Hockey Zombie: Two Terrible Tastes That Taste Terribler Together

What do you get when you take a regular webcomic and give it a shitty writer? Well a lot of webcomics come out of that formula, I suppose, but one result is Hockey Zombie, a comic which combines zombies (on which my views have already been expressed) and hockey (on which my views don't need to be expressed because hockey is a dumb sport played by Canadians who can't be bothered to play something resembling a real sport. Chris van Gompel decided to combine these two atrocities in some sick, twisted effort to create the biggest atrocity in the history of atrocities.

Hockey Zombie has so many terrible strips it is hard to know where to begin. I guess blatant racism would be a good start, though. HZ also qualifies as a gamer comic. Heh. Portal. Unfortunately, most of the game comics don't require the game reference at all. Others are just plain disgusting. Some are both. None are good.

Van Gompel likes to think himself as some great crusader for Internet Justice. By jumping on the bandwagons of hating e-famous villains, he obviously hopes to pull in more readers and gain e-fame himself. Not so sadly, no amount of hatred bandwagoning will make Hockey Zombie popular, and maybe van Gompel should just focus on making shitty comics without a political agenda.

Another failed attempt at garnering e-glory can be seen in Hockey Zombie's technically annual Shark Week, where van Gompel rotoscopes some fucking sharks and puts retarded words in their mouths. The sharks always look terrible, and the jokes never take advantage of the sharks. Effectively it's a dumb, half-assed gimmick that doesn't accomplish anything.

The thing about Hockey Zombie is that it started out as a serial with a really dumb plot. However, as time progressed the comic was interrupted by more and more one-off pages, and pretty soon the "plot" was forgotten. That's okay, it was terrible. It was just a bunch of zombie jokes that have been told an infinite number of times until they got so old that they were in a nursing home when John McCain was born. But what it was replaced with was a terrible amalgamation of awful gimmicks and shitty cheap gags. Read more→

Digital Strips: Podcasting is a Stupid Format for Reviews

The podcast is a relatively recent phenomenon, and much like webcomics, it allows an excessive accessibility to a medium that was previously well guarded. In this case, radio shows are now something that can be made and produced by anyone with a microphone and access to the Internet. Abandoning the notion of Production Quality, one can discuss anything he chooses. Enhanced accessibility leads to some real shit being produced, and Digital Strips is no exception.

Digital Strips features (or claims to feature) 6 geeks who are too untalented to make their own webcomics and decide to talk about other webcomics into a Fisher Price Sing-Along Music Maker Microphone. On a weekly basis, they discuss a webcomic from the viewpoint of an easily amused simpleton whose only desire is to be taken seriously intellectually. Admittedly, this is a viewpoint I am unfamiliar with and therefore curious about. Of course, after one attempt to hear this viewpoint I realized my folly and stopped.

This particular podcast is further marred by the fact that there's not one consistent "host" but instead pulls three from a pool of six potential hosts. Each has a different quality of microphone with different settings, giving the show a disorienting and uncomfortable sound. In addition, by not having a consistent host, it becomes hard to identify one speaker and keep track of his personality. The listener has a hard time maintaining a scorecard for the host like one could easily do for a real radio show.

Another problem is that there is very lax structure for the podcast. Conversation often drifts from the topic into casual conversation and tangential topics. This creates a show that's holier than swiss cheese, and the reader will drift out during the dull parts and might miss when the show actually returns to significance. I often found myself skipping large chunks of each show to find something that was actually worth listening to.

Digital Strips also features a blog aspect which is less focused than the podcast and is hardly worth mentioning. However, I will, to point out a few posts which symbolize how off-the-mark the podcast is. First, XKCD is not the epitome of webcomics, and doesn't even approach the realm of "enjoyable webcomic." Treating it as such is a travesty unto God Himself. Second, women making popular and good webcomics is not shattering any glass ceiling whatsoever. Webcomics are a realm for people who could not make it in the world of print comics, so how does this success shatter any glass ceiling? Finally a game for the readrs: See if you can find all the atrocities within this Digital Strips Comic! First prize is some aspirin for the headache you contracted trying to analyze the comic strip.

Webcomics are ongoing things, reviewing a different one every week is a genuinely retarded idea. It would be similar to reviewing television shows as if they were movies. There are at least two ways to make this idea worse: Try to do the same thing more often, or do it in an entirely vocal medium, such as a podcast. Ultimately Digital Strips is a webcomic review podcast run by children with short attention spans and bloated senses of importance and intellect, trying to be Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and end up being The Rush Limbaugh Show with Rush Limbaugh. It's great if you're a teenager who thinks he's the next Edgar Allen Poe, but otherwise I'd suggest to find something else to listen to. Read more→

F Chords: A Twelve String Guitar With Only Six Strings

Until now, I have only discussed nobodies in the Wide World of Webcomics; this is intentional, of course, I had no desire to jump on the bandwagon of hating the popular kids for instant street cred. But now I'm ready to take on the Big Leagues, and since Kris Straub recently debuted F Chords (A Niche Comic for Musicians), I decided it was a good target to take on.

Niche Comics are any comic which appeals to a small group of people based on the subject matter (i.e. Beetle Bailey for anyone whose been in the Army, Garfield for anyone who owns a cat, or any Gamer Comic ever), and are inherently terrible because of this fact. After all, the best jokes are ones that everyone can understand, just like the best characters are ones that remind more people of themselves or people they know. This is why I like Batman, I know like 6 guys that are just like him.

F Chords features two hyperdorks who, naturally, have their own band where they play obscure melodies from an obscure genre. In addition to their atrocious hobby, they also work making terrible music that no one will enjoy or pay attention to. Essentially it's the basic "Two buddies trying to do what they love but sucking miserably at it" scenario, one of the staples of shitty webcomics.

Though it has many faults, the comic introduces the central conflict early: Ash (the hairy one) has a thing for Jackie Chin, Queen of Faux Punk, but Best Buddy Wade (the Vin Diesel wannabe) doesn't like her because she recognizes that he is, in fact, a meganerd. Of course, Wade doesn't really need to cockblock his buddy, since once Ash takes his galpal to his home at an Assisted Living Center, she'll be so turned off that she'll become a nun. Sadly, this conflict hasn't gone anywhere since it started, and has ceased to be a promising source of character development.

Being a Niche Comic, F Chords doesn't stand much of a chance of gaining popularity outside of garage bands and music teachers. By limiting the scope of the comic, Straub is effectively alienating the fans that he might have brought over from his other endeavors, since no matter how well he writes the jokes, as long as they're about music, no one will want to read them. Kris Straub is known for producing some of the best webcomics out there, but it might be time to play Taps for F Chords. Read more→

Fishtank Tango: WHY IS EVERYONE YELLING?

Fish are loud, noisy pets. They yell all the time, even when they're not saying anything particularly emotive. Also if you don't keep them clean, they will mutate and grow human bodies.

Fishtank Tango is a webcomic about two guys who live together and also work together at a pet store. At work they talk about boobs and look at boobs and talk to boobs. Oh yeah and one of them has a fish for a head for some reason. Together they also go to a bar run by a fake Irishman and fail to pick up bar skanks. Most jokes are either incredibly sexist and chauvinistic, or else they're terrible fish puns. At one time, Fishtank Tango ended for exactly one year after publishing a very creepy comic. The most obvious reason is that he likely got arrested for lewd misconduct and was locked up for about a year.

The writer is a terrible speller and his word processor gives us such gems as "Diner and Desert" and "WHATTT," as well as my favorite, "Before you was a boy with a fish......obsession But know we can officially call you a man! Or atleast close to it!" The grammar is terrible as well, indicating that the creator is either a 12-year-old boy, or not a native english speaker. Or he's just like everyone else on the Internet, and simply completely retarded.

A more significant problem is the constant and unending shouting. Since strip one, every character has yelled his lines, showing no nuance or subtlety, but rather putting everything out there to be judged. This problem has only escalated as time goes on, reminiscent of a situation where people yell louder and louder at each other, simply because they need to speak over each other. The mouths have actually gotten wider as time progressed.

But if we look deeper, the darker nature of Fishtank Tango emerges. Here we can see Mike Fishhead's friend and roommate talking to someone. If you'll notice, his hand looks strangely like a fish fin. What we can extrapolate from this is that Mike is actually a mad freak who befriends someone and slowly turns them into a fish, which he then sells in his pet fish store. The darker side of Fishtank Tango revealed, unfortunately nothing has been proven one way or another after 5 years.

Fishtank Tango is a generic webcomic with little real emotion or even characters deeper than a wading pool. However, it makes up for these shortcomings by being incredibly unfunny and terribly drawn. It may take ages before this comic finally kicks the bucket, since it's only published weekly, but when it does, I'll be there to flush it down the toilet. Read more→

Dead Winter: Another Damn Zombie Story

Zombies are an incessant cliche. There's not much left to be said about them that hasn't been said already. Their use as a metaphor for human nature is good, but tired, and their origins from unchecked and unprepared biological research are familiar and repetitive. Effectively, there is not much left to be said regarding zombies that hasn't been said already. However, my good friend 'S. Dave Shabat' believes differently.

Forming the same rag-tag group of urban citizens who happen to be well equipped with the knowledge and technical skills to survive a zombie infestation, just like almost every zombie movie, book, comic and game to date, Shabat seems to be drawing parallels between life before and after the zombie outbreak, and how both are so boring that the only color worth coloring is on the two main characters, the badass hitman and a british poet-slash-waitress. Exception occurs when the waitress is struck with mild delerium and her subconscious takes over forcing her to address issues her conscious mind is oblivious to. Unfortunately this issue is generally "What should I wear today?" rather than anything which would lead to personal growth and development.

The other main character, a professional hit man, fulfills the role of "kicking ass and smoking cigarettes while wearing custom-made sunglasses to look like a total badass heck yeah!" In actuality, his badasseries create little more than a flat character who is good for nothing more than getting the group out of a tight spot where kind words and esoteric facts won't suffice. While handy when surrounded by mindless killing contraptions, it doesn't provide much for the sake of narrative.

I offered Mr. Shabat a chance to interview, in an effort to defend his work, but realizing how hard-hitting my journalism was, he smartly refused to answer my pointed questions. Unfortunately, I don't give up that easily and decided to answer my own questions on his behalf:

Anti-Snark: So you decided to make a story about zombies, in a world where zombie stories are already plenty damn plentiful. What was your reason?

S. Dave Shabat: I had been playing a lot of Dead Rising lately and zombies are just really cool. Especially the way they're like, weak alone but find their strength in numbers? That's definitely really awesome.

AS: Which character do you identify with the most?

DS: Definitely Liz. I think she and I are on the same intellectual wavelength and have the same interests, but we're also pretty different. For instance, she has a nicer rack. But soon I hope to fix that.

AS: I really like Lou. You're not gonna kill him off, are you?

DS: Well normally I wouldn't kill and tell, but I wasn't planning on killing him. Of course, now that I know he's your favorite, you can consider him dead by Halloween.

AS: What kind of formal training or experience do you have?

DS: I have a Cintiq tablet. In this industry, that's all anyone needs.

AS: Well, thank you for talking with me

DS: No problem, it was either this or going to my grandmother's funeral.

Dead Winter is another boring, cliche comic about zombies giving us the same old narrative with the same old characters. Generally, I prefer comics to give me something unique and generally whimsical, rather than being stale and familiar. Ultimately, we all know how Dead Winter will end, because we've all seen ____ of the Dead, or played Resident Evil, or read any comic about zombies. Essentially they're all the same. I know what killed Dead Winter, and it wasn't a zombie. It was old age. Read more→