Bengo's Choice: Investigative Journalism or Libel?

My faithful reader might be wondering why I stopped updating for the past month. Simple answer: I decided to take a vacation from this blog for a month, starting about 2 weeks before I made the decision. I had begun to run low on vitriol and needed to spend some time drilling some from the nearby gulf. The comics I have in my queue were either too young to work with, had spontaneously stopped updating, or were otherwise outside my capacity to review. So I decided to relax for a while and see if a month would give these guys enough time to mature into viable targets. Unfortunately, something far more inane occurred. Ben Gordon finally decided to leap from his bell tower of insanity to the the warm blue waters of the Crazy Sea. If I might be serious for one week, I'd like to point out how utterly ridiculous Gordon has become.

Gordon's magnificent swan dive into madness began almost six month ago, when he decided to take issue with a business model presented in How to Make Webcomics by those Halfpixel guys, namely an assertion that a firmly established webcomic might expect 5-10% of its readers to purchase any items from its online store. Gordon seems to think that this means that buyers will only purchase a single item whose profit is $5, failing to account for repeat customers. Gordon also seems to take a flawed mathematical approach, using monthly traffic numbers to approximate annual income. The use of "Traffic" as a term is also incredibly vague. Is he talking hits, unique visitors, or what? I wouldn't consider every unique visitor to qualify as a "reader" for the purposes of Halfpixel's sell-through rate. Gordon also seems to claim that several of his "case studies" give conflicting data but fails to deliver enough data regarding his case studies. While he seems to want them to remain anonymous, he is trying to imply that the expected income from the Halfpixel model doesn't match up with their actual incomes, but this figure is never given. Information like the age of the comic he's studying, selection in the comic's online store, or anything which would lead anyone to follow his conclusion from the data he's given. In summary, Gordon's rebuttal to the model presented in How to Make Webcomics lacks sufficient evidence to convince anyone but the most gullible.

This led to an intense mistrust of anything Halfpixel did, such as purchasing the webcomics.com domain and tries to find anything remotely suspicious about Halfpixel that he can muster up. Unfortunately, there's not a lot out there so he has to make a lot of it up.

At the same time, Gordon began developing a grievance against Dumbrella, namely for their sponsorship of webcomics blog Fleen. Now I don't know about you, but if McDonald's is producing a blog, I'd expect it to focus on Big Macs and McRibs, not the overall state of the fast food industry as a whole. They have access to information and sources that normal people don't have. But Gordon would have you believe that it would be best for all blogs to cover the same industry with the exact same scope, i.e. all webcomics blogs should cover the entire breadth of the webcomics realm evenly and fairly. Of course, since Gordon fancies himself a real life journalist, this is nothing more than a Journalistic wet dream he has. Wanting amateur webcomics bloggers to be held to some journalistic ideal seen only in films and comic strips. Whether Gordon is justified or not in disliking Fleen, this began an unhealthy obsession with Dumbrella, to supplant his already obsessive dislike of Halfpixel.

Gordon's desires soon turned to uncovering some kind of major corruption scandal in the world of webcomics. He began by developing some kind of "Corruption Metric" for webcomics, but of course he only states what he is measuring, not HOW he is measuring it. But until he found a big conspiracy, there was nothing to test his self-created metric against. Gordon was so intent on finding a big conspiracy that he managed to convince himself that one existed.

Until this past month, his obsessions were fairly harmless. But beginning in February, Gordon moved from harmless stalking to destructive libel. Inspired, perhaps, by the emerging popularity of Twitter among webcartoonists, Gordon began his quixotic crusade by attacking the advice given by Scott Kurtz in How to Make Webcomics, "Fake it 'til you make it," as inciting a plethora of webcomickers to fake their popularity until they actually become popular. In actuality, this is common advice for nervous people, telling them to act like they're highly skilled until they gain their confidence and self-worth. Gordon seems to have forgotten that he has manufactured this intention by Kurtz, and has taken further steps to sabotage his career. This blog post by Bengo was the first shot in a war against scientific integrity.

The next day, he posted a lengthy assault against a small collection of his enemies, accusing them of being a Twitter "faking gang," or a gang of people who created fake Twitter followers for each other. His premise is that a large quantity or Twitter followers is a significant status symbol among webcartoonists, and by inflating this number by dishonest means, one can attract gullible idiots who just want to read whatever's popular. He also tries to connect Twitter cheating to other statistical cheating, but applies circular logic later to convict his opponents to both. They are guilty of Twitter cheating because it's known that they cheat on their other stats, and they are guilty of cheating on their other stats because they are known Twitter cheaters.

His only stated method for identifying fake Twitter accounts is that they have a limited number of people they follow, with few posts of their own. Gordon has made claims that there are more conclusive techniques to identify fakes, but has yet to divulge them: "Various techniques allow us to identify fakes; too many to list today." At this point Gordon attempts to prove the fakers by showing their visitor numbers. These attacks are levelled largely at Scott Kurtz, but Meredith Gran of Octopus Pie also suffers a grand assault. Gordon's main argument is that OP went through large jumps in readership twice over the last year, therefore it must be doing something shady to generate those readership increases. The truth of the matter is simply that Octopus Pie was barely a year old, and at an age where large jumps in popularity are both drastic and common. Consequently, the graphs provided for PvP show nothing more than a single month of poor performance in November, followed by a large increase in December of 2008. The most likely reason is a glitch in the data provided (by a third party, no less), as well as a month where people have a lot of free time. However, presented by Gordon, this is a suspicious increase in traffic by the mastermind of a vast conspiracy.

After this less than damning evidence against Gran and Kurtz is presented, Gordon begins the most troubling part of his "report." He begins listing names of people he believes are fake Twitter accounts, with nothing more than the names of the people he thinks created them. Failure to grasp the behavior of Twitter in the hands of webcomics fans will be Gordon's undoing; these people are merely fans who wanted to follow their favorite creators. They signed up for Twitter just to follow these people, because otherwise they'd have no reason to have a Twitter account. People really are capable of realizing that their lives aren't interesting enough for other people to read about, and therefore feel no need to use this service for themselves. This behavior, continued in later blog posts by Gordon, is reminiscent of Senator Joe McCarthy naming suspected Communists, with no evidence whatsoever.

In the comments of this post, Gordon dismisses alternative sources of data as unreliable (for no discernable reason, no less) and asserts that his accusations of Twitter faking are, indeed, factual. Gordon fails to realize that in order for something to be factual, evidence is first required to verify. His speculation on Twitter cheating is not fact simply because he says it is, and using these false facts as evidence against these cartoonists for faking their other statistics is a terrible logical fallacy.

Several of Gordon's blog posts in February take snipes at his accused Twitter Fakers, turned an innocent party into some kind of exclusive nightclub circle jerk, and otherwise masturbated his own journalistic ego into a Grand Mal seizure of self-congratulation, before attempting to seriously sabatoge Scott Kurtz's career. Kurtz had been asked to host the Harvey awards this year at Baltimore Comic-con, because of a positive response to his presentation in previous years. Due to a manufactured grudge against Kurtz, after imagining a conspiricy, Gordon decided that Kurtz wasn't "good enough" to host these awards, and has started a letter writing campaign to have Kurtz uninvited. This is, of course, a ridiculous course of action to take when your only motivation is something you yourself have manufactured.

Gordon's most recent post on the subject gives more detail to his proposed motivation behind Twitter faking. In essence, the Webcomics Industry is largely run on the character of its creators. By faking popularity, Gordon asserts that popularity can be generated. Communities spring up around popular comics, and these communities will generate traffic in return. But it's a double-edged sword. Levelling audacious claims against webcartoonists with absolutely no evidence to support them, even things as seemingly innocuous as forging Twitter followers, can damage someone's reputation to the point where they begin to lose readers because of it. And that, my friends, is known as libel. Gordon, if he has no actual evidence to support his claims of Twitter forging other than wild speculation and circumstantial evidence, has committed libel, and should begin apologizing immediately.

Ultimately, Gordon is just a fringe blogger who desperately wants to be an investigative journalist with a lot of importance in the field of webcomics. Unfortunately, he has yet to realize that the way to get there is not by publishing audacious claims, inciting career sabotage, and committing grand acts of libel, but by dedicating himself to writing an honest, if boring, blog. Cover the dull stories, and use them to improve your writing skills, Bengo, and when something big actually does come along, then you can use those skills to really make it big. This route is self-destructive and dangerous, and part of me hopes you make the right choice.

PS: Joe McCarthy is a terrible role model 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.

Read more→

Psychedelic Treehouse: Tips on Shoddy Craftsmanship, From the Expert Shoddy Craftsman

How does a webcartoonist improve himself? Practicing alone might seem sufficient to some, but without direction, most will just practice themselves into a hole. Rote learning can make you more efficient, but not necessarily better. There are websites which can guide an artist into developing his skills well, by giving good examples and exercises, and lead to a greater understanding of anatomy, and higher quality art. Likewise, there are aids for the writers out there who want to escape terrible characters, awful pacing issues, and atrocious plots. But aside from the art, what is out there to help you present your webcomic? I have yet to find a good site about webcomic production, but I am knee deep in bad ones.

Psychedelic Treehouse is yet another webcomic site by Ben Gordon, aka scartoonist, in which he attempts to combine information that he feels is useful to webcartoonists who wish to improve the business of their webcomic. The first thing anyone will notice, however, is the terrible page layout of PT. The first textual paragraph is a bunch of metatags, presented as a jumbled mess of phrases, some of which link to subsections of the site, while others do not. The purpose of this section puzzles and confuses me. It is an ugly site feature, and will repel users looking for a more professional site to give them advice. After this massive text chunk, Gordon gives two substanceless taglines, followed by a link to a useless "list" style website. By the time the reader reaches any true substance in the Psychedelic Treehouse, he or she is already fatigued by all the empty content they've had to wade through.

Down in the bowels of the front page, PT turns into a two-column format, with the left column being a left-justified list of various categories and subsections, with no organization or formatting cues. The right column is a centered list of site credits and contact links. The formatting wraps lines in odd places, creating lines with two words, followed by a line break. All the credits in the right column are chaotically arranged, and the reader's eye bounces all over the place, instead of following the list cleanly. The left side is only slightly better, with section titles and descriptions having various assortments of font styles and sizes, with very little consistency among either.

But what kind of substance does The Psychedelic Treehouse actually offer? Perhaps it is a diamond in the rough, an object of immense value with an ugly presentation. And perhaps Jesus himself will swoop down on the back of a giant rooster and smite all the terrible webcomics. The majority of sections found on the PT are simply lists of things. A list of webcomics, a list of webcomic collectives, a list of comic portals, blogs, publishers, award winners, podcasts, books, and commission-taking artists. There are even three whole pages of 'miscellaneous' link lists. The most useless of these 'lists' is a gallery of webcomic logos. What is the purpose of these lists? A collection of information is useless if the average reader still has to digest and analyze it himself. These lists are simply pure streams of data, with no evaluation provided by Gordon, thereby making it about as useful as a list of quantum physics equations to the average kindergartener. Ben Gordon is apparently incapable of giving the necessary commentary on the lists he provides, since he has not done so, but with the quality of his writing, I'm not sure I'd want to see it.

A few sections attempt to be more significant than just a meaningless pile of lists, which is what I'd expect from topics such as Site Design Tools and Networking, topics that Ben Gordon has obviously neglected himself. Of course, they're merely lists of links accompanied with a summary of the link, which I suppose is an improvement, but ultimately, it's not enough. Many subsections again devolve into mere lists. One section on Fonts is prefaced by an amazingly inaccurate assessment and analysis on the use of fonts, making the claim that "If you use an exotic font to letter your comic, many people in your audience will see whatever their search engine thought was the closest match." How is your browser supposed to alter the comic image to change the font used, I'm not sure, but Ben Gordon has asserted that it happens, and presented it as fact. The presence of patently idiotic statements detract from the validity of Psychedelic Treehouse as a webcomic resource. It also doesn't help that the font chosen for the page header is Comic Sans.

The remainder of Psychedelic Treehouse's content consists of extremely short 'essays' about webcomics (as well as interviews and reviews crossposted from his other sites). The problem is that these essays are written to push Gordon's concept of what cartoonists should be doing, whether he has any factual basis for saying so, or not. This checklist is full of minor and inconsequential things that only matters to Gordon, but he has presented it as a definitive checklist for new webcartoonists. The truth is, I'd trust his advice about as far as I could throw him. He puts more emphasis on how to make money from a comic, as well as shameless self-promotion than he does about any kind of substantial improvement in quality.

Ben Gordon provides very little ethos when talking about building a better webcomic site. His own sites are so jumbled, scattered, disoriented and downright terrible. Trying to pass his Psychedelic Treehouse off as an essential resource for webcomickers is laughable. It is essentially a Webcomic Junkyard: Massive piles of junk with a single potential nugget of value contained within. He makes no effort to sort the wheat from the chaff, and as a result his information becomes massive and unwieldy. Anyone looking to improve their webcomic should avoid this site like the plague, since you will waste more time digging for gold without a map than you will spend applying the useful advice to your own product. If Ben Gordon built this Psychedelic Treehouse with his own two hands, then you should think twice about turning it into a clubhouse; the shoddy craftsmanship will fall apart on you at the worst possible moment. 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→

HalfPixel.com: The Evil Webcomics Empire

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Digital Strips: Podcasting is a Stupid Format for Reviews

The podcast is a relatively recent phenomenon, and much like webcomics, it allows an excessive accessibility to a medium that was previously well guarded. In this case, radio shows are now something that can be made and produced by anyone with a microphone and access to the Internet. Abandoning the notion of Production Quality, one can discuss anything he chooses. Enhanced accessibility leads to some real shit being produced, and Digital Strips is no exception.

Digital Strips features (or claims to feature) 6 geeks who are too untalented to make their own webcomics and decide to talk about other webcomics into a Fisher Price Sing-Along Music Maker Microphone. On a weekly basis, they discuss a webcomic from the viewpoint of an easily amused simpleton whose only desire is to be taken seriously intellectually. Admittedly, this is a viewpoint I am unfamiliar with and therefore curious about. Of course, after one attempt to hear this viewpoint I realized my folly and stopped.

This particular podcast is further marred by the fact that there's not one consistent "host" but instead pulls three from a pool of six potential hosts. Each has a different quality of microphone with different settings, giving the show a disorienting and uncomfortable sound. In addition, by not having a consistent host, it becomes hard to identify one speaker and keep track of his personality. The listener has a hard time maintaining a scorecard for the host like one could easily do for a real radio show.

Another problem is that there is very lax structure for the podcast. Conversation often drifts from the topic into casual conversation and tangential topics. This creates a show that's holier than swiss cheese, and the reader will drift out during the dull parts and might miss when the show actually returns to significance. I often found myself skipping large chunks of each show to find something that was actually worth listening to.

Digital Strips also features a blog aspect which is less focused than the podcast and is hardly worth mentioning. However, I will, to point out a few posts which symbolize how off-the-mark the podcast is. First, XKCD is not the epitome of webcomics, and doesn't even approach the realm of "enjoyable webcomic." Treating it as such is a travesty unto God Himself. Second, women making popular and good webcomics is not shattering any glass ceiling whatsoever. Webcomics are a realm for people who could not make it in the world of print comics, so how does this success shatter any glass ceiling? Finally a game for the readrs: See if you can find all the atrocities within this Digital Strips Comic! First prize is some aspirin for the headache you contracted trying to analyze the comic strip.

Webcomics are ongoing things, reviewing a different one every week is a genuinely retarded idea. It would be similar to reviewing television shows as if they were movies. There are at least two ways to make this idea worse: Try to do the same thing more often, or do it in an entirely vocal medium, such as a podcast. Ultimately Digital Strips is a webcomic review podcast run by children with short attention spans and bloated senses of importance and intellect, trying to be Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and end up being The Rush Limbaugh Show with Rush Limbaugh. It's great if you're a teenager who thinks he's the next Edgar Allen Poe, but otherwise I'd suggest to find something else to listen to. Read more→

The Floating Lightbulb: Time to Switch to CFLs?

For your consideration, The Floating Lightbulb: A Webcomics Eureka. The Floating Lightbulb (or TFL if you're cool) is Yet Another Blog About Webcomics. It presents a viewpoint about the webcomics industry that has been seen a million times, and presents nothing new or insightful to up and coming talent. So why am I wasting my time with the god forsaken tripe? Well, to be honest I'm just bored and wanted to write about something that sucked.

TFL is, like most webcomics blogs, entirely full of shit. But the icing on this particular cake is that the blowhard behind TFL has not one, but two incredibly derivative-looking comics to his name. The characters are simplistic, stiff, and easily drawn by any number of interns who can follow a simple model sheet. Both comics have latched onto what I consider to be an Internet meme, namely that "Communist Russia is awwwweeeesssoooomme." Having one character that talks in a Russian accent might be acceptable. But when such a large portion of TWO comics relies on this culture, it kind of strikes me as nothing short of a weird obsession. The plots are incredibly shallow and short enough so that a reader does not need to be particularly invested in the comic. All in all, these two comics reek with the odor of corporate comics.

This is amusing because the latest post (at the time of writing this) is a warning to all cartoonists to be wary of any corporate presence trying to get their grubby hands on the sweet, sweet nougat that is a cartoonists Intellectual Property. But I feel his warning is a bit misguided. He cites a recent dispute between DJ Coffman and a publisher he signed with. The problem is that dummy didn't realize what he was agreeing to. Now I understand that not everyone is in it to be famous or rich, but some people are, and they're going to want to sign with a publisher at some point. Warning these people against signing ANYTHING is dumb; they just need to be wary of what they are signing, and probably have another lawyer read it. If agreeing to give up your IP is something you're willing to do, then go for it dude. Millions are made just for coming up with Intellectual Properties for fancy corporations to have fun with.

The second sign that 'Scartoonist' is a blabbering idiot is that he takes Dinosaur Comics WAAAAY too seriously. Many a bloggist has attempted to dissect the enigma that is Dinosaur Comics to unlock some deeper meaning, some kind of social commentary, or a sign from god. But it's just some guy writing funny ideas and putting them in the mouths of dinosaurs. It's not that hard to figure out. From his language we can tell that 'Scartoonist' is not fond of Dinosaur Comics, which of course makes him worthy to define the line between 'comic' and 'not-a-comic'. Here, he provides samples of alleged comics where there is no hand-drawn art, simply pictures taken by the 'cartoonist' or otherwise assembled and dialog being written for all the characters, and Scartoonist has decided to let his readers pick which ones count as comics and which do not. Except... No one commented. So either no one cares about the boundary of cartooning, or no one reads his stupid blog? Since he generally gets at least 4 or 5 comments on any other post, I'm going to go with the former.

"Hey! HEY! If you want your comic to get indexed by Google, you should probably talk to me. I own a Webcomic link site, maybe you've heard of it?" This is the kind of egotistical posturing and self-importance that I haven't seen since the likes of Eric Burns. "Hey, if you want to get on my GOOGLE RANK 6 Webcomic List, just email me with a link and I'll see if it's good enough." I mean, not everyone is necessarily good enough for a GOOGLE RANK 6 site, of course. Scartoonist has got to have a tough screening process if he wants to maintain his status in the webcomics world.

Finally, I will discuss the post that inspired me to make this one. I'm sure many of you have heard of Your Webcomic is Bad and You Should Feel Bad, a blog that stole my schtick, and coupled it with a line lifted from Dr. Zoidberg hisself. Mr. Scartoonist, once again, takes things too seriously: A full 2 months after the last post from YWBYSFB, Scartoonist received the memo and finally addressed John Solomon. Defending Dresden Codak of all webcomics, Scartoonist paints John Solomon as being too emotional, too personal, and too gosh-darn mean. "Solomon is not going to change a single thing except lower the level of discourse and undermine the hard work and dedication that many creators bring to their comics. He may even deeply wound someone fragile enough to be vulnerable to his onslaught." Sweetie, if there is someone so fragile as to stop making art because of the likes of John Solomon, then removing him from the picture is just going to delay the inevitable.

In the end, The Floating Lightbulb is just another webcomics blog run by a self-righteous blowhard, who is wasting his energy preaching to the choir. So I say it's time to replace him with something a bit more energy-efficient. Read more→