The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Arts & Entertainment => Topic started by: V-Adore on November 30, 2005, 06:40:46 pm
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So, does anyone else out there read terrible webcomics as guilty pleasures? I'll freepy confess I do, although it's less for guilty pleasure than for schadenfreude; there's something reassuring about being able to say "man, my dog could crap a better comic than this."
If you do this too, what are your "favorites?" (If you don't... well, uh, don't judge me, man.) My personal schadenfreude read is Jack, (http://www.pholph.com/) (NSFW) which is wretched in basically every way a webcomic can be: "furry," incredibly inappropriate artstyle (extremely cartoony funny animals in a comic that's supposed to be Dark and Serious and Stuff), gratuitously gory and "adult" for no real reason, sophomorically written and crammed full of half-baked philosophizing, full of artist's friends' characters... and, of course, hugely popular. So much of what I know about how not to write came frm this comic. It's sort of a miracle, in a terrible way.
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The only webcomics I read semi-regularly are Achewood, Penny Arcade, and Superosity (http://www.superosity.com/). So I guess the last one would be the black sheep. At least, no one I know admits that they read it.
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...My personal schadenfreude read is Jack (http://www.pholph.com/)...
What the...what...it's like Looney Tunes in Viet Nam!
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The only other webcomic I read is Scary Go Round and actually, as a body of work I like it better over all but Onstad's 10 best strips are all funnier than John Allison's funniest.
However, the presense of TOUAMB makes it necessary for me to put ScaryGoRound below Acehwood in my life's priorities.
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That Jack comic is hugely popular? Is it hugely popular among a very specific demographic?
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Maybe schadenfreude makes it hugely popular.
How else can you explain things like 'Fear Factor', 'Hillbilly Wife Swap' (AKA Trading Spouses), and Cops?
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My personal schadenfreude read is Jack, (http://www.pholph.com/) (NSFW)
Bless this man's heart. He had a vision and he followed through with it.
As for you, V-Adore, why you would inflict this vision on other people - people who up until now had remained blissfully ignorant of it - only God knows.
Only God.
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That Jack comic is hugely popular? Is it hugely popular among a very specific demographic?
Well, yes. I probably should have attached "among furries who want to think they're dark and intellectual" there. That's still way more people than makes me comfortable.
Bless this man's heart. He had a vision and he followed through with it.
As for you, V-Adore, why you would inflict this vision on other people - people who up until now had remained blissfully ignorant of it - only God knows.
Only God.
Well, hey, if Bobby can do it...
Besides, there was like a paragraph of context there to let you know that you were clicking on something that really, really sucked. I thought I'd successfully covered my ass in that regard.
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Jack is the thing to read if you want a relatively illustration of "furry subculture as incomprehensible alien entity". Reading something like, say, Sabrina Online, you think "Okay, well, everyone is a skunk or a tiger or whatever, but I'm cool with that, it's basically a webcomic about a nerdy programmer working at a porn studio like any non-furry webcomic creator might make". And then you look at Jack and things just get steadily more divorced from any normal vision of the world, but not in the way the creator wants. It's not the death and divine punishment that shock and baffle, but the idea that it is totally normal for this character to be a third-generation mantis/deer/rabbit hybrid with butterfly wings, and that somehow, to someone, this is loaded with symbolic signifiers about the character. Or that "anyfur" and "everyfur" are logical and useful words. The vengeful fetus ghosts pale in comparison.
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there was like a paragraph of context there to let you know that you were clicking on something that really, really sucked. I thought I'd successfully covered my ass in that regard.
I understood that it was supposed to suck. What I did not understand is that if I started at the beginning of the archives, I would meet Fnar, The Fetus Who Went To Hell.
I also did not understand that I would find all of it strangely compelling, thereby calling into question my most deeply held beliefs about my personality/tenability as an individual.
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Diesel Sweeties (http://www.dieselsweeties.com/) and Questionable Content (http://www.questionablecontent.net/index.php).
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I pretty much only read Achewood and Concerned (http://www.hlcomic.com/), which is only funny if you've played Half-Life 2 and/or Counter-Strike for many, many hours.
Great game, great comic.
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Hahaha, I just started reading Concerned jough. It's pretty funny but probably only because I play way too much CS and Half Life.
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My personal schadenfreude read is Jack, (http://www.pholph.com/) (NSFW)
Bless this man's heart. He had a vision and he followed through with it.
As far as I can tell, all the comics are more or less the same
Panel 1: something vaguely positive or some neutral personal interaction happens
Later panel: something terrible happens. Someone dies, or it would seem they may die.
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I used to read Diesel Sweeties on the regular, but now it's pretty much just Achewood. I'll go back and read DS when I have an "Oh shit!" moment and remember it's there.
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I pretty much only read Achewood. I'll catch up on Perry Bible Fellowship every few weeks and take an occasional gander at Cat and Girl. Nothing else much grabs me.
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Some while ago, Perry Bible Fellowship stopped making sense to me. And then sometime after that it stopped working in Mozilla. So it's all over between us.
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Some while ago, Perry Bible Fellowship stopped making sense to me. And then sometime after that it stopped working in Mozilla. So it's all over between us.
PBF is about as hit-or-miss as it gets; the hits hit hard, the misses miss by a mile. I, too, have become somewhat disillusioned. These days, when I think of it, I reread the archives of A Lesson is Learned But the Damage Is Irreversible, (http://www.alessonislearned.com/) which reminds me of PBF if PBF attempted to have a narrative... and was in a different art style... and was deeper. ... So really it has nothing to do with PBF at all, but it reminds me of it for some reason and is also very good.
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So really it has nothing to do with PBF at all, but it reminds me of it for some reason and is also very good.
Ssoooo... kinda like The Parking Lot is Full (http://plif.andkon.com/) then?
(Whose site is for some undoggedly reason down at the moment.)
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Oh, and I catch up at You Damn Kid every so often too.
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In the I cannot look away category is Bleedman Comics.
http://www.snafu-comics.com/
The artist David Stanworth aka Bleedman awkwardly crosses over several kids cartoons and other media from the Powerpuff Girls to Invader Zim to Dexter's Lab to many others in a heady blend of pathetic attempts at humor and laughable attempts at angsty melodrama. And girls getting spanked. And In Fight Powerpuff Girl panty shots. It's terrible yet he has many fans. I check in occasionally to see what dpeths of preversion he has sunk to.
Also in the adult-ifying kids shows category (in the Creepy Fan-Comic Based On Some Forgettable Piece of Timeslot Filler sub-category) is this
Of Mice And Mayhem (http://www.electricgiraffemusic.com/001.html) A really way way way too involved Rescue Rangers fan-comic full of angst, espionage, romance, angst and angst that runs to 230 pages and is filled with dialogue like this
"Wait. Gadget. Chip's right! I searched for your life-force in the crystals and came up empty - but that V-Chip must have been 'blocking' your spirit at that very moment - removing your soul - WOW - from our plane of existence... somehow"
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It's terrible yet he has many fans. I check in occasionally to see what dpeths of preversion he has sunk to.
Yeah, and Pete Townsend was busted for child porn because he was "researching" to fight against it.
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In the I cannot look away category is Bleedman Comics.
http://www.snafu-comics.com/
Dang, say what you will about Onstad, at least he knows the difference between "your" and "you're".
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Oh, the Bleedman comics are ridiculously terrible. I think it's another case of someone with decent but marginal talent getting reinforced on their weaknesses: in this case, someone telling ol' Bleeder that his plotting was SOOOOO GOOOOOD when in fact his only strength is "has a decent art style, sort of."
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Bleedman's comic is funny because while there are disturbing bits, it's the over the top angsty melodrama that makes it a winner for me. I laugh at moments where I'm supposed to be shocked, horrified, saddened and vice versa at the humorous moments.
Here's the "cover" of his PPG/Dexter's Lab comic that got him some notice.
Basically characters are a few years older. Dexter for instance is kind of femmy looking. And Bleedman develops an ultra cliche relationship between him and his version of Blossom. (http://bleedman.snafu-comics.com/?strip_id=0)
Plus, Dexter's rival Mandark is now a raving kill-crazy psycho.
Here's the flashback to one of the unintentionally hilarious moments in this comic.LOOK OUT DEE DEE (http://bleedman.snafu-comics.com/?strip_id=81)
OH THE TRAGED-HA HA HA HA HA HA HA (http://bleedman.snafu-comics.com/?strip_id=82)
HA HA HA HA HA HA (http://bleedman.snafu-comics.com/?strip_id=83)
HA HA...heh...heh...HA HA HA HA (http://bleedman.snafu-comics.com/?strip_id=84)
Oh, it's been awhile since I saw that. I forgot how humorously hamfisted it was.
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Here's the flashback to one of the unintentionally hilarious moments in this comic.LOOK OUT DEE DEE (http://bleedman.snafu-comics.com/?strip_id=81)
OH THE TRAGED-HA HA HA HA HA HA HA (http://bleedman.snafu-comics.com/?strip_id=82)
HA HA HA HA HA HA (http://bleedman.snafu-comics.com/?strip_id=83)
HA HA...heh...heh...HA HA HA HA (http://bleedman.snafu-comics.com/?strip_id=84)
oh jesus
oh my GOD
Thank you, I about laughed myself stupid.
DEEDEE, NOOOOOO
(I have moments like that with Jack, too. "Oh, shit, the... triceratops... dude... just died from falling out of a tree? ... oh, wait, he got shot? ... AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH")
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COMPUTERRRR!!!
God, it reminds me of the end of Revenge of the Sith-Monsters From Beyond Pluto, or whatever EPISODE III was actually called, when the new Darth Vader wakes up, and in his new Stephen Hawkings voice, goes, "What about Padme. Is she alright. Noooooooo."
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Normally I find the wacky links, but by God this is something I never thought could exist. I am flabbergasted.
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"What about Padme. Is she alright. Noooooooo."
That bit made me angry but also almost giggle at the same time.
Picture Darth Vader doing the little potty dance 5-6 year olds do when they have to go BAD.
Yeah, that kind of giggle.
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hmmm.
one thing I'm -not- ashamed to read is anything on this website:
scott mccloud (http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/comics.html)
It is sometimes a bit pretentious, but it's really well drawn. and stuff. Reading it makes me want to go get some "arty" comics from the local comic store.
Speaking of which, do any of you enjoy print comics?
I liked: Maus, Maus II, Jimmy Corgan (The Smartest Kid on Earth), and Hey, Wait!
I just passed the comic store yesterday, so that stuff was on my mind. I wish I could draw, but I gave up trying at an early age. so my drawing never progressed past the 5th grade level.
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oh god... not Scott McCloud.
His understanding comics is a great book.. however his redefining comics has spawned so much utter shite that I'm almost tempted to write him off forever... almost.
Also Jimmy Corgan is pretty good.