Rooster Teeth (aka College Dorm: The Webcomic)

"I Call It 'Bad Webcomic'"

You might have noticed, for the last few months, I have had an email link asking for reader submissions of comics to review. I did not have to wait long until I received a suggestion: Rooster Teeth comics, from the same people who brought you Red vs Blue. A cursory glance told me that the comic was terrible, but I couldn't put my finger on exactly what was primarily wrong about it. So I decided to go through the archive and make a list of everything that was missing, in order to discern what the cartoonist did wrong.

• 40% of the American Flag - While inserting someone else's artwork into a comic is generally reprehensible, as it looks incredibly awkward and wrong, there is an exception when it comes to national flags. When it is flat against a wall, a flag made in Photoshop is going to be indistinguishable from a flag grabbed off Wikipedia, as long as it's accurate. A US flag with only 25 stars and 11 stripes is close enough to fool the reader at first, but becomes more and more suspicious the longer its looked at, and is rather disconcerting in a 'humor' comic.



• A Clear Concept of How People Converse - In most RT conversations, the characters are performing an unnatural action known as 'palming.' Artists often feel a need to do something with the characters' hands, but usually have no idea what they should be doing. Consequently, characters are drawn palming, because doing nothing is an undesirable option. Additionally, the characters must ALWAYS be facing the camera, because otherwise we wouldn't know who they were. Even if it looks like their heads are on backwards, they must always look toward the reader!



• A Tenuous Grasp on Human Anatomy - I'll start with this: necks do not end in the center of the head. They go in the back of the head. They're also not a foot long. Some of these characters have massive noggins perched atop narrow stalks for necks. The clavicle does not attach to your back, and torsos don't look like that when they twist. The humerus is not attached to the ribcage, and pectoral muscles don't just disappear. I can see why these guys are grossed out.




"No, I'm Not Interested in Buying Eyelids in Bulk at a Discount"

• Upper Eyelids - Most emotion in RT comics are expressed by squinting the character's lower eye lids. In fact, the majority of panels feature a closed lower lid. It would be nice if this was some sort of satire of the common half-lidded expression found in most webcomics, but I really doubt that the artist is clever enough to come up with that. Instead, I think he's just trying to avoid falling into that quagmire, and managed to fall into it from the other direction.



• Jokes - I'm not sure I understand the point of this one. Blu-ray players exist outside of PS3s so why is this guy spazzing out? No one knows. Why is a man yelling at trees? Who cares? There are a lot of comics that don't have jokes included. I know we're in a recession, but this is ridiculous.



• Consistent Comic Resolution - Some of these comics are really really small, and some are really really big. It's really kind of annoying having to strain my eyes to read one, then having to scroll all over the place to read the next one. Please keep them a consistent size, so the pages aren't annoying to read.



• Positive Space - Yes, I know you don't want to crowd the panel with characters and dialog, but this amount of negative space is just ridiculous. The guy looks silly at that size, and just doesn't engage the reader like he would if he were filling up a bit more of the panel, especially in those two panels where nothing is happening. The same could be said of these two, as they would look better if they were filling up the panel, as they'd look closer together and give the impression that they are actually interacting. This is probably caused by the artist drawing the characters before even thinking about the word balloons, so he draws a lot of space for the balloons to go, just in case. In the future, I would reccommend sketching the whole thing out, text and all, so it doesn't feel like the comic has a bunch of visual gaps in it that divert the reader and eat his soul.




Ironically, It Doesn't Filter Out Red Vs Blue

• Fresh Ideas - If you've read 10 of these comics, you've pretty much exhausted the depth of Rooster Teeth's pool of ideas. For the most part, these comics are about 30-year-old men who act like they're still living in the college dorm. Cracking gay jokes and video game sex jokes like they're still as funny as they were then, but unfortunately they aren't. When a 20 year old cracks an immature joke, it's funny because you expect him to be immature. When an old man makes the same joke, however, it's just creepy, because the only people that age who make immature jokes are most likely sex offenders. The writers are aware of how stale the material is, because they've acknowledged that the main comic is not funny enough, and decide to include some zany background character doing something wacky, in order to ensure laughs.



• Shins - Apparently someone blew this guys shins off in the war with a machine gun, and they had to glue his feet to his knees. But I think that idea's already been done.

This list has made one thing about Rooster Teeth comics apparent: It's missing something. What that something is can only be determined by looking at this list and analyzing each missing piece. And I have finally discovered what is wrong with these comics. They lack one crucial element, the one thing that is necessary for any webcomic. Hopefully the cartoonists at Rooster Teeth can work on attaining this thing that they are lacking, because until they do their comics will be the most brainless abominations to ever exist, appealing only to idiotic squids. What is this solitary thing that they lack? That thing is talent. Read more→

Point Guardian: Nothing Super About This Hero

I Don't Like It Either, Buddy, But I've Got a Job to Do

Superhero comics are a lot of work. First you need to come up with a compelling character with unique talents, skills or equipment. Next you need an interesting setting for your hero to work in. Add in a supporting cast to balance him out, and give him a well thought villain to go up against. It's easy for a comic creator to come up with the ultimate superhero, one who is infallible in every way, and is undefeatable, but in order to keep this interesting, exponential power growth usually occurs. If the hero defeats all the challengers in his city, then he expands to the nation, and if he conquers them, then he expands to the entire world. This process keeps going and pretty soon he's punching God right in the jaw. Think Goku from Dragonball. By giving the hero character flaws and weaknesses, it's easier to keep his adversaries from becoming absurdly powerful. Yes, a superhero comic requires a lot of work before pencil ever meets paper, and there is no better proof of this than a webcomic known as Point Guardian.

Point Guardian is a comic done solely by Ben Carver, and it features the exploits of a superhero named Ultra whose powers include the ability to "at will, empower his body, giving him strength and abilities far beyond those of mortal men." With generic powers like that, it's no wonder that Ultra is the most popular superhero in the known universe. The comic 'covers' also give me the impression that he has the ability to transform from an Asian man into an albino. Point Guardian claims that it is "One of the first and few non-parody superhero webcomics on the 'Net!" Thankfully, this is true.

You WILL See a Lot of White Space in This Comic

One of his other unmentioned superpowers is the ability to smirk incessantly to the point of annoyance. It seems impossible that the artist can draw any expressive faces that aren't plastered with a smug little smirk. The ones that aren't smirking, are merely blank slates; devoid of any emotion whatsoever, they litter the page like tiny tombstones in this cemetery of a webcomic. The most important part of drawing an interesting character is giving them a full gamut of emotions, especially ones that can't be expressed with a smirk. In the short span of comics I read through for this review, I counted 181 smirks. Since that covers about 1 3/4 years, we're looking at a rate of over 100 smirks/year. Look at the cast page, even. Every character is smirking here. That's just silly. While a well placed smirk can give a villain a chilling demeanor, when the artist plasters them all over the place, they lose their effectiveness. My suggestion to the artist here is to practice drawing faces at various angles, exhibiting a slew of various emotions, until he's good enough that a third party can reasonably pick out what emotion is being conveyed.

Other than the excessive quantity of smirks, there's not much else for me to pick on, artistically. Of course, I mean that literally. There is really nothing to this art besides characters floating on a white void. Backgrounds only seem to be drawn when establishing the setting, and ignored during the bulk of the action. This kind of behavior removes the context from the action and places the characters in an action scene with no reason, other than to be actiontastic. In fact there was one instance where Carver decided to place the action inside a featureless white room, for no other reason than he'd not even have to establish the setting in the first place. In fact, even his establishing panels are utterly devoid of visual description. Carver chooses to draw the area from an angle where he can get away with drawing as few lines as possible. And the comic covers, a picture one would expect to be filled with some action-packed scene and filled with detail, are generally just dull shots of 1-3 characters in some vapid pose, on top of a cheap gradient fill, if even that. People want soul-crippling detail, and filling your panels with empty white space is a surefire way to bore them to death.

I Don't Know Who He Is, But I Bet You Five Bucks He's Smirking

As far as characters go, Point Guardian's Point City is populated with the most ho-hum of heroes, as well as the most vacuous of villains. A quick look at Captain Smirk and his Smirk Squad tells us all we need to know about how much effort Carver puts into his characters. Powers include the ability to alter matter and time at will, the ability to make someone feel good or bad just by touching them, and the ability to be a dragon. But that's not even the start of it! Each hero has a kid sidekick whose ability is exactly the same as his mentor's, just reduced in scale. So now we have Kid Smirk and the Junior Smirkateers to assist the Smirk Squad in their Smirkly duties. Villains are even less inspired. While some are as creative as "The Protagonist's Evil Twin" others are decidedly less so. An energy vampire who can absorb anyone's abilities simply gives the writer a crutch to lean on whenever he needs to give the villain a leg up. Other villains have abilities such as "really strong" or "gadgeteer" which are vague enough to give the writer leeway when conducting a match-up. The final antagonist is the ruler of an evil space empire, which as we all know, is where writers pull villains from when they've hit a barrier on how powerful a person could reasonably be on earth. Pulling villains from space is the first sign of a desperate writer, since it simply means he can't write a convincing human villain.

Developing the relationships between characters is another aspect of comic making that Carver has failed at. Two characters are abruptly revealed to be mother and child, only so that it will seem more dramatic when, a scant three pages later, the mother attempts to kill her own child. Carver has no idea how to write two characters such that their relationship to each other genuinely increases the dramatic tension between them. Instead he relies on tropes and cliches without properly developing them so that they're actually effective. Most are applied at the last minute, as though the author simply had them as afterthoughts, thinking "oh, this meaningless fact would make the upcoming scene more dramatic!" The truth is, most readers see through this easily, which results in a cheapened event, rather than heightened drama. This, more than anything, makes me question how much of Point Guardian is planned out in advance.

Superhero Comics are rarely, if ever, strictly about a person with superpowers fighting some threat to humanity. There is often an internal struggle between his heroic life and his personal life. He may make poor life decisions, or be distracted into slipping up at a crucial moment. The point is, there is often a lot of detail peppered into one of these comics, illustrating as much about the character as possible. Point Guardian, on the other hand, gives its best effort to create as little detail as possible. Even potentially action-filled events are cut short because it would require more detail. By putting more effort into properly developing the world his characters live in, as well as the characters themselves, Ben Carver could have made Point Guardian into an interesting comic. Unfortunately what he gave us was nothing more than an amateurish attempt to come up with the best superhero: One who has infinite power potential, a broad scope of abilities, and an incorruptible spirit. This is the most boring superhero. If he was the one slated to rescue me, I think I'd opt to remain in mortal peril. Read more→

Dueling Analogs: Babbling Cintiqs

You Said It, Man

An artist should never blame his tools for his poor work. Accepting that personal shortcomings lead to a less-than-perfect product is the first step towards improving him or herself. Conversely, an artist should never expect his product to improve simply by acquiring some special tool. The Wacom Cintiq tablet is often lauded as the pinnacle of webcomic artistry. Many webcartoonists will needle their readers for donation money to "make the comic better!" Unfortunately, if your ideas are crap, there is no magical tool anywhere in the world that will make it enjoyable.

Dueling Analogs is, first and foremost, a gaming webcomic. We all know how trite and overused that concept is, but let's humor the creator, Steve Napierski, and review it like a real webcomic, shall we?

Artistically, Dueling Analogs is atrocious. Most characters are traced (or "referenced") from some piece of official art, and photoshopped around into some weird, jerky, awkward pose. Any original character designs look goofy, bizarre, or otherwise disfigured. And did you notice that all his slimmer character designs always wear turtlenecks? I guess Napierski just has no idea how to draw a proper neckline, so he just hides it with someone's fat head or anything else to disguise a character's neck.

You Need a Cintiq For This?

Of course the artist's skills don't really matter much when most of the comics aren't even being drawn. A large portion of Dueling Analogs's archive is comprised of these kinds of comics; pictures of consoles being copy/pasted into the comic and treated as actual characters. This is quite possibly the laziest thing a person could do in order to poke fun at how a console is being managed. Additionally, Napierski seems to have a strong inferiority complex, since he has a massive tendency to post strips where he apes another cartoonist's artistic style (unfortunately he still writes the same terrible jokes). There really is no humor in copying another's art, and it provides a poor substitute for actual skill, so why does Napierski insist on these ripoff strips? My only guess is that he is dissatisfied with his work and uses these strips to fantasize about being any cartoonist with more skill than he has. These two types of comics comprise about half of the Dueling Analogs archive

But the iniquity of Napierski's art is amplified by his audacity to ask for donations so he can purchase the aforementioned Cintiq tablet. Since nearly 75% of his art is traced and/or photoshopped, one wonders why he'd need a tablet at all. The air of desperation reeks around Steve Napierski, since he believes that this magical device will make him a better cartoonist. Sorry Steve, but the truth is, you'll only get better through hard work and practice (and this doesn't mean just making more terrible comics!). Take an art class or three, Steve, and maybe you can be just like your many heroes.

The key to writing a decent gaming comic is to remain unbiased. Poking fun at everyone will make it a lot easier for anyone to enjoy the comic (this goes for political comics too!). Napierski does a poor job of hiding his Sony Fanboyism, which makes him sound rather defensive or desperate in some strips. It also helps to have a unique viewpoint on the subject in order to avoid repeating a joke the reader has already heard before. This joke has been repeated in so many forms that it has officially gotten stale. Please stop rehashing it, guys. If you can't come up with an original joke (or at least one that's not quite so stale) then perhaps you should rethink your choice of hobby.

Ripping Off Penny-Arcade Just Makes You Look Like a Tool

Other times, it becomes very difficult to identify just what Napierski is trying to convey. His inability to properly write a joke thwarts even the simplest strips, reducing them from "terrible gag" to "incomprehensible mumbling". He also has problems making the dialog concise enough to fit inside the panel. Solution? Just add speech balloons OVER the panel. It's the internet, who's going to know? Well I'm going to tell all of you that this is a crappy, inelegant solution. It is better to trim your script down so that it will fit than to just cram the words in any way you can. Why? People aren't going to want to read a novel just to hear a single terrible joke.

Dueling Analogs has fought tooth and nail to be at the bottom rung of the Ladder of Gaming Webcomics. Napierski has succeeded in this endeavor by placing other Gamer Comics above his own, through the act of giving them special references in his own comic. Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but at the end of the day you're still just ripping someone off for easy hits. Besides, copying their work is not going to give you some grand insight into the deepest secrets of art. It's just going to make you look like a sleazy forger. The answer to self-improvement lies not in acquiring better tools, but learning how to use the tools you do have properly. As soon as Steve Napierski learns this basic fact, the his Analogs will finally be able to win a Duel.

Read more→

Tally Road: An Infinite Number of Potholes

The Donuts Are a Metaphor for a Terrible Webcomic

Shortly after the popularization of webcomics, some moron decided that it would be a good idea to institute a purely voluntary rating system, much like the one used for television. Ratings for webcomics are incredibly useless since the only things anyone cares about is whether or not there are exposed genitalia. Additionally, the host of the content is required to evaluate it himself, and assign the rating he thinks is most appropriate. With no universal standard being applied, a rating is worth about as much as a fettuccine noodle without any Alfredo sauce. And then there is an even greater travesty. Some cartoonists actually create content and try to shoehorn it to a rating, which is entirely and utterly backwards from the original premise. Tally Road (by a man known only as Jinxtigr) is one of these comics.

The first thing you'll notice about Tally Road is that it is another furry comic. The second thing you'll notice, is that it is uglier than sin itself. These two details, combined with the very small "Web-MA for Adult Content," should give you pause. And I'm the one who has to review this for you. The main page is utterly devoid of details and features, which is great for keeping clutter down, but is terrible for actually navigating the site. There is no concentrated archive page, or even a summary of the plot, characters or setting, so readers are required to read through as far as they can stand to figure out what the stupid thing is about. The only things you will find on the front page is a comic, basic navigation links (first, previous, etc.), a link to something called "Library" (more on this later), a blog post and one of those annoying chatterbox things. It's all black on white, which is about as bland as a Nilla Wafer, but without actually being useful in any recipes.

Going into greater depth on the art, it's a wonder Jinxtigr thinks he could ever make anything worthy of a "Web-MA" rating.

Eww Gross What is Going On Here?

Anatomically, the characters are so over-simplified, so basic, that it becomes impossible to discern an arm from a foot, much less tell which way they're pointed. There are only two characters, really, a dog and a cat. All characters have only minor variations on these two shapes, and it becomes very difficult to differentiate two of the same species. Male and female characters are (sometimes) differentiated by an extra line across the chest to indicate a breast, I guess, but that is rarely sufficient to identify that they are actually different people. During the comic's only known sex scene (don't click on this at work, moron), I can honestly say that I didn't realize the characters were both male until I was on my fourth pass through the archives.

The plot is incredibly jerky and disjointed, with consecutive pages often not showing any kind of coherent relation to each other. Characters just pop in or disappear with no explanation or even any acknowledgement. The protagonists (?) were very quick to abandon their own objectives for those of another, and failed to even go through any kind of argument or bargaining. Such weak motivation leads to apathy from the readers. No one will ever want to care about a character who is so weak-willed that he can't even follow through with any single conviction. Any attempt to inject humor into the comic falls flat, usually because of poor timing, but sometimes it's just an irrelevant joke that isn't consistent with the form of the comic. We can assert that Jinxtigr is worse at telling jokes than he is at telling a coherent story, which is quite an accomplishment, considering how terrible the entirety of Tally Road is.

Under the aforementioned 'Library' link, you can find various scrawlings that Jinxtigr has attempted to pass off as short stories and webcomic reviews. I'm not a literary critic, but I think it will suffice to say that the short stories are terrible. As for the webcomic reviews, we must ask whether Jinxtigr has any moral authority to provide an opinion regarding other webcomics. Sometimes offering no substantial opinion on a comic, he feels the need to simply talk about it, and compliment it even though he has no understanding of it. Not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings, he offers only kind words to the comics he reviews, feeling some kind of obligation to promote it. Listen, reviewers, if you are always patting everyone on the back, you've already lost as a reviewer. Not everything is good, and if you claim that your subject is good when it isn't, no one will take your opinion seriously. If you like everything, no one will want to use your opinion as a gauge for the quality of comics. You don't have to be excessively negative, but fellating everyone who asks for a review is not going to earn you any respect.

So what is Tally Road good for? Other than poorly drawn guns, awful sexual puns, and anarchist furry sons, not much at all. It gives us an excellent argument against the act of creating content to fit a certain content rating group, and probably even voluntary rating systems in general. The correct way to approach a project such as a webcomic is to create the product you want, and if anyone actually cares then you can assign a content rating to it, or better yet, let someone else do it. As far as Tally Road is concerned, my only advice is to take a detour because this road is just one massive pothole. Read more→

CAR: Ignoring the 'Check Engine' Light for 30,000 Miles (and Counting!)

There are millions of webcomics out there on the internet designed to appeal to niche markets and strange hobbies. No matter your interests, there is probably a webcomic that caters to them. Even if those interests are really dumb. But no matter how dumb the hobby, there are people who are really into these things. I guess maybe they seem dumb to me but these people really enjoy them so who am I to knock it? Or so I thought, until I met possibly the dumbest hobby-comic ever.

CAR (the author insists on the all-caps title of this abomination) is about driving around in a car. That is pretty much the premise of the entire comic. You can probably imagine the kinds of jokes that arise from car driving, and how Jeffrey Faden has managed to stretch this into 250 strips is mind-boggling. Granted, about half of them are about CAR ending or restarting; the joke has been used so much, it's collecting Social Security checks. As for other jokes, "WOAH MY CAR HAS A LOT OF BUTTONS AND SWITCHES!" gets dull fast. Driving like an old man isn't funny either. Basically there are two jokes about cars and they're both pretty bad already.

CAR reeks of the same technophilic MacFaggotry that rubs most people the wrong way. I know you think you're cool, Jeff, but no one cares about whatever gadget you got that provides marginal utility. An obsession with techno music is just an extension of technophilia, because people can act snooty and pretentious about obscure DJs that no one will ever hear, and they sound terrible anyways. If someone you know won't shut up about techno music, then they have also drunk the Apple Kool-Aid (that actually sounds pretty rad, apple flavored Kool-Aid) and you should probably cut all ties with them.

There is very little artistic difference between the earliest comic and the latest comic. Apart from the addition to gradient coloring, the characters look like strange amalgamations of old, cheap anime, and crude doodles done in the back of Freshman Lit. There is no need for more than one pose, since all characters are just talking heads used to further a dialog. And the characters have no consistent characterization, they are simply used arbitrarily to provide a foil to (or give aid to) the author-insert's wacky shenanigans. They are not people, but voices heard by the author that he responds to and interacts with. Essentially, there is only one character, and that is Jeffrey.

Despite grave reservations, I decided to track down Jeff Faden and ask him what, if anything, inspired him to keep coming back to this awful webcomic. Surprisingly, he consented to an interview. My most ardent readers will remember once before when I did an interview, the difference this time is that I'm actually interviewing someone else. So without further ado, I present a depressing interview with an unhinged individual: Jeffrey Faden, author of CAR.

Anti-Snark: CAR has been around for about 6 years; have you learned anything about comic making in that time, and if so, why haven't you applied it to CAR?

Jeffrey Faden: My greatest comicking education comes from Scott McCloud's timeless book, Reinventing Comics, where he leverages the power of the Internet as a content delivery medium that reaches consumers across the world and touches them with the magic of juxtaposed pictoral (or other) images in a deliberate sequence. I've learned, by studying that book, that you don't need to put forth anything with acceptable art, writing, layout, or sense of humor - what is more important is whether your webcomic is accessible to people in wheelchairs and fires off all of its JavaScript successfully. This is why CAR is valid XHTML and looks pretty much worse, and has less readers, than it did in 2002.

AS: God, that's pretentious as fuck. Now, CAR has been stopped and restarted 5 or 6 times. Why do you keep going back to the same failed comic instead of trying something fresh and new? Are you afraid of success, or just change?

JF: It's kind of you to suggest that success would be the result of future endeavours in comickery! Rather, I would see success as the total halting of CAR altogether, along with a pledge to never create another comic again. But just between you and me, I've got a secret - the reason CAR has no ads and does not advertise is because its revenue is more than taken care of by formerly Honda Motor Company, and now Toyota Motor Corporation executives who pay me large sums of cash for every frame in which one of their cars appears. (This is why I have made so many comics that repeat the same frame over and over.) Unfortunately, one reason for a 3-year hiatus is due to a giant legal battle with Honda in which I plead to stop making CARs, resulting in the reclamation of my actual car. Fortunately, this also resulted in the end of CAR, until I foolishly forged the same agreement with Toyota three years later. It seems as if I will be forever doomed to make mundane traces of the interiors of a Prius, passing a tedious process off as actual talent.

In summary, it's because I am very rich.

AS: Too bad you still can't afford any talent. Your art is sloppy and your writing is miserable. Which reminds me, why is it that there really aren't any consistent characters in CAR? You just seem to pick from a character design based on someone you know, and then write them in a way that you feel fits the comic. Are you just incompetent, or are the people you know really this inconsistent?

JF: Here's the process:
1. Person I marginally know wants to be put in CAR.
2. I decide I might as well, because I have nothing else to write about.
3. Person doesn't realize they've been put in CAR because I don't tend to keep up with people I've met in real life.
4. I use the character for a considerable amount of time and eventually twist their personality into an unlikeable, completely uncharacteristic mess.
5. Eventually the person notices they're still being used, and removes me from their Facebook friends list.
6. I pretend the character never existed; process repeats.

AS: That sounds like a load of BS. Have you ever considered attending a workshop on writing jokes or drawing people so they don't look like they have a genetic defect where they appear half anime?

JF: When it comes to improving my craft, I like to heed the words of my favorite contemporaries, Mookie and Absath - "if they're buyin', no use in tryin'." Of course, in my case, people aren't buyin', but I like to humor myself into thinking that they would if I cared enough to sell something.

Also, "Half anime" is probably the best compliment I have ever gotten.

AS: Who is your mechanic?

JF: Jesus. The Jesus that atheists worship.

AS: I don't think he's a licensed mechanic.

JF: That would explain the chorus of angels every time I turn on the air conditioner.

AS: Don't you know A/C ruins your gas mileage? If you really loved the planet you wouldn't use it. You don't hate the planet, do you?

JF: CAR still exists. Isn't that your answer?

AS: I'm afraid so.

As you can see, Jeffrey is clearly an imbalanced individual, who values his iPod more than his suspension. Making a comic about cars might not be a bad idea if you are focusing on maintenance or whatever (and actually know anything about cars), but if you're making a comic about just driving cars, you might want to rethink whether people consider you an interesting person or not. If your comic isn't interesting, then no one is going to read it, because it's just that dull. Read more→

Menage a Three: Betty & Veronica Give Archie Blue Balls

Sure, porn comics can increase your readership with the amount of horny teenagers, but what happens when you make a porn comic without any actual porn? Holding back might create an air of legitimacy amongst less-than-savvy reviewers, who might convince themselves that since there is no nudity, it's not actually a porn comic. This would relieve a sense of shame the creator might have about making such a comic since it's not really porn. "Pornographers are sleazy, creepy people, and that's not me!" they convince themselves. Well I regret to inform you that you are a pornographer, and you are sleazy and creepy. Blueballing your readers just makes you sleazier, because despite being ashamed of what you've made, you continue to make it, because you just love the attention.

Menage a Three is the tale of a poor virgin nerd whose old roommates turn out to be gay (and boning each other) so they are immediately replaced by two totally hot girls! It takes place in the deepest, darkest, dankest bowels of French Canada, which I guess is the home of the artist, Gisèle Lagacé, and I guess explains the title, a french term for a threesome, used only by pretentious yuppies who want to make sex sound classy. At any rate, the lonely nerd suffers a hilarious quantity of sexual frustration due to the fact that he'd rather read comic books and watch anime (and porn, and anime porn) instead of socializing with actual people and getting to know girls. Uh oh, I think I might have alienated some (all) of my readers.

Artistically, Menage a Three has been compared to Archie, with a hint of anime. It is full of traditional anime shorthand and tropes, like the bloody dork nose, sweatdrops, these bizarre rivers draining from eyes, little child versions of the characters for no reason, scribbles above the head of a frustrated character, the list goes on. Every strip is an homage to the honored Japanese tradition of abstracting every emotion to a mere symbol on the character's face. Obviously Giz knows her audience is primarily anime-loving virgins, some of which can only get off to anime porn, so she has added these elements to make them feel more comfortable.

The Archie influence is more than just in the art, however. Many of the goofy puns and trite sight gags are the kind of junk you would expect to see in Archie comics, except for the porno filter applied later in photoshop. The plots are generally mundane and Archie-esque, such as "Day at the Beach" or "Moving Day" where the biggest conflict is whether to eat chicken or hamburgers. The dialog is cheesier than ballpark nachos, and the characters act about as believably as Keanu Reeves. It's not really hard to put a sexually repressed nerd in a frustrating situation with two girls, so why not try a little harder to do it a little better? I guess the Gizzer isn't as committed to this concept as she wants us to think she is.

The characters themselves are very annoying. I don't mean "oh his flaws are so annoying, why do they put up with him." I mean "who could put up with this guy for more than a minute, his behavior is so irritating!" The large french woman, Didi speaks in Frenglish, often swapping between English and French at bizarre times. Speaking between two languages is a mannerism I have never seen done well, as the authors doing it have a tendency to just swap out words and phrases at random, without really thinking about which ones they're doing or why. A little research into this behavior would go a long way, but it's not really worth it, since it really adds nothing to her character other than "she's french." The scrawny "punk rock" (poser) chick Zii has massive boundary issues, and I find it hard to believe that she has gotten no reactions worse than rolled eyes, a shrug and an "oh Zii!" Her behavior is generally a subconscious desire for attention, and if you know someone like this, you know that attention-seeking behavior is always incredibly annoying. The comic book hypernerd, Gary, is a pathetic whiner who always looks like he's about to break out in tears. His inability to enjoy himself makes him a drag on everyone else and his constant protests make everyone want to leave him at home. These terrible characters are about as compelling as a documentary on French Canada, and they certainly make me wish I could just close the browser so I wouldn't have to read this terrible webcomic. Unfortunately, I have to, for your sake.

Menage a Three is a porn comic, without the pesky burden of actually having any porn. The premise of one sexually repressed guy living with two girls was more entertaining back in the 70s when it was Three's Company. I'm not being facetious, Three's Company is about twenty times better than Menage a Three could ever be, simply because it isn't ashamed of itself. Unlike most webcartoonists, Gisele Lagace has at least some artistic talent, but the fact that she is wasting it on this amalgamation of atrocities convinces me that she has no desire to become a great artist, and prefers simple stories for simple people. The Jizzer has given us a terrible webcomic, and expects to cash in quick with the promise of pornographic content, even though she has no idea of giving anyone anything more than a stray nipple. If you want a compelling character-based story wrought with sexual frustration, there are plenty of better ones out there that aren't just sleazy porn. And if you want porn, there's better places for that too. Menage a Three is simply the equivalent of trying to watch the scrambled channels on your TV. Read more→

Hijinks Ensue (In the Loosest Sense of the Term)

Terrible webcomics are fairly abundant on the Internet, but most are not worth my time to discuss here. Some are so commonly reviled that I believe ripping into them would just be redundant on my part, and others are so uninspired that it's obvious they won't last long enough to give me enough to really work with. It is truly rare to find a terrible webcomic with enough of an archive to give me something to work with, that hasn't already been picked clean by the other vitriolic webcomic reviewers around. I believe I have hit a veritable treasure trove, however, with Hijinks Ensue, a wretched hive of MacFaggotry, pop culture addiction, and one guy in the corner yelling "INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE!!" Well, maybe it does, but this is a particular set of "information" that we should keep locked in a hidden vault underground to forget about forever.

Artistically, Joel Watson is atrocious. H.E. looks like some sort of hideous amalgamation of the late Movie Comics and the abominable Shredded Moose (which I will probably save for another day). The artist clearly has no confidence in his own abilities, since he feels the need to draw young GENERIC FOX PRESIDENT with the goatee seen in earlier panels, so the reader knows who the kid is. Facial expressions are stiff and unvaried, while poses are robotic and jerky, giving the characters a sense of realism not seen since robots enslaved humanity. Because of the terrible art, this joke falls flat, since a casual reader wouldn't know the difference between this Eli character and the original, without close examination. The guy needs to study some anatomy, because no one's neck should stick out like this, nor should one's eyes be haphazardly bulging from one's head. Unfortunately, the art is not the worst part of this comic.

Putting the art aside, there is still plenty of terrible in this comic. The excessive addiction to television and movies is offputting, especially since there is rarely a joke about either that can be made funny by a webcomic. First of all, most of the shows enjoyed by nerds generally make fun of themselves by being so terrible. But when a nerd tries to defend these shows by appealing to some universal code of dorkery, it's not funny or amusing, just depressing. Second, if you can't stop watching a show because it has turned bad (or always been bad) then you deserve whatever misery you receive. Lastly, movie and television jokes often require that the reader has watched the movie or show in question, and if he hasn't, it is rarely funny. Also, you can't include spoilers in the joke in case people are intending to watch it, but haven't yet, so that cuts down on quite possibly a million potential jokes. Ultimately, a comic about movies or television shows is usually not worth it, considering that it often ends up being a very weak joke that few will get (or want). Because they are passive media, you can't make jokes about simple mechanics like videogames can do, and aren't broad enough to encompass a large portion of readers like current events tend to do.

But worse than the pop culture minutia, I feel, is the torrent of incorrigible MacFaggotry that permeates this webcomic like grease on a pizza. The worst thing about Apple products is the smugness that surrounds its consumer base so thickly that you could cut it with a dull knife. Apple fans have a tendency to treat Steve Jobs as the second coming of Jesus Christ, and every product he craps out as manna from on high. They admittedly acknowledge that they will buy anything Apple releases despite whether they really truly want them, especially when they know that a better model will be released a year or so later. Instead of waiting until the value fits the price, Jobsians will buy up everything and get angry about it later. And when a product with even remote similarity to an established Apple product is released, such as Microsoft's Zune, MacFags get extremely butthurt about people getting excited about an alternative choice to their beloved Apple, and call it such things as "inadequate," "second-rate" and "crappy."

And then there's a bizarre amount of hypocrisy. Berating Microsoft for their latest ad campaign where they show the diversity of PC users as being "off-target," while the Mac ads have become increasingly negative makes me wonder if people like Joel Watson can even compare something as transparent as an ad campaign, or if they simply follow the Apple party line. Harassing Wal*Mart for selling DRM protected music when the iTunes store is essentially nothing but DRM protected media is stupefying. Shifting blame to the manufacturer instead of the distributor with baseless accusations is the kind of selfish fanboyism I've come to expect from the MacFags out there. I could go for days giving examples of Apple fanboys attacking other companies for "reprehensible acts" while defending Apple for those exact same acts. Vista is too restrictive with respect to the consumer experience? Better defend Apple's restrictions regarding the consumer experience!

And what group of Applefans would they be if they didn't have a completely unnecessary podcast? I listened to one or two and all I can say is "ugh." It's basically an amalgamation of all the jokes they couldn't frame as a comic strip, as well as boring, detached-from-reality commentary, much like the ones that can be found under the comic strips. Who wants to listen to this terrible comic as a podcast after reading this terrible comic as a webcomic? Not me, that's for sure. And I'm surprised that a webcomic run entirely by MacFags has such poor site design. Framed with massive ads, the actual strip is always pushed over to the right, where, if you don't have your browser window full-screened, requires that the reader scroll over to read it. How irritating! There is an additional sidebar on the RIGHT side, under the comic, where Joel Watson begs for donations followed by another ad. Joel even considers this atrocious comic his full-time job, and wants to increase his income from it to self-sufficient levels. Hey, if you want to make a little more money, just add a few more ads! Separate each blog post with an ad, sell ads in your podcast, just make more of them!

If you want to turn comicking into a sufficient source of income, you should be prepared to churn out more than 3 comics a week. You're going to have to bust your ass to make a living in this world, half-assing a comic without decent art or subject material and hanging out with your friends in front of a microphone is not going to cut it. Streamline your frontpage so that it isn't absolutely burdened with thousands of links and ads. A minimalist site design would serve you well, especially considering your intended audience. As you are now, Hijinks Ensue, you are the most basic incarnation of "terrible." Oh, and what the hell is this? Simplifying a candidate like this is insulting not only to the candidate, but also your readers. Do you not think they're smart enough to make this kind of decision based on actual facts, instead of simply following whatever you say? Well maybe not, since they think your comic is worth reading. Forget I said anything.

Hijinks Ensue is a webcomic that I find to be very valuable, not because it has any redeeming qualities, but because it has none. A truly terrible webcomic like this usually does not have a substantial body of work for me to review, and when one does, it is often already well-known enough that I would essentially be beating a dead horse. This comic is basically the worst I have seen all year, and I appreciate it for giving me something to review. However, now that I have reviewed it, I kindly ask that these hijinks cease ensuing, because they are not at all amusing, just noisy and annoying.

Tuesday Addendum: Oh god I had spent so long working on this terrible webcomic that a few things I intended to mention failed to make it in, because by the time I finished the penultimate paragraph, I was already trying not to vomit all over my laptop.

The blog posts that accompany every comic page are so self-fellating, so auto-congratulatory, I wonder if Watson's head would explode if someone informed him that he is NOT the center of the Internet. They also end up inadvertently explaining the joke in case someone didn't get it (and wanted it in the first place). Lets face it, Joel, you're not that clever, so quit patting yourself on the back. Just stick to related topic links and pull your head out of the clouds. Oh wait I forgot that Mactards can't comprehend the concept of separating their ego from their writing. My bad.

One page in particular raised my ire, and it's something I have railed against before. Some webcartoonists don't grasp the concept of Services. You PAY people to do things so YOU don't have to. Even if it is something as menial as printing out your awful comic to glossy paper. If you don't like paying the service charge, then just roll up your sleeves, buy the supplies you need to do it yourself, and GET TO WORK. No one is forcing you to go down to Kinko's to print out a comic to sell to schmucks for an extra $10 in your pocket. It's not like you're even selling the original artwork. I guess all the idiots really do have too much money.

I apologize for missing these two atrocious aspects of this comic the first time through. I guess I'm going to have to start writing an outline down on paper beforehand to make sure that all my vitriol is fully expended the first time through. Read more→

Easy Skankin': Sex Smells

A wise marketing guru once said 'Sex Sells,' which is generally true. Unfortunately, it requires a subtle touch to work appropriately, and the majority of amateurs fail to make it work. In the world of webcomics, this is no different. Novice artists attempt to use a scantily clad lady with obnoxious bosoms to advertise their webcomic. Sadly, it's a terrible representation of the comic itself, which is how readers will be retained, and the girl is usually drawn terribly due to a bone deficiency. When you cram the 'sex sells' mantra into your comic as hard as you can, however, you usually end up with an overfilled gonorrhea twinkie, where the excess just oozes out the ends.

Easy Skankin' reads like the comic of someone who missed the lecture in Marketing 101 where they discussed the 'Sex Sells' theorem, and she got the notes from the stoned dork who sits in the back of the classroom playing world of warcraft on his laptop. Artistically, it's a flop. The whole idea is to use attractive, accessible people to sell your product, not the gutter trash who produces or consumes it. What we are presented with is female characters whose shoulders are much wider than their waists (and I mean insanely so), elongated necks (the extra bones allow for increased rotation of the head), taffy-arm syndrome (muscles are REALLY hard to draw anyways), breasts that look like they were stapled to the ribcage (because that's where they are, right?), extremely low collar bones (which at least makes the low hanging breasts less weird), plastic molded hair glued to the scalp (witty aside), and all with the lingering stench of anime permeating the air.

Before attempting to pass a drawn female figure off as 'attractive,' the artist needs to at least have a grasp of anatomy approaching tenuous, and Andi Wrede's grasp is arthritic. The anime emulation starts her off on a bad foot, and drawing the figures solely around the waistline just leads to worse art. Trying to make the end result look sexy is like dressing up a manatee in a prom dress.

A corollary to the "Sex Sells" doctrine is that the product still has to be viable on its own. Trying to sell edible dynamite by putting it in a bikini is still not going to move a lot of units. A droll journal comic with a paper thin author-insert character which is more depressing when you realize that Easy Skankin' is more about what the author wishes her life was like, rather than what it really is, especially since it's not all that ambitious. Wanting to be found attractive is a common goal for many people, but what I find mockable is her desire to be able to mock others without feeling a sense of hypocrisy about it. Fortunately for my readers (or unfortunately) I feel no sense of hypocrisy about mocking anyone, despite their level of talent relative to my own.

Another marketing tip for Andi Wrede: Supply and Demand only works when you charge for your product. Artificially increasing demand by lowering supply isn't something I'd advise for a free webcomic. Your webservers producing an "Internal Server Error" every other time I hit that next button really isn't helping my opinion of your comic. Either shell out some extra money to keep it up more, or just take it down entirely, I'm just not a fan of the otherworldly ghostlike existence of a site.

When marketing a webcomic, one has to focus on the product's strengths and pass over the weaknesses. When the comic is nothing but weaknesses, use sex to sell your webcomic. And if you can't draw well enough to successfully draw something "sexy" then you might want to consider art classes. Easy Skankin' suffers from a vast array of problems, just as many artistic as not. Personally I'd advise you to stay away from this comic, or if you can't due to reasons of stupidity, make sure to use protection. Read more→

BetaPwned: Hey Look! I'm a GIRRRRRLLLLLL (2 of 4)

I've always felt that, in order to improve one's skills, an artist must surround himself with works greater than his own. If you're the best, however, all you can really do is keep on dragging on, or quit while you're ahead. When I decided to write about BetaPwned, I first saw this page and thought "Another fan of awful webcomics decided to make one of her own," but after reading through the archives I realized that she WAS surrounding herself with better webcomics, because BetaPwned is atrocious. That other part is still true, though.

BetaPwned is a journal comic, which is inherently terrible because no one's day-to-day life is so interesting that it is entertaining to outsiders. Exaggerating these events can sometimes work, but a bad writer will exaggerate the wrong things in the wrong direction and the result is just weird. But the biggest problem is that the author rarely feels the need to give the characters any depth. Since they're based on real people, they automatically have the depth they need and there's no need to explore the characters further. The end result is a main character whose only character trait is "girl." The only reason for such a simple character is to draw in male readers who don't even know what a girl is, and the author character shares "interests" designed to attract these nerdular readers, such as webcomics and video games, though these are not stated in anything more than passing reference.

The art is terrible, but that's true of almost every terrible webcomic. Frankly, I'm getting tired of saying it. All the heads are lumpy sacks of bowling balls, with facial features spread over it like jam on rye bread. The characters look like cardboard cutouts, which could easily be remedied by varying the line thickness used in inking (this is true for a lot of comics, if you're reading and this is your problem, give this solution a try! But leave a comment with a url of your comic before you do so I can make fun of how terrible it is now). The flatness gives a weird contorted look to many of the poses, since there's no way to judge depth. There are more problems with the art but I honestly don't feel like doing that right now.

The worst offense committed by BetaPwned is the existence of "Dear Diary" comics, which is just musings of the author placed on a notebook. These things have no business being passed off as "comics" and I consider it offensive to the readers that this happens. If you want to write your terrible musings and have people read them, get a twitter account. Most of the non-diary comics have more words than the diary ones, which is strange because I expect more words to be in a book than a comic page.

Most webcomics are created by amateurs who are only doing it as a hobby. They see webcomics they like and decide to follow suit. By emulating better comics, a hobbyist can find ways to improve his own skills. However, emulating terrible webcomics just leads to a shitty hobby comic. Surrounding yourself with sewage doesn't make you King of the Sewers, it just makes you smell terrible. BetaPwned could become decent, but first it's going to have to crawl out of the sewers. Read more→

The Best Of What's Left: An Astonishingly Accurate Acronym (1 of 4)

When creating a webcomic, there are a few things that the creator should flesh out before jumping in. First is the story. A well-reasoned plot can be the difference between an enjoyable read, and a clusterfuck of convolution and obfuscation. Second, is the characters. Not just who they are, though a properly fleshed out character is important, but also what they look like. Character designs need to be consistent and distinct, so the reader can tell who is doing what and possibly even figure out why. Otherwise you end up with Dominic Deegan. Securing these aspects before getting started is the first critical step of webcomickry. Most, however, jump the gun, and put up their work before it's sufficiently planned out. The Best of What's Left (or T-BOWL, as it calls itself) fails on both accounts.

The characters in the T-BOWL are some of the ugliest mutations I've ever been witness to. The protagonist, a man known only as "Future Paladin" (is he a paladin from the future? not yet, but assured to be, a paladin? a paladin made OF future?) resembles a chunk of uncooked dough molded roughly into the form of man. Above his head are some undiscernable blue half circles, indicating something only God Himself would know. Equipped with only his hammer, which also emanates blue half-circles (which can only be some sort of gas leak). Other characters are generally simple inanimate objects with giant teardrop-shaped blobs, which I presume to be eyes, that extend beyond the head. The creator, Aaron Lewis, often tries to convey motion with these crude characters, but often only manages to create further confusion and aggravation.

The story is somehow an even greater abomination than the art. Tenuous and unstructured, the most I can gather from the story is that there is some kind of paladin with water powers (I wasn't aware that paladins had elemental affinities) who hangs out with trees for some reason, which is strange since I would expect a water guy to hang out with rivers, lakes, and babbling brooks instead of trees. This is even more confusing since there is a tree paladin introduced later in the story. Lewis often tries to cram too much story into too little comic, then will turn around and use too much comic to tell too little story. The vast majority of pages are written to fill the page, and end as soon as the page is filled, resulting in a page that has no sense of completion, no concept of progress, but rather a feeling of emptiness. Any longform comic should be able to convey at least simple plot progression within individual pages. T-BOWL often ends up having serious pacing issues which could easily be remedied with a little premeditation, and forethought to where the story has been and where it is going.

Success in webcomics requires at least a familiar understanding of the fundamentals. Without this, no one can hope to make something enjoyable to others or even themselves, much less help others to correct their problems or provide suitable analysis of other comics. Aaron Lewis has managed to produce a webcomic with terrible art, plot, characters and pacing, inspired by every game Blizzard has made. Unless he's willing to go back and replan the entire comic, then restart from scratch, I'm going to have to say that The Best of What's Left should have remained in the toilet bowl. Read more→