability to update on time, but instead, make fun of their lack of talent. Because it's easy to turn out a comic 6 times a week when they're written by an idiot and drawn by a hack.

The art, while commendable because it's not just another copy/paste job, is still pretty awful. Every character has the half-lidded smug grin (unless he's ranting or has been surprised) which shows that either the artist is incapable of drawing emotion, or the author is incapable of writing emotion. I'd probably say it's both. When two characters are talking, they are often palming more than any normal person would (i.e., at all). Like the author, the artist is granted a self-insert, but he is not granted the same egotistical boost from an insert that the author is. Instead he is forced to be a homeless guy.

Least I Could Do is another terrible webcomic with the added bonus of being incredibly condescending towards other webcomics, and that's something only I'm allowed to do. Ultimately, the least that Sohmer could do for his webcomic is improve the writing so that it's just not another nerdwank. Read more→

The Floating Lightbulb: Time to Switch to CFLs?

For your consideration, The Floating Lightbulb: A Webcomics Eureka. The Floating Lightbulb (or TFL if you're cool) is Yet Another Blog About Webcomics. It presents a viewpoint about the webcomics industry that has been seen a million times, and presents nothing new or insightful to up and coming talent. So why am I wasting my time with the god forsaken tripe? Well, to be honest I'm just bored and wanted to write about something that sucked.

TFL is, like most webcomics blogs, entirely full of shit. But the icing on this particular cake is that the blowhard behind TFL has not one, but two incredibly derivative-looking comics to his name. The characters are simplistic, stiff, and easily drawn by any number of interns who can follow a simple model sheet. Both comics have latched onto what I consider to be an Internet meme, namely that "Communist Russia is awwwweeeesssoooomme." Having one character that talks in a Russian accent might be acceptable. But when such a large portion of TWO comics relies on this culture, it kind of strikes me as nothing short of a weird obsession. The plots are incredibly shallow and short enough so that a reader does not need to be particularly invested in the comic. All in all, these two comics reek with the odor of corporate comics.

This is amusing because the latest post (at the time of writing this) is a warning to all cartoonists to be wary of any corporate presence trying to get their grubby hands on the sweet, sweet nougat that is a cartoonists Intellectual Property. But I feel his warning is a bit misguided. He cites a recent dispute between DJ Coffman and a publisher he signed with. The problem is that dummy didn't realize what he was agreeing to. Now I understand that not everyone is in it to be famous or rich, but some people are, and they're going to want to sign with a publisher at some point. Warning these people against signing ANYTHING is dumb; they just need to be wary of what they are signing, and probably have another lawyer read it. If agreeing to give up your IP is something you're willing to do, then go for it dude. Millions are made just for coming up with Intellectual Properties for fancy corporations to have fun with.

The second sign that 'Scartoonist' is a blabbering idiot is that he takes Dinosaur Comics WAAAAY too seriously. Many a bloggist has attempted to dissect the enigma that is Dinosaur Comics to unlock some deeper meaning, some kind of social commentary, or a sign from god. But it's just some guy writing funny ideas and putting them in the mouths of dinosaurs. It's not that hard to figure out. From his language we can tell that 'Scartoonist' is not fond of Dinosaur Comics, which of course makes him worthy to define the line between 'comic' and 'not-a-comic'. Here, he provides samples of alleged comics where there is no hand-drawn art, simply pictures taken by the 'cartoonist' or otherwise assembled and dialog being written for all the characters, and Scartoonist has decided to let his readers pick which ones count as comics and which do not. Except... No one commented. So either no one cares about the boundary of cartooning, or no one reads his stupid blog? Since he generally gets at least 4 or 5 comments on any other post, I'm going to go with the former.

"Hey! HEY! If you want your comic to get indexed by Google, you should probably talk to me. I own a Webcomic link site, maybe you've heard of it?" This is the kind of egotistical posturing and self-importance that I haven't seen since the likes of Eric Burns. "Hey, if you want to get on my GOOGLE RANK 6 Webcomic List, just email me with a link and I'll see if it's good enough." I mean, not everyone is necessarily good enough for a GOOGLE RANK 6 site, of course. Scartoonist has got to have a tough screening process if he wants to maintain his status in the webcomics world.

Finally, I will discuss the post that inspired me to make this one. I'm sure many of you have heard of Your Webcomic is Bad and You Should Feel Bad, a blog that stole my schtick, and coupled it with a line lifted from Dr. Zoidberg hisself. Mr. Scartoonist, once again, takes things too seriously: A full 2 months after the last post from YWBYSFB, Scartoonist received the memo and finally addressed John Solomon. Defending Dresden Codak of all webcomics, Scartoonist paints John Solomon as being too emotional, too personal, and too gosh-darn mean. "Solomon is not going to change a single thing except lower the level of discourse and undermine the hard work and dedication that many creators bring to their comics. He may even deeply wound someone fragile enough to be vulnerable to his onslaught." Sweetie, if there is someone so fragile as to stop making art because of the likes of John Solomon, then removing him from the picture is just going to delay the inevitable.

In the end, The Floating Lightbulb is just another webcomics blog run by a self-righteous blowhard, who is wasting his energy preaching to the choir. So I say it's time to replace him with something a bit more energy-efficient. Read more→