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→

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→

Webcomics Beacon: Dogs Don't Know It's Not Beacon (4 of 4)

As I stated yesterday, Circle Jerks in webcomics lead to artistic stagnation and undue popularity. It doesn't take a lot of talent to provide meaningful criticism, but webtoonists are often blind to their own faults. This excuse does not work when the creators regularly work with other terrible webtoonists to provide criticism to OTHER terrible webtoonists. Like the crossover I discussed yesterday, running a podcast is another great way for atrocious webcomics to Circle Jerk. The Webcomics Beacon is run by some of the most terrible webcartoonists I've covered with this blog. In fact, I told you those stories so I could tell you this one.

First and foremost, this podcast is way too long. Each episode is over an hour long, and if you're talking about webcomics for more than an hour, the evidence indicates that you just like hearing your own voice. I do like that these amateurs don't talk about one webcomic for the whole hour, but rather a certain trend or meme among comics, but the topics are still too broad and general. The hosts also have a tendency to go off-topic often, which contributes to the excessive dragging-onnery of this podcast. Additionally there is a lot of dead air and simultaneous talking, all of which could be remedied with a structured program and pre-planning. Having a set rotation for asking and answering questions would definitely cut down on the confusion, and figuring out what the best questions are and focusing on those would probably cut the runtime down to a reasonable half-hour.

The bigger problem is that the hosts may or may not be giving good criticism, but the comics made by the hosts undercut that criticism by being so terrible. The idea is, "If they can't use their advice to improve themselves, why should anyone else do so?" Of course, I completely agree with this argument. A better use for a group such as this would be to turn their critical eyes inwards, and utilize each other to improve themselves. Of course, since the entire point is to increase readership for everyone involved, the hosts are not going to turn too critical an eye (least of all towards their guests) resulting in a shallow and unchallenging show. The only criticism being offered is towards those who aren't on the show, giving off the impression that the Webcomics Beacon is used to signify an impending circle jerk.

The actual website is also a mess, and has so many circle jerking links that it overloads the reader with too much irrelevant information. There's an entire section devoted to Webcomic Milestones which just tells the reader which webcomics have completed an arbitrary number of pages or existed for an arbitrary number of years, with no discretion based on quality, consistency or continuity. Another section lists every single site mentioned in the week's show, no matter how passing the reference. While nice for those who find themselves asking "what are they talking about?", reducing the size of the section to only those sites talked about in depth would keep it from being overwhelming.

It is human nature to want to promote your creations, and the Internet is an easy way to do so. However the act of self-promotion often leads to introspection and growth after being rejected. When artists take the easy way out by promoting themselves through others and cutting quick deals often end up being screwed over by a bad deal. Some might get lucky, sure, but the best works are going to come from those who aren't relying on finding a great bargain, but instead put the effort into themselves and their own works. Creating new assets to bargain with, such as a podcast, are only indicative of desperation, and it almost becomes a spectacle to watch and see just when someone gets burned. While those who wish to build themselves up through their own merits should stay away, the Webcomics Beacon signals to all those who wish to dash themselves upon the jagged rocks. Read more→

Aikida: Girls Don't Really Play Video Games, You Know

There are a million and twelve gamer comics out there. They all fit the same archetype: Two guys playing video games on a couch with a token girl and a few gamer friends that only show up to be strawmen. So how does a gamer comic try to differentiate itself from the herd? Creative Jokes? Nice Art? Character Depth? No, those are ridiculous ideas. The best solution is to simply switch gender roles around. I mean, girls playing video games? That's hot.

Aikida follows all the gaming comic tropes, and repeats all the common jokes. MMOs are like crack, CEOs are crazy and irrational, most or all gamers are actually attractive, and of course the classic "playin video games on the couch." Of course since it stars TOTALLY HOT CHICKS instead of guys, it's completely new and innovative and should receive loads of positive attention from the webcomic community for breaking the mold of gamer comics, right? Not quite.

First of all, Josh Meinzer is gonna have to get better at drawing techniques such as "anatomy" and "consistency." All of the girls' boobs look like someone stapled water balloons to their ribcage. Female characters are astonishingly longwaisted. Certain facial expressions lead to them having a particularly more mannish jawline than they should have. The female poses are usually hideously unnatural, as the artist tends to have them hold their arms behind them like they're mentally deficient. Also his fire looks like someone painted a porcupine orange and then drew that while having a seizure.

Aikida has a very weird peculiarity. It jokes about pedophilia. Like, way too much. Creating a 17 year old who claims to be 15 just to torment male characters is a bit weird. Like it's a fetish. If it had been a one-off thing it would have just been a weird joke, but continuing to write the character as a woman-child drives this train through Creepyville and straight into Predatortown. Sending this two-inch tall childish girl (with quite a masculine jaw) over to frustrate the male neighbors may seem like a harmless prank, but having one character insinuate that he's going to masturbate after the incident is indicative of the author's pedophilic desires and gives us an unsolicited peek at the contents of his porn folder.

Aikida is simply another gamer comic trying break the mold with a layer of fresh paint. Creating a backstory for each character might be useful if the factoids were utilized ever, or in the case of the title character, followed at all when considering her appearance. A large-breasted, tan, and large-framed Irish/Japanese Canadian makes about as much sense as putting a jet engine on a laser printer. In addition, ripping off character details from Charles Schultz's most popular character is never a good idea. In the end we simply have a female version of the traditional gamer comic, a novelty gimmick that doesn't really add anything to the incredibly oversaturated genre. If you find yourself with this one, feel free to trade it in for something more innovative. 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→