Political Webcomics: More Baffling Than Voting for Pat Buchanan

In my opinion, the most patriotic day this year is November 4, Election Day. I enjoy the democratic process by casting my vote in favor of the most reprehensible candidates, because inciting suffering on the citizens of my county, state and nation is something that gives me a perverse pleasure. In honor of the upcoming election, I decided to take a look at what the world of webcomics has to provide in the realm of political comics. And I wish I hadn't.

The first one I looked at is one I had glanced over before: Right Left Center by the guys who also do Electronic Tigers. Since then, however, the comic has simply devolved into even more ridiculous political cartoons. In the latest comic, he has presented Democrat candidate Barack Obama as a skewed charicature of his actual views, sporting conflicting socialist and fascist strawman arguments, and the icing on the cake is a series of "citations" from right-wing sources which are already significantly misconstrued, and then he removes what little context is left. The previous page isn't much better, pushing the same ineffective talking points that have been on the table for months, and thinks they'll work this time. Of course, they're just the generic arguments made against Democrat candidates, so it's not like this Republican mouthpiece is spewing anything that hasn't be spewed before. The main problem with RLC is that it's just too damn wordy. Political comics have never been around to change anyone's mind; instead, they just need to poke fun at some recent political (or otherwise national) event and twist it into a humorous analogy, metaphor, or charicature. RLC fails at this with incredible swiftness, but since the primary demographic is racists and people who want to argue with racists, I'm sure they find the stiff, one-sided haranguement of Democrats to be amusing.

The next one I found was Keenspot's longest-running political comic, Sore Thumbz (the z is extreme), which was originally supposed to be YAGC (Yet Another Gamer Comic) but writer Chris Crosby hasn't played a video game besides those dang ol' Marty-o Brothers, so he uses it as a political mouthpiece. Like RLC, Sore Thumbz has a tendency to stretch a gag out way too long. Unlike RLC, it's not as bad as RLC. Still, it's not without a veritable gold mine of faults. The conservative mouthpiece is an obnoxious loud-mouthed business owner, while his liberal counterpart is an equally obnoxious large-breasted bimbo, and both are about as flat as Iowa. The art is really kind of sloppy, as these two characters will often change size and shape between pages and even panels, but the glaring flaw is the writing. Chris Crosby wedges a liberal joke into pages where it's really unnecessary, and pushes his left-wing character to always be correct. 99% of the time the conservative is portrayed as either a raving lunatic or a smug jackass, detracting from his emphasis as a serious counterpart and turns him into a mere comic foil. A better design for this setup would involve both characters being used equally, by which I mean using them whenever appropriate for a joke, rather than leaning on the left-wing jokes and ignoring the others.

But when it comes to forcing a joke, none does it better than Keenspot's newest addition, M. J. Offen's Politicomic. It's only been around for a month and a half, but has still managed to strike me as the worst attempt at political humor on the Internet. Actually calling it a comic is kind of iffy, since all the art is just photographs of the candidates after they've been shoved through a handful of Photoshop filters. In fact, if just playing around with photoshop is enough to get on Keenspot these days, maybe I'll give it a whirl. I mean, I'm sure I can come up with better jokes than McCain Kong. Of course we all know why this Obamanation ended up on Keenspot, and that's because Chris Crosby wants to give a leg up to all the liberal political webcomics out there, even if they don't really come close to deserving it.

Of course, a lack of art is not uncommon in webcomics, especially when politics are involved. Get Your War On thrives with nothing less than old clip art and a foul, sarcastic mouth. While it focuses on the Iraq War and the politics related to it, GYWO is not above discussing other political issues, like the economy, or various campaign bizarrities, and railing against the war and the Republican party has given GYWO a boost in popularity among moody teenagers and high-minded college students who consider it to be much more poignant than it really is. So much so that it has been modified into a series of animated shorts. The truth is, anyone can manufacture popularity through faux outrage and obscenity. Loud ranting is not funny, and sarcasm gets old after just a short while. A political comic without these things has a greater chance of being appreciated for its wit, rather than just being blindly followed by those too dumb or high to differentiate between quality and trash.

The last political comic I found before I got sick of looking is known only as The Pain (a reference to The Princess Bride, no doubt) which provides the same cynical look at current events as GYWO, except providing actual art. Actually, the art is populated by nothing but grotesque distortions of reality, like looking at life through reverse-beer goggles. The comics often carry a severe tone of pessimism and misery, interjected with wild bouts of mania, and I wouldn't be surprised if the author had Bipolar II disorder. Many of the scenarios presented aren't grounded in reality, but instead play up fantasies of anarchy, martial law, and apocalyptia, and the artist seems driven by nothing more than his most base desires, rather than any desire for social, moral, or economic reform, so his writing suffers from a lack of conviction to any kind of viewpoint other than selfishness. I guess that makes The Pain the perfect political webcomic for self-centered assholes who would rather wallow in their own misery instead of doing something about it, so I'm surprised it's not more popular than it is.

American Politics are generally about which human being the people detest the least, and can stand to vote for without hurling. Voting, like surgery, tends to require that the participant not eat for many hours prior to the procedure. Most voters don't even vote for their own interests, but rather some imaginary future version of themselves that doesn't actually resemble them at all. Regardless of who wins, I can expect that there will be plenty of moping around the nation, and I will revel in their misery. Additionally, I can expect to read a few comics complaining about America electing the wrong guy, from political and non-political webcomics alike, and all of this griping will be met with the same response: "Why didn't you try to do more?" Political cartoons have never been very funny, and political webcomics mangle the genre even more, trying to squeeze the blood of comedy from the stone of politics. If presented with a referendum to continue political webcomics, do the responsible thing: vote no. Read more→

Electronic Tigers (Guest Starring The Ponz)

When leveraged properly, a popular webcomic can provide an ample source of income. A healthy mixture of donation incentives, merchandise, and publication can turn a successful hobby into a successful business venture. With enough spit, gumption, determination and elbow grease (spunk and grit don't hurt either), a skilled webcartoonist can turn their talents into a supplemental or even primary income. Thankfully, I'm not here to talk about people doing things the right way, but rather to lambaste someone for doing things in exactly the wrong way.

The Wrong Way to turn your comic into a cash fountain involves, among other qualities, impatience. Being impatient can lead an otherwise capable cartoonist down a path of failure, misery, and greed. I am talking in the general sense, of course; I wouldn't want to imply that the cartoonist behind Electronic Tigers is capable. Electronic Tigers is the worst kind of garbage: A gaming comic infused with heavily skewed political 'humor', mired in racism, fueled entirely by an asian with enormous bazongas. This 'hot azn' loudly and obnoxiously declares herself a virgin, solely for the economic benefits rather than her moral beliefs. These economic benefits extend to the creators, because for some bizarre reason, horny nerds find virginity to be infinitely more attractive than sexual experience. Therefore, Mika's virginity can be exploited in a myriad of ways to net cash dollars for her owners.

The average ET strip is really actually not very funny. The author fails so often to construct anything resembling a joke, and even when he comes close, the punchline often fails to be amusing. Instead the humor tries to spawn from "crazy situations" and "wacky character behavior" despite neither of these being taken to enough of an extreme that it approaches Chuckleville, much less Guffawston. It would also probably be funnier if it wasn't so incredibly racist.

As unfunny as the original Electronic Tigers was, it was decided a few months back that it just wasn't political enough. So once a week the ET brain trust releases a political comic known as Right Left Center or RLC, where the 'right' is represented as a calm, intelligent elephant, while the left is portrayed by a braying jack-ass of a strawman, which effectively reduces the viability of the 'right' viewpoint provided by the association. The strawmannery and flawed logical arguments were always a part of ET, but by separating the political commentary from the gaming comic, the creators hoped to make ET look less retarded. This didn't really work at all.

Recently, one of the Electronic Tiger handlers has fallen on hard financial times. Rather than putting his miserable comic on hiatus to find a job, and sparing me the discomfort associated with the mere knowledge of its existence, he has decided to prostitute his characters to feed his family. As his 'situation' continues, his political views become more and more vehement and vitriolic, as well as no relevance to reality, and instead of seeking employment, decides to argue his political opinion with his readers at length.

In an act of desperation, this creator has signed up with a company employing a Ponzi Pyramid Scheme (more commonly known as an MLM business) and actually has the gall to ask his few readers to throw their cash in under him. If any bite, then it will surely bite him when they can't even recoup their 'initial investment'. He then took some offense to Something Awful for flooding the comment page with arguments against MLM schemes (For some odd reason, SA users have an intense hatred for pyramid schemes, searching them out to quash them in their infancy) and also for registering their dislike for the comic while they were there. Retaliating against a massive readership spike simply because they were being negative is a great way to alienate them. Instead of insulting a group by referring to them as 'e-thugs' or 'cyberbullies' or 'digi-hooligans', an enterprising webcartoonist could easily find a way to turn a negative into a positive, and convert the haters into continued readers.

Converting a webcomic from a hobby to a job is not something that can happen overnight. It is a gradual process that takes careful planning and severe dedication. In desperation, resorting to exploitation, prostitution and pyramid schemes might turn a quick buck, but you'll end up shooting yourself in the foot in the long run. More self-destructive is a comic is created for the sole purpose of exploitation, prostitution, and pyramid schemes, as is the case of Electronic Tigers. If you want to see a decent gaming comic, there are plenty of better ones out there. If you want to see a decent conservative political comic, there are plenty of better ones out there. If you want to see pornographic, racist, or simply unfunny comics, again, there are plenty of better ones out there. Electronic Tigers is simply an abomination upon all of these genres, and serves no greater purpose other than the generation of easy money. Read more→

Something Positive: If You Don't Have Something Nice to Say, Post It on Anti-Snark

The majority of Internet users are cynical, untrusting, hate-filled piles of misery and mistrust. In theory, a comic full of characters who mirror this attitude (as well as paper-thin strawmen for them to attack with their rapier wit and superior intelligence) should be immensely successful amongst the misanthropes of the E-Zone. Something Positive has managed to build a comic on this premise, and promptly run it into the ground.

Devon, the author-insert, is a bastion of cynicism and sarcasm. Leading others down a sardonic path of self-loathing, and even converting a few mindless strawmen characters along the way, Randy Milholland fancies his Devon counterpart as a Sarcastic Jesus character, saving all the sarcastoids and defeating the forces of Happiness Hell.

Milholland has also managed to cut production costs by eliminating the Plotline Development Department. Instead, he simply re-runs the same 4 or 5 plotlines ad nauseum, merely recasting certain roles and fine-tuning dialog. Plot 1: Devon gets a new girlfriend. Plot 2: Devon finds out girlfriend is crazier than he thought. Plot 3: Devon gets involved in a play. Plot 4: Devon and Friends play a Role-playing game using 'zany' characters. Ultimately, each of these plots resolves the same way, so you really only need to read through the archive about a year before you've gotten all the plots read.

Milholland has caught on to this problem, but instead of writing new plots, he has simply beefed up his one-shot filler comics with a sizeable cast of 50 or so nitwits who were converted to the side of tolerability by Devon and his Sword of Sarcasm. This way, a reader will feel obligated to learn everything about each minor character by reading through the archive until he or she shows up as a blathering strawman, ready to be given character depth by Devon's divine influence.

Artistically, Something Positive is a stagnant marsh of fetid water. Milholland's characters are juvenile arrangements of facial features on the side of a lima bean, with the consistency of a bowl of banana pudding. The sarcastic, half-lidded gazes from smirking faces almost smarm me into a feeling of annoyance before they melt off their gelatinous skulls. From panel to panel the features are stretched and smushed before being redrawn. Minor characters are often hidden behind large glasses that obscure the otherwise expressionless eyes (expressionless because the artist has no idea how to convey happiness that isn't accompanied by smugness).

Perspective is a difficult concept for fourth graders, and Milholland is no exception. Most pages are framed with no spatial depth, and those that are try to keep it simple. However, occaisionally a few will slip through that make Guernica look like a technical diagram. Milholland is also terrible at drawing clothes, since everything he draws looks like it was tailored to fit Quasimodo (or Quetzalcotl, I'm not sure which). One thing is for certain, I won't be asking him to design my house or my wardrobe.

Sarcasm is fun. It lets you pretend you're smarter than someone simply by being indirect. Of course, there is a point where it gets ridiculous and excessive, and everyone gets sick of it. Something Positive has passed this point several times, each time stopping to ask for directions on how to get to "popular" (sarcastically of course). There is nothing we can do at this point to stop the sardonic juggernaut except hope that sarcasm is just a fad on the Internet, and will soon fall out of favor with the mindless sops who populate this dank corner of Cyberspace. The only positive thing about Something Positive that I can say is that it's not a comic that people feel the need to talk about a lot, since it's so offensive to my senses that the mere mention of it would induce vomiting. Read more→