Dresden Codak, Part II

As promised (and you people assumed I was being flippant), this is the second part of the Dresden Codak review. Much to my dismay, we have utterly failed at keeping to Aaron Diaz's business model: as little as we tried to update, he still managed to update even less. We are shamed by such a master of procrastination and ineptitude.

But enough about that. Last time we may have ripped on Diaz's shitty business depending wholesale on pathetic, horny nerds (not an unsafe gamble, just a very repugnant one) - this time we'll be beating the shit out of his lackluster and morbidly dire storytelling abilities. That is, the abilities he doesn't have and probably never will. Cue a mighty wailing and gnashing of teeth from his whale-sized fantards, I reckon, but it's sadly true.

An aside, for a moment: in the world of published books, there have been some works of fiction put to print that should never have seen the light of day. Some publisher, somewhere, had looked over the entire body of text and deemed it worthy of the expense of being printed by the thousand. Now, consider that if it is possible for a system that was inherently designed to stop stupid shit getting published to make mistakes, the publisherless medium of the Internet must be FULL OF THE WORST CRAP TO EVER EXIST.

And so we have webcomics. For every talented creator who simply does not wish to submit themselves to the harrying experience of Getting Actually Published™ - and I speak from experience that the constant back-and-forth with publishers can often be as entertaining and pleasant as shitting broken glass non-stop for eight weeks - we have ten thousand who know, deep down, perhaps even subconsciously, that they are so bad that even the brain-dead publishers would turn them away. Aaron Diaz seems to be one of them.

Make no mistake, his pictures are pretty enough. He's mastered not only perspective and proportion (though a little more orthodoxy in panel/word balloon placement may not hurt), but how to draw a crackin' fine pair of nerd girl boobs. Hence the pandering, as explained earlier.

Diaz's forté as a writer, though, lies in his earlier, nerdier strips. The ones like this one. Not particularly original or smart, but harmless enough to make you crack a smile every now and again. You know the type - the type that he's said he's never, ever going to do again because his latest storyline ("Hob") is going so well. Y'know, when it's not sucking.

While I'm sure Diaz is liking the sophisticated and educated level of feedback as taken from his own forums - "Wow, amazing as always." "Also, how do you get to be so consistently kickass? Is it the hat?" "DC is so crazy I can't foresee what will happen next." - I think he may prefer some observations made by someone who possesses writing talent. Namely me, since I don't see anyone else with the appropriate qualifications willing to give it a go.

I doubt he will actually like what I have to say, since he's devolving into the kind of Internet artist who no longer despairs over not improving on a fucking Fibonacci curve and instead considers themselves "good enough" for whatever it is they do (and thus stagnate and turn into a Buckley), but tough shit. Like it or not, I'm going to explain why Dresden Codak's story is pretty much balls. Those of you who are just going to tell me that I'm untalented, jealous, wrong and also a big faggot can post your comments now. It'll add to the entertainment value of the update for those who actually pay attention to how big and clever I am, and I doubt you'll actually pay attention to anything I have to say, you ignorant cunts.

Since "Hob" is the "new" Dresden Codak and we'll be getting no more funnies out of Diaz (again, seriously, he said that - give up hope), we'll start with page one of that.

Immediate plus points: showing, not telling. There's no narration to hammer in what you're supposed to be seeing, unlike some webcomics. Coupled with page two, this gives us a gentle lead-in to what will turn out to be a disappointing story. And what makes it disappointed? Page three.

Here's the thing about characters in a work of fiction: they're people. They might be people people, robot people or even... occasionally... anthropomorphic animal people. The point is, they're well-rounded individuals with depth. Why do writers (well, good writers) make their characters this way? Because firstly, it's easier to write them.

"Woah there!" I hear a vast section of the Internet cry out, looking up from their Zutara fanfics. "You're wrong! Writing well-rounded characters with depth is hard!"

Oh, but of course it is for you, because you're lazy and you don't know a fucking thing. If you're competent, then you don't have to sit and think "What will my stupid character do next?" What they'll do next is obvious, because you know their personality like it's your own, or at least a close sibling whose mind you can read. So rather than sweat out the decisions, the prose flows from your fingertips like it has a life of its own. Every quirk and mannerism becomes second nature - they might click their fingers while thinking, or play with their hair when flirting. Whatever. You, as an author, know this person.

Kimiko "Thunderbolt" Ross is an optical illusion, however. Whatever image of depth you perceive, you perceive wrong. The main character of Dresden Codak is as flat and as tiresomely predictable as Kansas. What you see here on page three is her entire character laid out before you, to be judged like a fucking piece of meat. Which is all she is, in a literary sense.

Point one: Kimiko is obsessed with the nerdsterbation topic of transhumanism, assuming that for some reason people gotta bone robots to be better people. Perhaps a common topic amongst people with low-to-zero self esteem, but as someone who understands that humanity is fucking rad I don't see it. Powered flight to space travel in sixty years, and without robot brains thank you very much.

Point two: Kimiko is a girl, and a girly girl with girly boobs and girly parts. This is made painfully obvious later, but it's personified in page three - ironically enough. (If you don't get that joke, you're too damn foreign and I won't have you readin' this blog.) Kimiko's girlness exists for the audience (and author) to get big wobbly nerdboners over. Much in the same way that Questionable "T-shirt factory" Content works, except Jeff Jacks is at least savvy enough to have multiple flavours of female to accommodate the fact that readers have differing tastes.

Point three: Kimiko is Aspergin' like fuck. Can't talk to people without fucking up, struggles to answer simple questions with simple answers, can't rationalise with basic human empathy, is a fucking fruitcake. Show your average Internet nerd a woman that crazy and they'll be going "MAI WAIFU" and composing Japanese sonnets in her honour before you can duck behind a concrete wall for safety.

That's it.

That's her character.

There's some shit about her dad being rich and her mother being dead, I guess, but that's not characterisation. Just having your parents rich/dead doesn't make you a deeper character. It might make you Batman, I suppose. No, the characterisation comes from how you feel. Which even Batman has, even if it's entirely dependent on the current writer as to how he feels.

So how does Kimiko feel? Please let me know, because I can't tell. She shows a little anger, once, and sometimes cries and blushes but boy howdy that's not very specific. I am not a cold-hearted machine, I can empathise, but not when there's nothing to empathise with. Kimiko "Japan is so cool" Ross has yet to progress beyond a cute face that spits out technobabble and exposition. In the mean time, she'll remain exactly what she is: a Mary Sue. Apart from the "crazy as a fucking loon" thing, she's got no flaws - except if you count "oh she just needs a nice guy for a boyfriend... a nice guy like me!" Which we don't.

The one point where I held out hope for some ambiguity - the part where she smashes an old guy's head with a fucking rock - no. Turns out she was right all along, and they were pure evil, and the old guy didn't get brain damage and die.

Seriously, Diaz, what Hollywood shit have you been watching where a fucking rock to the head just makes someone be fine except for a little bleeding no more than two minutes later? Did you see the size of that fucking rock? Well, yes, you drew it, but seriously.

All right, enough rock tangent, let's get back to the point of explaining why this story is bad - as if "the main character is a shitty Mary Sue" isn't enough. (It is.)

Digest this chunk of information: every literary medium is viewed by its audience in a different way. In case you don't know what that means, what it means is that a movie is not a book. If you understand that simple concept (and I don't hold out much hope) we'll move on from there. There are various things that can happen in the text of a book which cannot be effectively translated to the medium of film. The opposite is also true. What this means is that when creating for a medium, you should embrace its nature and write specifically for it.

You do not create a WALL OF TEXT with a few illustrations.

Not if you're doing a comic, anyway. Now, I am not against text in general. Considering my job, which contrary to popular belief is not updating this blog or journalism of any kind, I'd be an idiot if I flew into a rage every time I looked at a block of text. When all you're doing is writing text, there's little else you can do except write text. No, what I am against is ugly text. In webcomics this boils down to not being able to structure your dialogue and pacing and just going "fuck it, INFO DUMP".

Writing isn't just about creating a story that's intelligent, engaging and emotive. It's about doing that with style. Having a John Galt speech of exposition sandwiched between illustrations because you can't be bothered to decompress the scene is the sign of being an incompetent writer. Fuck, Diaz, if you'd divided that up into some smaller text boxes and made a new page for it, it probably would have been fine. But no, you went for the ugly text. You went for the cheap way out.

A webcomic doesn't have to be like Dominic Deegan or Ctrl+Alt+Del in order to be bad. Dresden Codak may have nice pretty pictures (and nice pretty nerdboobs) for the masses to ogle over, but its writing is lackluster. But you, the audience, cannot tell. Because of the publisherless status of the Internet, you have come to accept the unpublishable as acceptable. Like burn victims who've lost all their nerve endings, or Americans who can't taste fructose, you simply lack the capability to discern shit.

Which is why people like me exist, to be elitist bastards who stomp all over everything people create - because it's shit and we want you to know it. I know I tend to get a bit melancholy toward the end of reviews, but it's probably because I'm trying to think of a way to sum up a great big ol' review that people are going to ignore. Chief among this legion of hear-no-evil stooges tends to be the people who could actually do with understanding that if you are trying to create art, you do not give up.

Diaz, your pretty pictures of nerdbutt and nerdboob (and robots, occasionally) have led me to believe that once upon a time you were a young lad who struggled to understand horizon lines. Do you not remember those early days, when you drew over and over to perfect matters? Do you remember studying up on techniques to make your drawings better? Did you get inspiration from other sources?

Writing is also art, Diaz, despite what you and the majority of the webcomics world might think. You can't just wing it and then get indignant when someone tells you it's shit, because it is shit. To write well you have to devote just as much time and effort as you did in learning to draw, it's not something that comes "naturally". Again, a vast section of the Internet is looking up from their Zutara fanfics, but Goddamnit it's true.

Diaz, if you persist in this pathetic excuse for a story, start putting those weeks between updates to good use. Go find some books about writing and read them. Pay attention to what I say (for I am wise) when I cuss out your Kimiko for being a flat character. Hell, just practice and ask for honest, harsh criticism. If you don't, you're as bad as Tim Buckley (except for the showing your dong to underage girls thing).

Powerup Comics

Never thought I'd be able to say this, but I found it. Or rather, we found it, for this neverending search for bad webcomics is nothing if not the labors of a community, united in mind and will. What we have found is the worst gaming comic, that puzzling enigma residing in the swamps of DrunkDuck: Powerup Comics, the subject about which these words are written. Though mere words seem insufficient to describe its horrors, as always I shall intrepidly try.

In here friends of originality, that ambrosia sought so desperately on those angry streets at dawn, will find no fellow traveller, for the well-familiar archetypes are established in quick succession from the very first strip. Two comrades, united in their mutual hobby of gaming, a couch that said hobby takes place on, and a talking inanimate object. Soon after is the strawman established, upon whom is pinned the wilted arguments and failed dreams of nemesii imagined, easily dispatched by the self-insert protagonist with gratuitous violence time and again. And the ensemble can't be complete without the sarcastic girl gamer who fails to break the cliché of breaking the cliché of female gamers not being as good (at gaming) as their male counterparts.

Gaming 'humor' in general is a black hole of comedy, and Powerup Comics only reinforces that truth, as it not only has stock gaming webcomic characters but stock gaming webcomic jokes as well. The Wii has poor graphics? How cutting-edge! What's next, Shadow and Chug? Jack Thompson jokes? That's right! Oh and Nintendo must have been on WEEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDdd to come up with their crazy game concepts AM I CORRECT IN THIS ASSUMPTION!?? Why don't you fucks eat a bullet of creativity or something, by which I mean kill yourselves, with a bullet that you shoot into your mouth? Die shittingly.

Going further, we can look at Powerup Comics's first attempts at a storyline, which as expected fails to grip the reader, develop the plot, or deliver a satisfying conclusion. Not that much can be expected in the first place, but even the lowest base level of entertainment fails to be reached. Even the simplest applications of the reversal of expectation end up only reinforcing slight clichés and the flat characterizations defined entirely by gaming console preferences. Such is quite typical of Powerup Comics storylines, often recycling themes and ideas tried and failed miserably in other terrible gaming webcomics, essentially performing the role of the bottom feeder in the ecosystem that is webcomics.

Even estimating the number of gaming comic clichés fulfilled by the first few strips alone is a task better left to those of a more numerical persuasion. The blatant use of copy-paste almost reaches self-parody as new characters are assembled from parts cut, pasted, and possibly recolored from old ones. Even new poses are generated this way. This has not escaped the notice of even the DrunkDuck crowd, prompting the expected responses of men so dull in the creative faculties. Truly this, if nothing else, proves the worthiness of Powerup Comics to join the ranks of the comics reviewed on this blog, as it was rejected even by those who would accept comics of the most abysmal quality with their fives. Fives, good sir. Fives gleaming gold in the light of a constant sun.

Really, there seems to be nothing Powerup Comics succeeds at that is in any way related to worth. Through word-of-mouth they have achieved readership, but you, dear reader, should know by now that such a metric is all but useless in assessing quality. But even that readership is illusory, for it seems to consist nearly entirely of people fully aware of the comic's true quality, either expressing their distaste directly or egging on the comic to continue with false praise. There is no other explanation for certain guest comics. And it's understandable, as though the comic has a Cafepress store, without actual fans it will not be a money-making venture anytime soon. Supporting it truly is harmless, as even the lowest echelons of the internet public are loath to flock to it. After all, in a world of absolutely terrible gaming webcomics that have achieved financial success on their own, ironically supporting the one that towers above the rest on that ignoble scale can be downright therapeutic.

But inadvertent entertainment does not excuse Powerup Comics' faults, and nor does it excuse the faults of the creators as their takes on homosexuality, race, politics and history betray a worldview that is supremely ignorant at best.

All in all, I can only wish death on Chug and Shadow. That's right, death, and not the kind of death that leads to the childish hopes promised by religion (by the way I highly doubt that Chug and Shadow possess the intellectual maturity to be logic-choosing Atheists such as myself), but to actual, shitting, death. Because they are simply horrible people, and not just for the comic alone, as mentioned above. What I wouldn't doubt would be that they were libertarians, as libertarianism is the political ideology most suited for spoiled children who feel entitled to things and should also probably die because the world won't miss them. In fact I would have assumed their support of Ron Paul straight-up if it wasn't for that comic about Ron Paul. I wouldn't be surprised if they came out in support of Obama next. They're halfway there, after all, and Obama is the perfect fit for those who love imaginary friends and are twelve years old.

Lastly, just look at the comic's misogyny. Apparently women are simply props to demonstrate the desirability that proficiency in video gaming grants in Shadow and Chug's world. Alix, the only female character, is hardly developed past her gamer-girl sarcasm and inexplicable attraction to Shadow, the self-insert character of Shadow, the primary author. For these additional transgressions they deserve to die, even more than they already do. That's it, I can't go on anymore. This terrible rape-abortion of a comic by these buttshoes has broken me, has broken all of us. It's a fitting coda for this project. The following are my parting words, and possibly the last you will ever hear from us, so heed them well.

Look inside yourself. Ourselves. Let us look inside ourselves and realize that those ultimately at fault for webcomics like Powerup Comics are not people like Shadow and Chug but people like you and me. For we are webcomic readers. Even by simply reading bad webcomics to make fun of them we are webcomic readers. And most of us are not merely readers, for we continue to perpetuate the lie that these bad webcomics we mock aren't the entire medium, and that there are these mythical 'good' webcomics that everyone should support 'instead'. But let me explain this to you: There are no good webcomics. At all. Without exception. By pretending otherwise we give the legitimacy of our tacit assent to a shithole of a medium that shouldn't be in the same language as the word 'art'. Even the best webcomic and the best webcomic blog (this one) is naught but Powerup Comics translated - a shallow reflection of a culture, tepid and utterly empty, contributing absolutely nothing of its own. The only difference is the culture itself, which we cannot pretend is any better than 'gaming culture', as this culture stoops to using webcomics to express itself of all fucking things. Know that this is the absolute truth, and there is no denying it.

So we realize that there is only one course of action left to us, and that is to wash our hands completely of this particular sphere of the internet. Delete your bookmarks of webcomics and anything related to webcomics such as forums, podcasts, and blogs. Yes, even this blog, for after today there will be no new updates. We hope you join us in leaving this wretched world of online sequential art behind and look forward to the new day tomorrow when we all will webcomic no more. Free at last, we webcomic no more.

God Mode

It's not hard to reach into the grubby, dark barrel that is the world of webcomics and pull out a gaming webcomic. Gamers are, for the most part, fucking stupid and will appreciate anything mundane and boggle over anything complex - much like most webcomic artists. Before any of you threaten to beat me to death with a Wii controller, let me remind you that any video game that's remotely clever or interesting regularly fails to sell well, while any bland FPS shitfest with zero plot simply can't be put on shelves fast enough. Remember when LucasArts used to make witty adventure games with engaging plots? Remember the fantastic voice acting in Grim Fandango? Of course you don't, you're a brainless dullard who hoots and gibbers while mashing the button to skip the plot cutscene since all them thar fancy words hurts yer thinkin' parts.

Still, dumb as you both are, the window-lickers responsible for gaming webcomics are fractionally smarter than your average gamer. After all, they're canny enough to realise they can make up for their lack of talent and humour with game references. You'll leap up and down, screeching "HA HA! THE CAKE! IS A LIE!"

(I mean, for fuck's sake, out of all the amazing dialogue in Portal you seize upon the one part that was only amusing for about five seconds the first time round - which was in the game itself. Why? Oh, wait, because you're fucking stupid.)

So look at God Mode, look at it good and hard. It's the proud result of your "gaming culture" - a steaming pile of shit that has been crapped into the Internet's heart, and you dickholes are rolling around in it like a bunch of pigs. You'll smother yourself in that filth, lick it up and ask for seconds. Because even though it's not clever, or funny, or well-drawn, or anything whatsoever, it's about video games you guys. Even my dog isn't so easily amused, for Christ's sake.

Because, again, I know you wankers are going to jump down my throat with how wrong I am, and how it's just my opinion that this webcomic sucks, I'm going to give some examples.

First, it's not clever. Let's see: the joke here is supposed to be that Square/Enix are the Borg. Y'know, just like how Microsoft are the Borg. And everything else that's remotely large and disliked by sweaty dorks who take computers too seriously. All right, so I can see the reasoning behind this, regardless how lame that reasoning is. But... it's not a joke. It's just "THIS BIG CORPORATION IS THE BORG." It's essentially telegraphed in the second panel, and doesn't really flow anyway. Keep on browsing through the depressingly large archives and tell me that this is a unique event and the rest is all hilarious. You can't, unless you're either willing to lie or you're a gamer and thus incapable of understanding what the difference is between "a joke" and "referencing video games".

God Mode does not have the kind of sharp and snappy writing a gag comic needs to exist. What it has is the kind of Ctrl+Alt+Delete spend-four-panels-beating-one-concept-into-your-thick-head bullshit. I know I said that gamers are stupid (and you are) but I think this shit could have been done in half as many panels and far, far fewer words.

See, one of the things you people don't get (because you're fucking stupid and can be entertained by pretty flashing lights and electronic beeps) is that something text-based, like a book or a blog entry or a podcast (text can also be read aloud, before you hurr at me), has to have words in. It has nothing else that can relate information. Visual media, like films and webcomics (emphasised so you may perhaps understand), have images. In case you never heard, a picture is worth a thousand words. That means in a four-panel comic, you're already at 4000 words. If you're thinking "Well, if I'm at 4000 words, it won't matter much if I add on another 500!" then you are Tim Buckley and you are a drooling mongoloid with severe ego problems.

Second, it's not funny. Fuck, just see above. It doesn't just fail at clever humour, it fails at all humour. All it does is pander, pander, pander. It panders so much that it eats bamboo and the Chinese want to grind it up and make it into a pill that cures impotence. It does nothing but simperingly try and appeal to gamers, which it accomplishes easily because gamers are morons. Have I said that enough in this review? Because it's true. This, gamers, this is what the rest of us see you as. Losers who goggle over wannabe-Japanese animu bullshit because you got your first boner over Metal Gear Solid. Pasty, gargantuan nerds permanently stained with Cheeto dust who practically wet themselves over a "joke" that's nothing but "wacky violence" and a dated pop culture reference. Repressed misogynists who can't deal with women who aren't impossibly-figured, wearing enough material to make only half a roll of dental floss and utterly fictional.

Not to mention the million times that a joke concept is ruined by overstating it, over and over and over again, until what humour was in there has been ground into a stain and rendered totally unfunny. No great loss with God Mode, though, since none of the joke concepts are good. Ever. It's a never-ending parade of mediocre shit as portrayed by none-dimensional characters who are pretty much all drawn the same.

It's also nice to see God Mode being even worse than CAD by making this strip. Why, yes, that is the exact same joke that was done in both CAD and Penny Arcade, except a whole two months after CAD and four months after Penny Arcade. No use jumping on the bandwagon when it's already gone, you idiot. Unless you're not imitating Penny Arcade at every available opportunity, like CAD does, but are instead trying to emulate Ctrl+Alt+Del. That's a scary thought, but would explain an awful lot.

So, let's sum up: so many gamers are stupid, I may as well say that all gamers are stupid. Not only that, but the same is true for bad webcomics: so many bad ones exist, that it's almost redundant to say "bad webcomic". But if we are lenient and call the least offensive mediocre, then God Mode is still a bad webcomic. It's supposed to be funny - apparently. How the Hell can you tell, though? There's nothing resembling a joke, much in the same way a stain on the ground doesn't resemble a dead horse.

Basically, fuck God Mode, fuck the incompetent and dimwitted moron who shits it out, and fuck all gamers everywhere for being the third worst human beings possible, right after furries and transgender fetishists. Between the three groups, you are responsible for 90% of bad webcomics.

Exiern

I always thought there was a killing to be made in this whole transgender-fetish-webcomic business. I mean, this is the same community that keeps shitheaps like Misfile and The Wotch financially afloat. Hell, they were giving the latter more than a thousand dollars a month when it was down to updating once a week. These people have no fucking standards when giving out their money at all. Push the right buttons, update consistently, possess a level of artistic talent that outpaces its competitors (noting that this necessary level of talent can still technically be 'none'), and then market it all cynically and you have a webcomic so geared towards making money that you could have a blind retard run it and still make a profit.

Exiern, by one Drowemos, is that comic, and is run appropriately, as his ridiculous handle would suggest. Its premise is pretty standard: Barbarian hero of Liefeldian proportions infiltrates the fortress of an evil wizard to rescue a princess and is hit by a magic spell that turns him into a girl. Then they go off on some epic journey where there will undoubtedly be much humor relating to the barbarian's cluelessness, the wizard's wacky evil antics, and the parade of men unwittingly attracted to the changed woman! Pretty standard, as I said. There's even a shopping scene!

Now, you may have noticed that the art in this comic is a cut above its competitors in the TG-comic world, which isn't very hard when its competitors look like this and this. And I don't really care about any of its shortcomings because all that is completely fucking irrelevant in light of the fact that Exiern once looked like this, the first panel of which I will reproduce below.



How did this change in art happen? Was it because, God forbid, the creator put his balls to the wall and improved his way up? Nope. This is the comic a year later, the last panel of which I will reproduce below.



I'm not doing these reproducings for no reason, either, because what really happened was that he COMMISSIONED an internet art studio to take over the art of Exiern with an eye towards eventually replacing the archives of his comic with the new art. But really, the fact that a grown man thought that it was a good idea to show the artistic works above to anyone, much less the entire internet, is so ridiculous that he deserves to be laughed at in every circumstance and social stratum for that alone. I almost can't fault him for resorting to paying a stranger to make his pathetic magnum opus come to life. Almost.

I won't say anything to the artist or his inability to grasp the finer points of anatomy because I'm pretty sure he knows exactly what he is doing, and that is bringing the fantasies of pathetic Internet perverts to life for money. But hey, we all have to eat somehow. No, I'll just address Drowemos instead, because there is a possibility, however faint and contradictory to the apparent, that in the back of his mind somewhere persists the thought that he is creating entertainment, or even art, and he must be disabused of such a pathetic notion.

Drowemos, there's practically nothing in your comic that isn't a cliché of fantasy or transgender comics. There's nothing more telling of this fact than your ridiculously transparent self-insert, the Harry Potter lookalike (named Denver, of all fucking things!) who gets into a hulkrage over adventure books. He's naive, suicidally brave, has a background more ridden with fantasy clichés than Dominic Deegan (parents got killed by dragons, has a locket of his missing sister, finding other half of said locket is the device through which death of sister at the hands of monster is found out, fucking stop me when you've had enough), and is of course able to kiss the main character without being beaten to a pulp, which is in contradiction to the precedents set so one-dimensionally. It's an excellent move from a commercial standpoint though, as your self-insert can act as the self-inserts of your pathetic readers as well, and they'll end up throwing money at you to continue this tale where somebody just like them can win the heart of a man who has been turned into a woman against his will. But somehow I think that that is giving you too much credit. And the rest of the comic is excuse after excuse to show your lead in torn or missing clothes. Even the fucking monsters are not exempt from this. Not even the male monsters either, because they can be turned into female ones!

What you are doing isn't entertainment. It is gratification, appealing to the baser instincts and the simpler minds. In exaggeration I would call fiction of such ilk pornography, but in your case it is not an exaggeration in the slightest, because you have an honest-to-fucking-God MEMBERSHIP section where you show the unrated versions of the more borderline scenes and you proudly advertise this fact on every page that contains such scenes!

What insults can I throw at a man who is so brazen? Such a venture is hopeless from the start, because no insult could ever hurt as much as knowing what you have made and what it means. The realization that you can put all the tender loving care you want into your plot and characters and dialogue and this story you once wrote so earnestly that you sent it out to the world before mastering the motor control skills possessed by a toddler, and it won't matter a single goddamn bit because that is not what your audience comes for, and the audience that would care about such things will be repelled by what you are doing.

Jesus Christ (PBUH), you're so fucking incompetent that you have spelling errors in your tribute to fucking Gary Gygax, who must have been a god to your pale-skinned, fantasy-escapist kind! I'd hate to see you give an eulogy - you'd be constantly tripping over big words like 'happiness' and 'remember'.

Now I bet you're laughing all the way to the bank as you're reading this, because you've probably stopped caring about the actual content of this thing as this money-making setup you have really is foolproof. But know that the very personality traits that would lead you to thinking that it was a good idea to put out the original Exiern in the first place cripple you here, because webcomics, like any other business, require some modicum of social skill to succeed. You don't have to have much of it, because hey, webcomics. You don't have to not be an asshole, because there are few who know more about turning webcomics into money than Scott Kurtz. You don't even have to not be a narcissistic idiot, because even Tim Buckley manages. You just have to not be an autistic manchild with the mindset of a young teenager - the kind that whines about his own inability to read a business contract, some ridiculous bullshit about elitism, and something so fucking trivial it makes my brain hurt. (How fucking trivial you ask? Would you guess that it is about not getting linked from The Wotch yet? Then you are right!)

But even with all your failings it's not like I don't believe you'll achieve some level of financial success with your venture. On the contrary, I do, for I have faith. Faith in the stock that comprises your fanbase to be capable of patheticness and stupidity greater than any you could muster. Faith in their ability to plunge my faith in humankind into greater and greater depths. Faith in the universal axiom that that which appeals will sell, with no consideration of quality or worth.

So I can't really get angry at you or your comic, because you are inevitable. If not you, then someone else would have not only figured out this opportunity, like I have, but acted upon it as well. I just wish that whoever took that opportunity would have been a little less transparent, a little less whiny, and a little less pathetic than yourself.

And stop buying your shitty ads all over the fucking place. When I'm reading another bad webcomic I'd rather not be reminded of the existence of yours, thanks.

Dresden Codak

If you haven't already noticed, I've decided to make this blog my job, much like Aaron Diaz of Dresden Codak decided to do for his webcomic. In fact, we're using the exact same business model! After making my decision, I then decided to put off updating for a couple of weeks, and after this update is done I'm going to go off on a vacation. But don't worry, I'm selling you guys t-shirts, which is a perfectly acceptable substitute for actual content, at least according to Aaron Diaz.

Since a lot of you people seem to be utterly incapable of appreciating or even understanding subtlety, let me spell it out for you: Aaron Diaz is treating his webcomic, Dresden Codak, as a business. This "business" involves selling you t-shirts (that are mostly based on his older, funnier strips) and forgetting to update his comic. Get all that? Need me to grunt and paint some crude pictographs for you?

As of this update, the latest strip is dated March 2nd. The previous, January 28th. Now, I understand that if you're being an artiste and only drawing when you feel like it, you can update however infrequently you want. But Aaron Diaz, you are no longer drawing for fun. You are running a business, by your own admission. You are failing to run a business.

I know a lot about update schedules, I attempted one for this blog and then gave it up - mainly because I don't want to give any of you jackoffs a sense of entitlement. I didn't want to make this a business, I do already have a job and I'd rather not make a source of fun for me into work. Diaz still wants to see his webcomic as a business, but he has not given anyone a sense of entitlement, nor expectation. People do not consider Dresden Codak to have an update schedule, because it doesn't. This makes it a shitty business. Am I going to have to explain why? Because it seems pretty obvious to me.

It's a good thing that Dresden Codak mercilessly panders to the "pathetic, lonely nerd" demographic of the Internet (98% and rising) because otherwise its audience would have given up the first time it became apparent that Diaz is an unreliable hack who probably puts more effort into masturbating than he does his webcomic. Since he'd have to beat off less than once a month for that to be false, it's a good assumption to make.

Masturbation is the key, you see. The principle character of Dresden Codak is Kimiko "Thunderbolt" Ross. That's a Japanese name with a comic book reference, be still my beating +2 Heart. Not only is she immensely attractive and prone to dressing like the fine-ass piece of bitch she is, but she also gushes with girlboners over the concept of The Singularity.

If you don't know what that is, apparently Diaz envisions a future where people are popular nerd celebrities who have been struck blind by a wrathful compu-god who is probably going to be Kimiko, unf unf unf. For someone who apparently spent the whole month of February furiously masturbating to the concept, Diaz paints a rather lousy picture of the Singularity. I suggest people go check out the works of Charles Stross. Maybe if you'd simply just like to see competence.

That's really the only reason people come back to Dresden Codak. The unrealistic, "I wish she was real and mai waifu~" sentiment that its readers get when Kimiko flounces across the bizarre panel layout and fills the air with a wall of fucking text about how ridiculously Aspergian she is. If there weren't people on Wikipedia staunchly opposed to it, I guarantee you that there would be an article on her and this fucking awful webcomic ten times the size of the ones on Hitler, Stalin and Lex Luthor combined.

Dresden Codak can be, and has been, a good webcomic. I liked the earlier ones, before it became the ridiculous nerd fantasy wankfest starring Ms. Fap-To-Me Fantasy. I mean, Goddamn, a nerdy Japanese girl with no boyfriend? In the next update, when she inevitably takes on Evil Captain Jean-Luc Picard and his crew of (equally evil) cripples, I wouldn't be surprised if she wields not only a katana, but also a pair of railguns.

So maybe by about June, then. Until then, buy more t-shirts and support Aaron Diaz's noble quest to be paid for doing as little work as he possibly can!

Why are You People so Crazy?

Maybe it's because I watched both seasons of Dexter last week, but I'm beginning to think of myself as a webcomic serial killer. I select my victim, strap it down and then proceed to hack it to bits - and everyone freaks the fuck out. Because God forbid I say one word against a webcomic.

It's funny, you can find hateblogs of all types these days. People bitch about shitty video games, shitty movies and everything else, but none of them ever have to put up with a few hundred people throwing fucking hissy fits just because they said something bad about a movie. Which is weird, because you pay for movies and video games (in principle, anyway) and webcomics are free (in principle, anyway). Why people form these powerful bonds of emotional attachment over something they have no other connection to is as baffling to me as basic empathy to a serial killer, except for that fact that basic empathy has an actual grounding in logic.

So - and know that this is not by popular demand, this is my own decision- I am turning the comments back on. I need to know why you people shit your pants when I say bad things about bad webcomics, and the only way to do that is to study your rampant stupidity. I was going to finish off with "Go nuts" but then I realised you all already are, so nevermind.

Zap!

It may be my own highly cynical nature that makes me wary of anything that incorporates an exclamation mark into its title, or it may be the fact that history has proven time and again that anything that incorporates an exclamation mark into its title is either Airplane! or utter shit. Since Zap! is what I'm looking at today, that kinda narrows down the choices.

Formerly Zap! in Space!, which had twice the exclamation marks and therefore was a better title for warning people about its content, Zap! started off with that strange kind of art where you're unsure whether it was done in MSPaint or not. It probably was. But hey, look at it these days! It's polished, professional and practically pleasant to look at. What a pity that is literally the only positive thing it has going for it.

Being able to draw something nice is negated when you've drawn something that's also stupid, then made it do stupid things and capped it all off with some stupid words coming out of its stupid mouth. Practical knowledge of anatomy and perspective is utterly worthless when you're putting it into drawing pictures of eight-dicked anthropomorphic tigers shitting into the mouths of anthropomorphic dragon-dolphin hybrids wearing diapers. Fuckin' Shakespeare could have written an epic play about two households, both alike in flatulence, and no matter how flowery the language, no matter how clever the wit, it'd still be three fucking hours of fart jokes.

Zap! is neither furry porn nor fart jokes, although that might at least have gotten it a larger audience. It's still just the same kind of colossal waste of space, however. What little plot it has is lifted right out of the collective Japanese cultural subconscious and transplanted without any alteration whatsoever. Check this: the main character, Zap, has amnesia. Not only that, but he's got spiky blond hair and a mysterious mystery villain/nemesis who used to be his friend and has long, effeminate hair.

For those of you thinking "Hey, wait, isn't this Final Fantasy 7?" you are entirely correct but no sweat brah it's all cool because instead of ridiculous-looking swords they have psychic powers that manifest as glowy shit - and sometimes guns. Space-guns. In space! But you know, it's actually not quite as horribly stereotypical as you might gather from that link - no, it's worse. The ridiculous space-crew (in space!) that Mr. Zap seems to be rolling with for the purposes of exploring this cliché plot - pointlessly, because you know how it's going to end since it's just that cliché - comprises of Sassy Intellectual Robot, Big Furry Strong Guy, Beautiful But Jaded Female Love Interest and Spunky Tomboy Engineer Girl. Combine that with Zap being Hero With Powers He Never Knew then by God I think we're so deep in cliché territory that I can barely breathe due to the overwhelming unoriginality.

Zap! Is! Shit! That's all you need to know. There's nothing about it that isn't shit. In fact the only entertainment value you're likely to get out of this crap is how laughable it is. For example, there's a character who's a feline alien - that is, a catgirl. She's on the villain's side and acts pretty much exactly how you'd expect "villainous catgirl" to act, just a lot more dull. But the best part is that she sports the most retarded wardrobe I've ever seen in a webcomic. She wears an ass-cape. That's a cape. For her ass. While I'm sure Tetsuya Nomura is furiously jackin' it to that very concept, us normal human beings have to go "What the Hell, an ass-cape?" The rest of the cast all wear varying degrees of ridiculousness, but the chick with curtains covering her backside wins by a mile.

But, besides a monotonous re-hashing of FF7's plot as enacted by a group of badly-dressed mongoloid circus freaks, what can you - the humble reader - expect from this piece of shit? The answer is nothing, absolutely nothing whatsoever. Any moment of action feels like a mundane cutscene, any moment of drama feels like a mundane cutscene, everything just feels like one fucking never-ending cutscene. Which means it succeeds at being exactly like FF7, I suppose, but it accomplishes nothing else. The characters are so mired in their stereotypes they're actually capable of irritating the fuck out of you with how scripted their behaviour is. Every move they make is telegraphed painfully, you know what they'll do before they do it because the stock character is burned into your mind. You cannot empathise with them because they are just so fucking cliché. Being able to sum up the main character as "happy-go-lucky guy who is very powerful with his powerful power but he does not know it" is basically like barfing up the last three decades of shonen animé without the slightest trace of the originality that made 2% of those shows worth watching.

The writer or writers (I didn't bother to check how many people were involved, because I don't care) are utterly superfluous to this endeavour. There's no reveal, no mystery, you don't think "Oh my, I wonder what will happen!" You're basically reading Frankenstein's webcomic, sewn together from the mouldering clichés of existing plots and then brought to life with 1.21 gigawatts of blatant greed. That's all there is to Zap!, it's just a homogeneous front for Paypal donations. Find me one iota of creativity that went into making any part of it and I'll take back every word I said - a hollow promise, since it can't be done.

That's really quite the sad thing about Zap! - it's not repugnantly misogynistic, like Dominic Deegan or Shredded Moose. It's not devoted to creepy Internet fetishes, like El Goonish Shive or The Wotch. It's just overwhelmingly bland and tiresome, which makes it most like The Broken Mirror. There are differences - Zap! gives off an air of desperation, of "I want to be Japanese SO BADLY" instead of Broken Mirror's feculent stench of "I am a brilliant writer, all my cats tell me so". But any difference in the flavours doesn't change the fact that they're still bland peas in a pod.

I suggest you go read something that's more exciting and original than Zap!, like Ctrl+Alt+Del. Or, y'know, a good webcomic. They exist! They're out there! They're absolutely nothing like Zap!, of course, but that's the very reason why they're good.

Chugworth Academy

You know, as both the youngest and the weakest out of the Elders of Zion, it seems I get stuck with all the shit jobs. I'm the one who reviews the comics that are not merely bad due to incompetence or terminal stupidity, but those that are bad due to the sheer vileness of their creators. Take Chugworth Academy as an example. It's like Shredded Moose and Dominic Deegan had a precious retarded baby that never quite lived up to their parents' reputation but still managed to be a soul-crushing shitfest.

This atrocity combines shit jokes with shittier writing and characters so one-dimensional they make cosmic strings look like hypercubes who also happen to be super-shiny noseless animu people. Though it gets less blatant, the noseless thing is never quite fixed, despite the fact the artist can actually draw noses. Attention, Mr. Cheung. Two scribbles in the middle of the face do not a nose make. The art, while not especially shitty, starts out as amateurish animu shit that relies on highly stylised visual cues to convey human emotion and gradually evolves into polished animu shit that STILL relies on those same visual cues. Please note that almost every single character has the exact same facial features with the tiny pointy nose and the big eyes and the gaping mouth and the prettily pointed chin. The differences are purely superficial - hair and eye colour, freckles and lack or presence of glasses. Some characters do get original designs, like the producer (who wears a beret because hey, he's an artist! Pinnacle of humour there, Cheung) but those are fairly rare and are not part of the main cast. This is made worse by the fact Kiyoshi (the male lead) is meant to be at least half-Japanese. And yet he has the exact same facial structure as everyone else. The only concession to his father's ethnicity is slit-eyes. As in actual fucking slits. Not racist at all, eh?

You know, the art isn't bad enough to make Chugworth stand out as a terrible comic. It's bland, uninspired, devoid of any personal touches and annoying to look at for too long, but it's nothing special. There are thousands of webcomics out there with art like this, usually drawn by talentless hacks who learn by imitation. Sure, it's crap, but it's not worthy of notice. The problem with Chugworth lies entirely in the writing.

Character writing especially.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that every single character in Chugworth Academy is a stereotype. There's the stupid guy and his long-suffering "TOTALLY HOTT" girlfriend who loves him anyway - they do break up later on in the comic, but she doesn't magically acquire a personality after this event and nor does his IQ increase. The guy, of course, has an enormous cock. 12", ladies! Line up and wait your turn! Our hero is a true example of manliness! Dumb as a cork and hung like a horse! Now, this may be hard to comprehend for men who've never had sex with a woman they didn't have to pay but a big dong doesn't magically give you mind-blowing sex skills. It just gives you a blunt weapon that hangs between your legs and scares off women whose vaginas are not made out of rubber.

And anyway, the whore in that old joke was right. It don't matter how much ya got, honey, as long as you know how to use it. To be honest, I would not trust our prematurely greying protagonist to not put it in my bellybutton.

Right, where were we? Ah, yes. Stereotypes. Like the Japanese father of Mr. Flesh-Club. Because he's Japanese, he has a "hilarious" Japanese accent and believes in honour. Har fucking har! And let's not forget stellar characters such as the dumb-as-chicken-shit metalhead! Who likes violence! Or how about the spotty, arrogant nerd and his fellow tabletop RP players: the ghetto-as-fuck black dude, the wigger, the "azn sensation" and the weaboo? And for finish it off, would you like a side helping of shrill yaoi fangirls?

Now, Cheung could claim that he's sending up moronic animu comics which are full of stereotypes and dumb jokes, but I just don't get that vibe from Chugworth Academy. I do get a strong "brainless slimy penis" vibe from it. Either it's not a parody or it's such a bad parody that the point becomes moot. In both cases, Cheung sucks at writing and the dude who's "working on scripts" with him does too. I should not be able to describe a good flat character in anything less than a full sentence. A sentence with fucking clauses. Well-rounded, complex characters should merit an entire essay. Cheung's entire cast can be summed up in a monosyllable: "urgh".

You know, I was gonna mention something about the story or the humour, but I realised that it's totally pointless. The story's both stupid and confusing and I'm not about to play High School English Teacher and grind it down for you to swallow and later throw up on request. You want to know the story? Read it yourself. You see, when I have to suffer, my only consolation is that later I'll be able to share the pain with my unwitting audience. Really, you can say that this is the entire point of this blog.

As a final insult to my intelligence and an almost fatal blow to my love of humanity, Chugworth Academy is ... well ... what do you call a guy who draws hyper-sexualised, slutty and very definitely underage girls? Come on! They're even wearing school uniforms in half of these! How much more blatant can you get?

Cheung also sticks a childish face on a well-defined teenage body and the endows the resulting abomination with the mind of a five-year-old. And he lets us know the truth about blonde women who are able to get jobs: it's because they're hot and stupid and willing to be spanked by someone who'll pay them.

The word for people like this is "creep". If you're me, that word's turned into a phrase: "motherfucking creepy pervert who should be taken behind the barn and shot in the balls". Reading Chugworth and seeing all those cutsey, childish faces juxaposed with pantyshots, cleavage and almost endless fucking makes me uncomfortable. It makes me feel like I'm committing a crime simply by giving this fuckstick's site any hits. I mean, check out his deviantArt gallery (warning: NSFW, but you should know that already from reading this review and having two braincells to rub together). It's full of nothing but extremely explicit pin-ups of his characters. His school-age female characters with faces like little kids. I hope this point really doesn't need to be driven home with a jackhammer.

Incidentally, Cheung and Cheung's rabid fans: I do not hate sex. I do not hate men or women, except in specific cases. I am neither Christian nor prudish and I don't believe that keeping the lights on is the most exciting thing one can do in the bedroom. I'm just very clear on where an empowered female character who just happens to enjoy sex becomes a juvenile vehicle for fanservice and wanking.

Cheung, you're a creepy motherfucker (as evidenced by the fact you used to draw guro for a living) and your comic's a piece of shit that's only notable due to you letting your creepiness spill over into it. I recommend that you either undergo a complete personality and morality transplant or take down your shitty site and go jump into a vat of nitric acid.