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→

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→