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.