Mag-Isa: Good, Evil, I'm the Guy With the Self-Loathing

Here We See Emmanuel "Crybaby" Cruz About to Achieve Super Wuss Form Level 4

Conflict is an essential part of any story. Well-written conflict is an essential part of a good story. So when something is written that is devoid of conflict, it becomes difficult to determine if you have a story, or a Series of Events That Happened. The former is generally intriguing, attracts an audience on its own merits, and maintains some momentum that the writer can use to coast through some dull but necessary exposition. The latter would be akin to telling everyone that you had a mediocre cup of coffee, and expecting them to care. Today we'll look at what happens to a webcomic when it is deprived of any conflict whatsoever, and how that affects a reader's ability to care. Our subject is a comic known as Mag-Isa and has persisted for two years and 10 "chapters" without any conflict. It has only done so through sheer force of will, and perseverance in the face of boringness.

Mag-Isa stars a young, troubled self-insert by the name of Emmanuel Cruz. He is an Filipino immigrant to Canada, who often laments his lack of friends and family. A normal person might consider that there might be some way to improve himself so that he would better fit in and make friends. But no, apparently it's just a cultural difference and there is nothing that can be done to bridge that gap. His family is not much better, allegedly. Both parents are portrayed as incredibly abusive, when they inconsistently beat Eman, complaining about his violent tendencies after he writes a troubling journal entry about raping drugged-out prostitutes with AK-47s. Eman sees no issue with his writing of course, and doesn't comprehend why anyone else would. After all, it's just a creative writing class, so it's not like the words are anything more than an expression of his inner desires.

Considering that Emmanuel is a blatant self-insert, the reader can only assume that these incidents reflect actual events in the author's life. Exaggerated, most likely, but since hyperbole is just a matter of scale, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to assume that the author has the same kind of twisted worldview where it's normal to write about killing your colleagues and self, and that no one should express any concern over that kind of content.

This is not the only troubling behavior exhibited by Eman. There is also an event where he spends all his time helping his female friend work on a book report. After it's finished, Eman decides to ask her out, but she rejects him. Could it be the fact that she values his friendship more than his value as a potential mate? Or perhaps it's just the really creepy way he asked her out? No, she's just an ungrateful, selfish cocktease who wishes to torment Eman for no other reason than he's fun to torment. Then she shoots him.

When I Told Her to Swallow a Bullet, This Wasn't What I Meant

Through all of this, there has not been any significant building conflict. Chris has propped his "story" up against a generic Good vs. Evil plot, but has not done much to actually develop or explore this conflict, or even show how Eman fits into it. Meanwhile, Eman has had several opportunities to engage in conflicts of his own, between his peers or his self, but instead of confronting any of them he instead chooses to ignore it and go somewhere else. When his favorite priest is accused of pedophilia, Eman just cries for a bit and then moves on. When his friend and roommate gets shot in front of him, Eman just yells for a bit, launches an effortless revenge attempt, and gets shot up a lot, then moves on.

Ultimately, Eman joins an anti-government terrorist cell because some girl has sex with him. He then spends the next period of time training to fight against some generic, faceless enemy. His colleagues are other degenerates who have lashed out violently against their peers, and feel that there is nothing wrong with their behavior. The unusual bit about this, is that Eman had spent a while doing "Martial Arts" training with his priest (before he had been framed for pedophilia) and almost immediately becomes out of shape when he joins the anti-something terrorism squad.

In eleven chapters, the only thing remotely approaching conflict would be two poorly choreographed fight scenes, one between a priest and the object of his desire, and the other between some heretofore uncharacterized agent of "Good" fighting some bizarre plantchild. Neither of these fights has any sort of building action, no motivation beyond "I don't want to die right now" and serves no literary purpose beyond breaking up the boring exposition. This does not qualify as true conflict, though, since it doesn't really add to the story in any way whatsoever. Instead, this is a way to distract the reader from the fact that there is nothing driving the plot by creating the illusion of strife. Unfortunately for Chris, it's hard to forget that the protagonist is a worthless, self-hating twerp who has no potential for an enticing story.

When This Guy Flips Out, His Skeleton Gets All Wonky

So if there is no conflict driving this story, just what exactly is? Something must be compelling the author to tell this story; there must be something driving him to put us through this drivel. My guess is that it's some sort of cathartic release, retelling these "tragic" events of his life so that the pain will stop. But I'll tell you something, Chris, the pain never stops. as long as this webcomic exists, someone will have to live through the pain it causes. And if you have a conscience, the guilt will eat away at you until you destroy yourself. I hope.

From what we've seen in Mag-Isa, I think it's safe to say that Chris harbors some kind of persecution complex, feels that the reason his life is so terrible is that someone out there is trying to make it so. This is the theme presented in Mag-Isa, large corporations and media outlets being corrupted by the generic forces of "Evil" to trick people into believing dumb ideas and performing horrible actions. The responsibility is removed from the people and the blame is placed squarely on the Elite.

It has always been firmly established that a good story requires conflict. Conflict drives the plot, giving your characters a reason to grow. It is the lifeblood of any plot. But until Mag-Isa, no one really knew what would happen if the story lacked any conflict whatsoever. Now we know that it becomes a whiny piece of livejournalistic moping and depression. Thanks for the experiment Chris Lim, you can end it now. Please? Read more→

Rooster Teeth (aka College Dorm: The Webcomic)

"I Call It 'Bad Webcomic'"

You might have noticed, for the last few months, I have had an email link asking for reader submissions of comics to review. I did not have to wait long until I received a suggestion: Rooster Teeth comics, from the same people who brought you Red vs Blue. A cursory glance told me that the comic was terrible, but I couldn't put my finger on exactly what was primarily wrong about it. So I decided to go through the archive and make a list of everything that was missing, in order to discern what the cartoonist did wrong.

• 40% of the American Flag - While inserting someone else's artwork into a comic is generally reprehensible, as it looks incredibly awkward and wrong, there is an exception when it comes to national flags. When it is flat against a wall, a flag made in Photoshop is going to be indistinguishable from a flag grabbed off Wikipedia, as long as it's accurate. A US flag with only 25 stars and 11 stripes is close enough to fool the reader at first, but becomes more and more suspicious the longer its looked at, and is rather disconcerting in a 'humor' comic.



• A Clear Concept of How People Converse - In most RT conversations, the characters are performing an unnatural action known as 'palming.' Artists often feel a need to do something with the characters' hands, but usually have no idea what they should be doing. Consequently, characters are drawn palming, because doing nothing is an undesirable option. Additionally, the characters must ALWAYS be facing the camera, because otherwise we wouldn't know who they were. Even if it looks like their heads are on backwards, they must always look toward the reader!



• A Tenuous Grasp on Human Anatomy - I'll start with this: necks do not end in the center of the head. They go in the back of the head. They're also not a foot long. Some of these characters have massive noggins perched atop narrow stalks for necks. The clavicle does not attach to your back, and torsos don't look like that when they twist. The humerus is not attached to the ribcage, and pectoral muscles don't just disappear. I can see why these guys are grossed out.




"No, I'm Not Interested in Buying Eyelids in Bulk at a Discount"

• Upper Eyelids - Most emotion in RT comics are expressed by squinting the character's lower eye lids. In fact, the majority of panels feature a closed lower lid. It would be nice if this was some sort of satire of the common half-lidded expression found in most webcomics, but I really doubt that the artist is clever enough to come up with that. Instead, I think he's just trying to avoid falling into that quagmire, and managed to fall into it from the other direction.



• Jokes - I'm not sure I understand the point of this one. Blu-ray players exist outside of PS3s so why is this guy spazzing out? No one knows. Why is a man yelling at trees? Who cares? There are a lot of comics that don't have jokes included. I know we're in a recession, but this is ridiculous.



• Consistent Comic Resolution - Some of these comics are really really small, and some are really really big. It's really kind of annoying having to strain my eyes to read one, then having to scroll all over the place to read the next one. Please keep them a consistent size, so the pages aren't annoying to read.



• Positive Space - Yes, I know you don't want to crowd the panel with characters and dialog, but this amount of negative space is just ridiculous. The guy looks silly at that size, and just doesn't engage the reader like he would if he were filling up a bit more of the panel, especially in those two panels where nothing is happening. The same could be said of these two, as they would look better if they were filling up the panel, as they'd look closer together and give the impression that they are actually interacting. This is probably caused by the artist drawing the characters before even thinking about the word balloons, so he draws a lot of space for the balloons to go, just in case. In the future, I would reccommend sketching the whole thing out, text and all, so it doesn't feel like the comic has a bunch of visual gaps in it that divert the reader and eat his soul.




Ironically, It Doesn't Filter Out Red Vs Blue

• Fresh Ideas - If you've read 10 of these comics, you've pretty much exhausted the depth of Rooster Teeth's pool of ideas. For the most part, these comics are about 30-year-old men who act like they're still living in the college dorm. Cracking gay jokes and video game sex jokes like they're still as funny as they were then, but unfortunately they aren't. When a 20 year old cracks an immature joke, it's funny because you expect him to be immature. When an old man makes the same joke, however, it's just creepy, because the only people that age who make immature jokes are most likely sex offenders. The writers are aware of how stale the material is, because they've acknowledged that the main comic is not funny enough, and decide to include some zany background character doing something wacky, in order to ensure laughs.



• Shins - Apparently someone blew this guys shins off in the war with a machine gun, and they had to glue his feet to his knees. But I think that idea's already been done.

This list has made one thing about Rooster Teeth comics apparent: It's missing something. What that something is can only be determined by looking at this list and analyzing each missing piece. And I have finally discovered what is wrong with these comics. They lack one crucial element, the one thing that is necessary for any webcomic. Hopefully the cartoonists at Rooster Teeth can work on attaining this thing that they are lacking, because until they do their comics will be the most brainless abominations to ever exist, appealing only to idiotic squids. What is this solitary thing that they lack? That thing is talent. Read more→

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→

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→

Tally Road: An Infinite Number of Potholes

The Donuts Are a Metaphor for a Terrible Webcomic

Shortly after the popularization of webcomics, some moron decided that it would be a good idea to institute a purely voluntary rating system, much like the one used for television. Ratings for webcomics are incredibly useless since the only things anyone cares about is whether or not there are exposed genitalia. Additionally, the host of the content is required to evaluate it himself, and assign the rating he thinks is most appropriate. With no universal standard being applied, a rating is worth about as much as a fettuccine noodle without any Alfredo sauce. And then there is an even greater travesty. Some cartoonists actually create content and try to shoehorn it to a rating, which is entirely and utterly backwards from the original premise. Tally Road (by a man known only as Jinxtigr) is one of these comics.

The first thing you'll notice about Tally Road is that it is another furry comic. The second thing you'll notice, is that it is uglier than sin itself. These two details, combined with the very small "Web-MA for Adult Content," should give you pause. And I'm the one who has to review this for you. The main page is utterly devoid of details and features, which is great for keeping clutter down, but is terrible for actually navigating the site. There is no concentrated archive page, or even a summary of the plot, characters or setting, so readers are required to read through as far as they can stand to figure out what the stupid thing is about. The only things you will find on the front page is a comic, basic navigation links (first, previous, etc.), a link to something called "Library" (more on this later), a blog post and one of those annoying chatterbox things. It's all black on white, which is about as bland as a Nilla Wafer, but without actually being useful in any recipes.

Going into greater depth on the art, it's a wonder Jinxtigr thinks he could ever make anything worthy of a "Web-MA" rating.

Eww Gross What is Going On Here?

Anatomically, the characters are so over-simplified, so basic, that it becomes impossible to discern an arm from a foot, much less tell which way they're pointed. There are only two characters, really, a dog and a cat. All characters have only minor variations on these two shapes, and it becomes very difficult to differentiate two of the same species. Male and female characters are (sometimes) differentiated by an extra line across the chest to indicate a breast, I guess, but that is rarely sufficient to identify that they are actually different people. During the comic's only known sex scene (don't click on this at work, moron), I can honestly say that I didn't realize the characters were both male until I was on my fourth pass through the archives.

The plot is incredibly jerky and disjointed, with consecutive pages often not showing any kind of coherent relation to each other. Characters just pop in or disappear with no explanation or even any acknowledgement. The protagonists (?) were very quick to abandon their own objectives for those of another, and failed to even go through any kind of argument or bargaining. Such weak motivation leads to apathy from the readers. No one will ever want to care about a character who is so weak-willed that he can't even follow through with any single conviction. Any attempt to inject humor into the comic falls flat, usually because of poor timing, but sometimes it's just an irrelevant joke that isn't consistent with the form of the comic. We can assert that Jinxtigr is worse at telling jokes than he is at telling a coherent story, which is quite an accomplishment, considering how terrible the entirety of Tally Road is.

Under the aforementioned 'Library' link, you can find various scrawlings that Jinxtigr has attempted to pass off as short stories and webcomic reviews. I'm not a literary critic, but I think it will suffice to say that the short stories are terrible. As for the webcomic reviews, we must ask whether Jinxtigr has any moral authority to provide an opinion regarding other webcomics. Sometimes offering no substantial opinion on a comic, he feels the need to simply talk about it, and compliment it even though he has no understanding of it. Not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings, he offers only kind words to the comics he reviews, feeling some kind of obligation to promote it. Listen, reviewers, if you are always patting everyone on the back, you've already lost as a reviewer. Not everything is good, and if you claim that your subject is good when it isn't, no one will take your opinion seriously. If you like everything, no one will want to use your opinion as a gauge for the quality of comics. You don't have to be excessively negative, but fellating everyone who asks for a review is not going to earn you any respect.

So what is Tally Road good for? Other than poorly drawn guns, awful sexual puns, and anarchist furry sons, not much at all. It gives us an excellent argument against the act of creating content to fit a certain content rating group, and probably even voluntary rating systems in general. The correct way to approach a project such as a webcomic is to create the product you want, and if anyone actually cares then you can assign a content rating to it, or better yet, let someone else do it. As far as Tally Road is concerned, my only advice is to take a detour because this road is just one massive pothole. 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→

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→

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→

Girl Genius: Crashing Through the Glass Ceiling Face-First

Webcomics are essentially the scum of the Internet. But it's true that not all of them are abominations. From the subsewers of mediocrity arises a few hypermutants which do not immediately offend the tastes of the rest of the mutants on the E-Zone. How do we determine which ones are good? Who the fuck knows. However, I do know what doesn't work, and that's placing the choice of "best turd" in the hands of other webcartoonists.

The most recent choice for "Most Outstanding Comic" is none other than artistic travesty Girl Genius. For those of you wondering what the hell a comic called Girl Genius could possibly be about, the plot synopsis page is not going to tell you a whole lot, since the author got to what I assume was an insignificant plot point (based on what I know of shitty webcomic authors) before giving up on writing what invariably would have been a lengthy and convoluted description of what every single page had contained.

From what I can glean, though, the story is basically your standard Mary Sue character who is suddenly thrust into a high adventure world based on talents and skills she was unaware of before. She has 2 or 3 companions to round out the skill set, and she has some kind of rival and some kind of nemesis to provide varying levels of conflict and is ultimately possessed by an even more powerful force than herself. Basically the premise of every anime ever. Slap a coat of Steampunk paint on it and it becomes Girl Genius.

Despite the uninspired and hackneyed concept, Girl Genius continues to show that it does not deserve "Most Outstanding" anything with its more than sloppy art. The artist, Phil Foglio, has never seen a human face in his entire life. Eyes are not teardrop shaped, though they ARE generally the same size, and heads are not the size of a softball. And most of all, facial features should exist on the actual face, not on a plane in front of or behind the face. Of course there's rarely any consistency between characters, since faces have a tendency to change their proportions in EACH PANEL. Of course this may be a result from not planning out the art very well; as seen in the last two panels, the features are often resized to accomodate the presence of other features at such an angle.

Ultimately, when one decides who should earn the label of "Most Outstanding Webcomic," one should consider whether the artist can draw a character consistently enough to convey the concept that his characters are not made of Silly Putty. The story should be something which isn't lifted from the annals of japan, and the writing (if it is a long form comic) should be conveyed clearly and concisely to new readers. When the winner of "Most Outstanding Webcomic" is a Girl Genius with an IQ of 60, one has to wonder what the comics who chose it are like. Read more→

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sarah Zero: Look for Our Ad in Cosmo Girl!

Welcome to the Contranet. Sarah Zero is an alleged webcomic that attempts to tell the story of a hideous sea mutant that has taken on human form and has assimilated itself into the human culture of piracy, white slavery and child pornography.

Sarah Zero is your basic terrible webcomic, at least on the surface. Most noticable is how every 'page' looks like a magazine ad for vodka. Word Art that doesn't say anything prevails, and by the liberal use of meaningless text, many readers may get the idea that in the world of Sarah Zero, words don't mean much at all. Dialog between characters is empty and riddled with buzzwords. These people do not talk like real people

A bigger problem is the artist's desperate unfamiliarity with human anatomy, as evidenced by these two fish-men. Any artist will tell you that before using stylized characters, as SZ is attempting to do, one must first have a firm basis in how actual people look. Without this established foundation, one will often end up with a human-gazelle hybrid. Even worse is that the title character generally does not maintain the same proportions from ad to ad, creating the sense that her bone structure is, in fact, gelatinous.

On the outside, Sarah Zero might seem like a harmless terrible webcomic. But a closer inspection reveals that it is a cry for help from a distressed individual. First we should examine Ace Plughead's irrational hatred for creators of webcomics that are much, much more popular than his (and deservedly so). Through the thinly-veiled persona of "bRYAN NORSOOMAIKXCD," Plughead attempts to drive home the point that these comics are nothing more than corporate gutter trash, and that more independent comics such as Sarah Zero should be Contranet Superstars. Also I find it funny that he doesn't know the name of the guy who does XKCD.

Plughead has also exhibited some strange attention-seeking behaviors: requesting criticism and then rejecting it, strange baby-talk, and enabling his detractors by constantly acknowledging them. He clearly would prefer to be hated than forgotten, and simply convinces himself that such hate is simply inspired by jealousy of his greatness, indicating a grandiose delusion. Arguments could be made that the artistic talent shown is indicative of hallucination or other negative symptoms, but seeing as I'm no psychologist I'm just going to leave it alone. Besides, if he truly were schizophrenic, Sarah Zero would be a lot more fun to read.

Ultimately Sarah Zero is an example of what happens when an advertising agency takes the brown acid and puts the rejected submissions on the Contranet. Unfortunately, the Plughead Ad Agency has so much emotional investment in this campaign that any dissatisfaction is just the uncultured opinions of philistines and plebians. But the truth is, Sarah Zero is simply ugly, slow, and bordering on psychotic. Whatever they're selling, I'm not buying. Read more→