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→

Fishtank Tango: WHY IS EVERYONE YELLING?

Fish are loud, noisy pets. They yell all the time, even when they're not saying anything particularly emotive. Also if you don't keep them clean, they will mutate and grow human bodies.

Fishtank Tango is a webcomic about two guys who live together and also work together at a pet store. At work they talk about boobs and look at boobs and talk to boobs. Oh yeah and one of them has a fish for a head for some reason. Together they also go to a bar run by a fake Irishman and fail to pick up bar skanks. Most jokes are either incredibly sexist and chauvinistic, or else they're terrible fish puns. At one time, Fishtank Tango ended for exactly one year after publishing a very creepy comic. The most obvious reason is that he likely got arrested for lewd misconduct and was locked up for about a year.

The writer is a terrible speller and his word processor gives us such gems as "Diner and Desert" and "WHATTT," as well as my favorite, "Before you was a boy with a fish......obsession But know we can officially call you a man! Or atleast close to it!" The grammar is terrible as well, indicating that the creator is either a 12-year-old boy, or not a native english speaker. Or he's just like everyone else on the Internet, and simply completely retarded.

A more significant problem is the constant and unending shouting. Since strip one, every character has yelled his lines, showing no nuance or subtlety, but rather putting everything out there to be judged. This problem has only escalated as time goes on, reminiscent of a situation where people yell louder and louder at each other, simply because they need to speak over each other. The mouths have actually gotten wider as time progressed.

But if we look deeper, the darker nature of Fishtank Tango emerges. Here we can see Mike Fishhead's friend and roommate talking to someone. If you'll notice, his hand looks strangely like a fish fin. What we can extrapolate from this is that Mike is actually a mad freak who befriends someone and slowly turns them into a fish, which he then sells in his pet fish store. The darker side of Fishtank Tango revealed, unfortunately nothing has been proven one way or another after 5 years.

Fishtank Tango is a generic webcomic with little real emotion or even characters deeper than a wading pool. However, it makes up for these shortcomings by being incredibly unfunny and terribly drawn. It may take ages before this comic finally kicks the bucket, since it's only published weekly, but when it does, I'll be there to flush it down the toilet. Read more→