PSI: The Pressure to Make a Good Comic is Often Overwhelming (3 of 4)

The Circle Jerk is a useful tool for aspiring webcomic creators to generate public awareness of their creation. By doing crossovers with other unknown comics, one can triple his readership (from 3 to 9). While decent webtoonists often have to carve their readership on the merits of their own skills and word-of-mouth advertising, these less-than-talented people can swap fanbases with others simply by trading cameo appearances. This is because fans of terrible webcomics have no taste, and as such, will be willing to jump onto many other terrible webcomics just for the sake of having something to read. After I dipped my hand into the vat of volatile chemicals labelled "A Pessimistic Sense of Inadequacy" (more commonly known as PSI) I was immediately overwhelmed with Circle Jerkiness, as well as other terrible offenses added for color and odor.

PSI is the tale of Gordon Freeman's retarded half-brother Fes and a giant anthropomorphic rat Ernst (also known as a 'furry'). Together, these two travel with some girl with no fashion sense and whose only ambition in life is to become a furry. If you're not aware, Furries are people who like to think they are humanoid animals, and are often sexually aroused by a dog walking on its hind legs. They are often the targets of ridicule and harassment, and liken themselves to racial or religious minorities, but in actuality are closer to the rednecks from that trailer park on the other side of town, except they don't run meth labs.

For the past 11,000 months or so, PSI has been engaged in a gigantic circle jerk with other terrible webcomics. Extending for 100+ pages, with only a few non-crossover pages in between, PSI has been building itself up through others. Known only as the "Crossover Wars" (and actually the project of another terrible webcomic entirely), a Circle Jerk of massive proportions engulfed all of the untalented webtoonists around and made a mess of everyone and everything. Ultimately, this was admitted to be irrelevant to the PSI plotline and clearly nothing more than a ploy to increase readership. The problem with convoluted and extended crossover appearances is that it seriously muddles the storyline. People often lose interest in the original plot, and potential new readers feel overwhelmed that they have to read the archives of not only one, but several comics just to understand what is going on, and will usually decided to get their kicks elsewhere.

Another travesty is the insistence of the author to use bizarre and confusing onomatopaeia. While it doesn't do the same thing as almost every other terrible use of onomatopaiea and simply use a verb like 'flip' or 'jump' or 'toss' to indicate a sound, the usage of undeterminable sounds such as 'fwash' or 'z-zoft' or 'strrrrrrrrrrack' will alienate the reader who is unsure how these unusual sounds are supposed to sound, and strike me as an attempt to be a unique snowflake by using sounds which no one else has used. The end result, however, is a fair amount of noodle-scratching by readers and great targets for ridicule. The art is also terrible but I'm getting tired of mentioning it in every post I make so I'm gonna let it slide this time.

Many people often confuse 'readership' for 'quality,' thinking that the more readers a comic has, the better it is. There are, of course, many counter-examples to this statement. Simply whoring your characters out for readers is a terrible idea, since most of the fans generated by this act are going to fall under the "retarded, delusional and way too emotionally invested in this terrible webcomic" category. These types of fans are festering tumors on the body of webcomics, creating a sense of legitimacy for that mutation of a third arm or ninth finger that we see so often. Crossovers lead to massive growth in these tumors which result in blockage of both personal growth and fresh readership. Perhaps by removing the crossovers and those that utilize them, such as PSI, we can help alleviate some of the pressure.