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→

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→

Hockey Zombie: Two Terrible Tastes That Taste Terribler Together

What do you get when you take a regular webcomic and give it a shitty writer? Well a lot of webcomics come out of that formula, I suppose, but one result is Hockey Zombie, a comic which combines zombies (on which my views have already been expressed) and hockey (on which my views don't need to be expressed because hockey is a dumb sport played by Canadians who can't be bothered to play something resembling a real sport. Chris van Gompel decided to combine these two atrocities in some sick, twisted effort to create the biggest atrocity in the history of atrocities.

Hockey Zombie has so many terrible strips it is hard to know where to begin. I guess blatant racism would be a good start, though. HZ also qualifies as a gamer comic. Heh. Portal. Unfortunately, most of the game comics don't require the game reference at all. Others are just plain disgusting. Some are both. None are good.

Van Gompel likes to think himself as some great crusader for Internet Justice. By jumping on the bandwagons of hating e-famous villains, he obviously hopes to pull in more readers and gain e-fame himself. Not so sadly, no amount of hatred bandwagoning will make Hockey Zombie popular, and maybe van Gompel should just focus on making shitty comics without a political agenda.

Another failed attempt at garnering e-glory can be seen in Hockey Zombie's technically annual Shark Week, where van Gompel rotoscopes some fucking sharks and puts retarded words in their mouths. The sharks always look terrible, and the jokes never take advantage of the sharks. Effectively it's a dumb, half-assed gimmick that doesn't accomplish anything.

The thing about Hockey Zombie is that it started out as a serial with a really dumb plot. However, as time progressed the comic was interrupted by more and more one-off pages, and pretty soon the "plot" was forgotten. That's okay, it was terrible. It was just a bunch of zombie jokes that have been told an infinite number of times until they got so old that they were in a nursing home when John McCain was born. But what it was replaced with was a terrible amalgamation of awful gimmicks and shitty cheap gags. Read more→