Peter is the Wolf: The Most CONTROVERSIAL Review Yet!

In the Light of a Full Moon, Sarah Hazen Transforms into an Atrocious Webcomic.

There is nothing more reprehensible than a smutty porn comic that tries to pass itself off as something for all ages. Comics often attempt to pull this off by taking their pornographic material, and covering up small naughty bits or just removing completely graphic scenes. Unfortunately this usually results in a second-rate product for general audiences, since all of the creator's effort is being poured into the purely erotic bits. I'm not convinced that a comic can exist where two equal versions exist, where one is for scum-sucking sleazebags and the other is for the more decent population. The odds are very slim. Peter is the Wolf, (from White Lightning Productions) is the prime example of just how unlikely a concept this is. And since furries are being thrown into the mix, the odds are ever-narrowing. NOTE: I will only be discussing and linking the general version of this comic, because the porn pages are so mind-shreddingly vile that I would be charged with war crimes if I inflicted them upon you. You can switch to the adult version (at your own peril) by replacing 'general' in the URL with 'adult'.

Peter is the Wolf (written by Kris Overstreet and drawn by Benjamin "BAR-1" Rodriguez) is, at its core, a tale about werewolfs. Werewolfs, it turns out, are simply the furry equivalent of vampires, which we all know is simply a ploy to seem more mysterious. Furries have an amazingly difficult time separating their professional life from their sex life, so it goes without saying that anything I link, despite being from the general audiences version, is probably not safe to view at work, lest you get fired from your job as an actuary/test pilot/terrible webcomic reviewer. Peter is the Wolf chronicles the adventures of a werewolf, not surprisingly named Peter, who unsuspectingly turns his girlfriend into a werewolf via unprotected sex. Invariably, she turns into a 12-foot-tall werewolfess, and since this is first and foremost a porn comic, her breasts are larger than seven of her heads. Peter, an abnormally small werewolf, has the only crotch in the world capable of calming her and reverting her to her mousy human form.

Yes, that's right, the most common way to turn a ten-ton titan back to a meek, minuscule maiden is through sexual intercourse. Granted, this is a furry porn comic, so I can't say I'm that surprised, but there IS a difference between writing a porn comic for your readers, and writing one for yourself. And if anyone is the intended audience for Peter is the Wolf, it's Overstreet and Rodriguez.

This Guy Knows Something You Don't

Since werewolfs (or lycanthropes, as the most anal of nerds would insist) are indicative of a transformation fetish, this comic is laden with instances of characters switching from their "wolf form" and "human form" frequently, and require the reader to make a mental note of what both forms look like for a character, and realize that they are, for the most part, interchangeable. Seriously, there are pages where a character can switch back and forth about ten times. Since there's no discernable reason for this, such behavior can come off as confusing and befuddling to the reader. Some pages are also peppered with a dramatic shot of someone spying on our pair of protagonists, but this doesn't really bear any fruit, since we have no idea who these antagonistic spies are, what their motives are, or why we should care that our dynamic duo is even being watched to begin with.

As usual, there is nothing great to say about the art. Characters are wildly inconsistent, and that's just when they try to stay on model. When BAR-1 attempts a tense, wide-eyed shot, it only serves to creep readers right out. The intended expression of shock is submerged in a sea of distorted faces and strange viewing angles. The artist takes most of his artistic cues from popular anime characters, but it's obvious that he is more comfortable drawing wolf-men than humans, judging from how skewed his people end up looking. Again, I should not act surprised. The inconsistency of human characters could also be explained by the artist's excessive cribbing of 'manga' and anime sources, since comic characters will often change proportions, but only between different artists. If this artist is trying to emulate this effect, then he is decidedly worse than the ones who draw their comic right-to-left with tall skinny speech balloons, despite the native language being English. If this is not his intent, then a study of anatomy would be the standard prescription.

Yes, It's Very, Very Wrong

There a few other oddities involved with PitW's composition. On several occasions, the creators have felt it necessary to write, in large letters, "SPIELBERG" behind a surprised character. I would hazard a guess that they are trying to indicate a "spielberg moment," but I guess no one told them that a spielberg moment only occurs in film, and not comics. If you can't indicate surprise without referencing an occurrence in another medium, you really have no business making comics. Additionally, there are times when, instead of drawing backgrounds, Rodriguez has decided to simply use photographic backgrounds. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the epitome of laziness in webcomics. Using photographs for backgrounds is like using actual cardboard as the crust of a pizza. No one is gonna like that pizza.

The porn is blatantly obvious when you run into it, even in the "all-ages" version. Because the artist is lazy, he takes a shortcut--scaling the original image so that the "naughty bits" are out of frame, would work if not for one issue. Changes in resolution within an image are painfully obvious, and this kind of scaling creates a massive neon sign that says "THIS IS NOT RIGHT. SOMETHING IS WEIRD HERE." If the creators are committed to providing two versions of the comic, then they should be willing to redraw panels when necessary, instead of moving things around in Microsoft Picture Editor. While the writer could easily pull apart the important stuff and separate it from the smut, it really falls on both creators to treat both versions of their comic with the dignity it deserves. Why bother putting this stuff out there on the web if you're not going to put your best effort into it?

Personally I promised myself I would never review a porn comic, since its goals are generally not in line with my own. But when a webcomic makes an attempt to be both porn and not-porn, it has committed a violation so egregious that deserves ten times as much ridicule as it will ever receive. The use of furries is merely a giant fluorescent target painted on the webcomic, garnering even more ridicule, as it highlights the creators' flaws and shortcomings. Peter is the Wolf is the most condemnable and wretched implementation of a webcomic I have ever been witness to. Sergei Prokofiev is rolling in his grave. 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→

Out There: Doonesbury for Beauty School Bimbos

Complacent With Mediocrity, R.C. Monroe Grants Us a Look At His Life

R. C. Monroe's Out There walks into a bar, and says to the bartender "I'd like a terrible webcomic." The bartender says "here you are" and hands him a mirror. Yeah, I know it's not a very good joke, but it was designed as an example rather than something to make you laugh. You see, it's the kind of writing I've come to expect from a comic like Out There, a comic so bland that it makes Blondie look like The Watchmen.

Out There is basically what happens when the valedictorian as the local beauty school decides to make a webcomic, based solely on the fact that they read Doonesbury in the newspaper, liked how it looked but the jokes went over their head. In fact, Out There LOOKS like a crappy knockoff of Doonesbury, and it's formatted like a crappy knockoff of Doonesbury, it just lacks the political satire that made Doonesbury tolerable. Instead, Out There focuses on things the author knows well, like "being an alcoholic" and "being a tramp." Unfortunately, the drunken sex exploits of a twenty-something get old pretty fast, especially since nothing is ever shown. The protagonist's raging alcoholism is never seriously addressed, beyond a friend saying "haha oh you drink too much," and nothing ever happens beyond that. I know I'M glad that this comic isn't trying to force some anti-alcoholism agenda down my throat; if I want to get drunk and beat the hell out of my kids, that's my prerogative.

I Wish My Legs Were Detachable...

I know I've said it before, but Out There is a visual knock-off of Gary Trudeau's work in Doonesbury, but without a clear grasp on anatomy or a clear plan on differentiating characters. The key feature used to distinguish one person from another is the hair, since all body types are generally the same, and clothing is generic and featureless. In fact, this indicates an excessive amount of inspiration taken from Dominic Deegan, though the problem isn't as drastic as that. If you were to remove all hair from every character's face, it would be nigh-impossible to pick out specific people. Characters have few expressions that aren't half-lidded eyes paired with an open mouth. When Monroe does decide to use a wide-eyed expression, the result is generally bizarre and freakish, and ultimately unsettling. The black & white coloring does nothing to generate interest, and the comic would benefit a lot by being in color, or at least grayscale, in order to give the user something interesting to look at in this miserable webcomic.

There's Always One Ironic Panel in Every Webcomic

The writing is also an awful Doonesbury knock-off, in the sense that each strip and plot is structured just like Trudeau would write the 'bury. Unfortunately, Monroe has failed to realize that Doonesbury is done this way because it's a political satire comic, which Out There is decidedly not. In the case of OT, there is no satire, which means each strip should at least offer something interesting to hook new readers. As it is, Out There reads like a long-winded novel with small illustrations under each line of dialogue. Every strip fails to contain anything resembling a joke, and each page instead ends with something that attempts to convey finality but falls short in some significant way. When two characters engage in an intimate situation, nothing is really explored in their characters beyond the shallow characterization that Monroe has already given them. Instead of wallowing in what we already know about these characters, how about delving into their personalities once in a while? You can't attempt to have a comic with one continuous plot, without any meaningful plot development. Even Garfield had a few story arcs that looked deeper into Garfield's character once in a while (before it got homogenized into oblivion). Monroe treats his story like a nature hike where he is pointing out all the interesting things on the trail, but not letting you actually see them for yourself.

Out There is really one of the worst webcomics I've read in a long while. It's even bad at being bad, instead being that insufferable kind of dull that makes it difficult to even form a coherent opinion about. You can easily see the effort put into the comic, and its half-hearted. Monroe has given us a comic developed by simply applying ethereal silly putty to Doonesbury, and rubbing out all the politics before pressing it on to paper. Its characters are as shallow as they come, incapable of submerging the smallest of minds. In the end we are given the most drab, boring and droll webcomic in existence, R. C. Monroe's Out There. I only wish it was out there, and not in here where I am. Read more→

The Year In Review: Best... Worsts of 2008

It's hard to believe I'm still posting on this stupid blog about terrible webcomics. I had originally planned on losing interest sometime around October, but unfortunately I had by then accrued a list of comics to review that was longer than my list of known aliases. So I kept reading awful webcomics and writing down my less-than-professional opinions, and before I knew it, it was the end of the year. I decided that I should make a top 10 list of the worst comics reviewed on anti-snark this year, but after I realized I had only been reviewing for half a year, I shortened it to the top 5. What follows are not just the worst comics, but also the worst responses to my reviews, as well as the worst interview subjects of the multitudes I had interviewed. So without further ado, here are the 5 Best Worsts of 2008.

5. Hijinks Ensue
I don't recall when I first found Hijinks Ensue, but I do remember that my inital reaction was basically "Oh look a ripoff of Movie Comics." After reading more, though, I realized that I had been far too generous. The jokes revolved around moronic television shows and idiotic films, and consisted entirely of nerdwankery.

Visually, it reeks of unoriginality and shameless copying of character designs from more popular webcomics. While this is a common occurrence among terrible artists, usually it isn't so poorly done that you start feeling bad for the ripped off. Whoever said "Imitation is the greatest form of flattery" never experienced the insult that is being imitated by Joel Watson and his rusty, mechanical drawing hand. Perhaps if Watson had a life that didn't consist of sitting on his butt watching television and movies, he'd learn how to give more life and originality to his drawings, but the chances of that (like the chances of Steve Jobs creating something that nerds won't blindly purchase) is slim to none.

The art managed to be utterly reprehensible, despite the fact that the cartoonist uses a Cintiq tablet. There's a reason for this, of course. A great tablet will not make anyone a better artist, no matter how expensive/Mac-friendly it is. Joel Watson is one of the greatest offenders of the "Tools Make the Artist" crowd, which is why Hijinks Ensue receives the award of "Worst Application of a Cintiq Tablet" and is #5 of our list of 2008's Best Worsts.

4. Dead Winter
After four weeks of reviews, I wanted to try something new, so I asked Dave Shabet of Dead Winter if he would bless me with an interview about his terrible zombie webcomic. As I recall, his exact words were "get away from me you skeevy pervert." I tried for over an hour to change his mind but in the end, he wasn't going to budge. I had sunk so many resources into the interview questions, that cancelling it would have meant the end of Anti-Snark, so I came up with a bold solution.

Since Dave Shabet was too good to answer a few questions, I decided that I would answer them as though I were him. I tried to give readers what I felt was an accurate representation of Shabet and his work, but about halfway through answering my own questions I remembered that I had no readers so I felt pressured to jazz the interview up a little bit. The result was an inconsistent personality that I had created for him, and the whole thing was really unbelievable. This is why I have decided to present Dead Winter with the award for "Worst Interview" and placed it fourth in 2008's Best Worsts.

3. Bizarre Uprising
I had added this amalgam of retarded anime tropes and terrible plots to my expanding queue of cannon fodder sometime in September, but every time I looked at it, I decided it wasn't atrocious enough for me to review at that time. When I finally forced myself to take a shot at it, I hoped merely for an underwhelming article as a result. After prodding through the archives, however, I was amazed at how astonishing, how truly horrendous, how utterly ridiculous the plot truly was.

Here's a synopsis: A teenage boy finds out he has magic vampire powers, and begins training with some off-the-wall school mascot that is a pig or something. He gets into fights with people far more experienced than he, only to defeat them because he believes in the heart of the cards or some equally tropish anime facet of his personality. Girls begin to swoon over him for no reason other than he's the artist's fantasy-insert, and even goes so far as to turn a lesbian straight. After one of his ex-girlfriends is shot from 100 yards with a pistol and killed, we find out that the mascot vampire trainer is actually the main character's dad and also that he is the king of vampires. We also learn that Jesus Christ (our one Lord and Savior) is a vampire, and he begat all the other vampires. Meanwhile, the protagonist's best friend seduces the hero's unusually hot and not-at-all parental mother (I'm sensing some disgusting incest fantasy by the artist) AND his girlfriend, then cries foul as he is unconvincingly male-raped. This male-rape subplot extends for nigh on 5 years before it finally concludes unsatisfactorily. The hero does some boring crap that is not even interesting in the slightest, and the reader is left wondering if he missed something in the middle or if the writer simply failed to include some quantity of important details (hint: it's the latter, and that quantity is in the triple-digits).

Needless to say, if you love reading terrible webcomics just to gaze at the ensuing train wreck, none other will satisfy you better than Bizarre Uprising. I only wish I had reviewed it earlier in the year, so I could hope to see some troubled reaction by the creators, who feel it acceptable to only produce one page per week, despite the troubled writing and the sloppy, amateurish artwork. Bizarre Uprising recieves the title of "Worst Webcomic of 2008" and ranks third among our list of the 5 Best Worsts of 2008.

2. Webcomics Beacon
During the month of September, I reviewed the Webcomics Beacon, a terrible podcast about webcomics, as well as the webcomics done by the hosts of the podcast, in order to illustrate that these people should not be doling out advice about webcomics. Shortly after, one of the hosts noticed the review of his comic and decided to take offense, posting predictable rants about how he couldn't believe anyone would spend their time being negative towards webcomics. It's just inconceivable that anyone who enjoys reading these pieces of trash would rather point out the negatives rather than the positives!

I figured he'd quit there, but to my surprise he continued his tirade on the actual podcast itself. He refused to link the big bad review and didn't even give the name of the website, because he didn't want any of his five listeners to give any pageviews to me, since I make so much money off a single page view. I never figured anyone would take my amateurish scrawlings so seriously, so I was quite surprised when I heard what ol' Fesworks had to say. Essentially, he is upset that anyone would bother giving a negative opinion of his work, since he's clearly just a hobbyist and not a professional, and how he gets upset when people are giving professional comic advice, which is not so useful to those who comic for the hobby of it. Of course, this is just code speak for "I want to draw comics but I don't want to put any effort into getting better at it!" Any real hobbyist would still want to put effort into improving his skills so that he could get better.

By devoting so much attention to what was really just a half-hearted negative review of his webcomic and podcast, Fesworks and the Webcomics Beacon crew have earned the title of "Worst Tantrum of 2008" and secured second place in our list of 2008's Best Worsts.

1. The Floating Lightbulb
Our number one spot on the list of worsts goes to the blog that inspired me to return to Anti-snark in the first place. The Floating Lightbulb is a webcomic blog that updates nearly daily, where cartoonist Ben Gordon attempts to give advice to budding cartoonists, thereby elevating himself in the arena of webcomics. Unfortunately, his advice is generally not backed by anyone's experience, and is inspired solely by Gordon's perception of what cartoonists should be doing, rather than anything that might actually work. Gordon is fuelled by his massive ego, tenuous grasp on reality, and fragile self-image.

Often posting lengthy diatribes about websites that do the same thing as one of his many other websites, claiming redundancy and inefficiency, Ben Gordon is quick to write off the webcomics.com guys as some sort of evil corporate empire. Unfortunately what Gordon fails to realize is that his own attempts are shoddy, amateurish and unusable, and ANY attempt to do what he's done is automatically going to be better. Gordon clearly wants to be a webcomic bigwig, but until he can improve the quality of his writing, website organization and comic skills, the best he can do is inflate his standing by acting bigger than he really is. This is why Gordon has been awarded the "Worst Attempt at Being Relevant" and is our Best Worst of 2008.

I hope that reading this has been an adequate time-waster and helped you kill a few minutes. Let the staff of Anti-snark know of any terrible webcomics or webcomic-related sites that you know of, so we can continue to bring you the same hard-hitting journalism next year.

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