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→
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Bengo's Choice: Investigative Journalism or Libel?
Sunday, January 25, 2009
The Gigcast: Cramming a Megacast of Information into a Gigacast
I first noticed The Gigcast by watching my referral links like a hawk. I generally do this to find humorous search terms that find me, because I do get some weird stuff (the most popular search term is some variation on "betty and veronica porn," and I'm starting to regret reviewing Menage a Three now). The Gigcast had shot me a pair of links comparing me unfavorably to the now-extinct "Your Webcomic is Bad and You Should Feel Bad" blog, which was my first indication that this podcast is the product of two oblivious idiots who couldn't discern an apple from a federal bailout.
The two hosts, JT (A 40 year old man who plays a ukelele and as far as I can tell, does nothing else) and Scott (who does a vapid webcomic with dull art and poor writing) run the show as though it were a weekly lecture on the importance of bread in a post-modern society, which results in a podcast that is unnaturally extended to fill a whole hour. Both hosts give the impression that they are just watching the clock until the show is complete, filling the space with awkward conversations and off-topic murmurings. Unlike other podcasts I've punished myself by listening to, the guys on The Gigcast actually go in with a bulleted list of topics to bring up, which puts them a leg up on the rest of the competition. Unfortunately, this is still inadequate since after the first few sentences, the discussion meanders away into something unrelated to the initial topic, and more than likely, regards some self-centered bit of information, such as what the hosts are doing at some upcoming convention.
The first ten minutes are generally occupied by a segment known as "Shallow Thoughts" which is basically just co-opted from another podcast to fill time. It has little to no relevance to "the industry" and therefore has no purpose in this podcast. In addition, it's just a cheap knockoff of the old "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey" segments from Saturday Night Live, but with less humor. Next is generally a segment where the hosts spotlight comics submitted by someone named Brian Anderson. These spotlights are generally just brief descriptions of a comic's about page, which really isn't much to go on. If the same amount of time was devoted to a single comic, the results would be a bit more detailed giving the listener a greater impression about what is being shilled. That is, assuming The Gigcast's writers could craft a decent evaluation.
By now we've been able to eat up a good ten minutes. Solid! But now we've got another 50 to kill. The next step is to start talking about the parent company Nightgig Studios and shilling its other products. This is actually expected, since this is the whole purpose of a "collective" but it could be done so much less blatantly. Unfortunately, I think this would require that JT and Scott knew what the definition of 'subtle' was. I don't think they do, which is why they cover all their bases quickly and fully, instead of working them into other topics that they bring up later (which they also do, just to be sure).
As JT runs down his bullet-list of news items, Scott will often chime in with some irrelevant comment that steers the conversation onto a meaningless track until they run out of gas. Then with the next list item, the cycle repeats itself. The overall effect is like listening to two cut-ups in the back of a classroom, taking cues from the instructor, then moving their own discussion onto a tangent of a tangent of a tangent, until the instructor raises his voice to speak over them, resetting their attention to the topic at hand.
The Gigcast will also feature a guest sometimes, which, if I understand the formula correctly, is whoever is buying the most ad time via Project Wonderful. The guest does very little for the show, since he's neither the centerpiece of discussion, nor a fresh voice for the show. Instead, they generally tend to be in the same vein as Scott and JT, i.e. meandering and self-serving. Either give them more weight to the course of the show, or shorten their appearance time, don't drag them through the entire hour if they're not going to affect the outcome.
As the show draws to a close, our intrepid hosts have a tendency to note how close to the end of the show we are, and how many more minutes we have to fill. Here's a tip, don't draw the audience's attention to how much or little time they have actually spent because it detracts from the enjoyment experienced. Not that there's much of that involved in The Gigcast. Try to fit as much significant content into the hour, instead of dragging things out to fill the whole thing. If you can't fill an hour with substantive content, then you shouldn't try to go for a whole hour.
The strange thing is that there is often a blog post that coincides with each podcast, full of bullet items which could easily be used to fill the space on air. It's already in the same format as the bulleted list used for the items they talk about already. Of course, without more structure for the ones they DO use, this would just extend the show by hours into conversations about how JT and Scott each spent Christmas in 1995.
Ultimately, my biggest problem with The Gigcast is the inability to focus on the topic for the entire duration. A lot of chaff in a podcast is a recipe for disinteresting the listeners. If you find yourself looking at the clock to find out if your job is done, then you might want to rethink your format. Putting more preparation into the news items being covered will result in more structure and a greater adherence to the topics being discussed. The hour will be filled more substantively and the result is appropriately sized content for an appropriately sized show. As it stands now, though, The Gigcast is just too small for its britches. Read more→
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Peter is the Wolf: The Most CONTROVERSIAL Review Yet!
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.
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.
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→
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Point Guardian: Nothing Super About This Hero
Point Guardian is a comic done solely by Ben Carver, and it features the exploits of a superhero named Ultra whose powers include the ability to "at will, empower his body, giving him strength and abilities far beyond those of mortal men." With generic powers like that, it's no wonder that Ultra is the most popular superhero in the known universe. The comic 'covers' also give me the impression that he has the ability to transform from an Asian man into an albino. Point Guardian claims that it is "One of the first and few non-parody superhero webcomics on the 'Net!" Thankfully, this is true.
Other than the excessive quantity of smirks, there's not much else for me to pick on, artistically. Of course, I mean that literally. There is really nothing to this art besides characters floating on a white void. Backgrounds only seem to be drawn when establishing the setting, and ignored during the bulk of the action. This kind of behavior removes the context from the action and places the characters in an action scene with no reason, other than to be actiontastic. In fact there was one instance where Carver decided to place the action inside a featureless white room, for no other reason than he'd not even have to establish the setting in the first place. In fact, even his establishing panels are utterly devoid of visual description. Carver chooses to draw the area from an angle where he can get away with drawing as few lines as possible. And the comic covers, a picture one would expect to be filled with some action-packed scene and filled with detail, are generally just dull shots of 1-3 characters in some vapid pose, on top of a cheap gradient fill, if even that. People want soul-crippling detail, and filling your panels with empty white space is a surefire way to bore them to death.
Developing the relationships between characters is another aspect of comic making that Carver has failed at. Two characters are abruptly revealed to be mother and child, only so that it will seem more dramatic when, a scant three pages later, the mother attempts to kill her own child. Carver has no idea how to write two characters such that their relationship to each other genuinely increases the dramatic tension between them. Instead he relies on tropes and cliches without properly developing them so that they're actually effective. Most are applied at the last minute, as though the author simply had them as afterthoughts, thinking "oh, this meaningless fact would make the upcoming scene more dramatic!" The truth is, most readers see through this easily, which results in a cheapened event, rather than heightened drama. This, more than anything, makes me question how much of Point Guardian is planned out in advance.
Superhero Comics are rarely, if ever, strictly about a person with superpowers fighting some threat to humanity. There is often an internal struggle between his heroic life and his personal life. He may make poor life decisions, or be distracted into slipping up at a crucial moment. The point is, there is often a lot of detail peppered into one of these comics, illustrating as much about the character as possible. Point Guardian, on the other hand, gives its best effort to create as little detail as possible. Even potentially action-filled events are cut short because it would require more detail. By putting more effort into properly developing the world his characters live in, as well as the characters themselves, Ben Carver could have made Point Guardian into an interesting comic. Unfortunately what he gave us was nothing more than an amateurish attempt to come up with the best superhero: One who has infinite power potential, a broad scope of abilities, and an incorruptible spirit. This is the most boring superhero. If he was the one slated to rescue me, I think I'd opt to remain in mortal peril. Read more→
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