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.