Do any of you know Jennifer Diane Reitz? Because she's (or he's) pretty Goddamn crazy. In fact it'd be child's play for me to turn this review of Pastel Defender Heliotrope into a big long mocking of how crazy JDR is.
Which is why I'm not going to do it. Over the last few reviews, the Dominic Deegan one especially, I've had people shaking their fists at me from the safety of anonymous comments, calling me out on being a petty and jealous kind of guy who is obviously super-jealous of their beloved lord and master. Now, although sensible people know that it is possible to hate a creation and/or its creator without being envious of it (and I would seriously, honestly, truly rather die than be responsible for Dominic Deegan), there are those who like to say my reviews are "LEGENDARY FAIL" because I am talking shit about the guy responsible for the webcomic. As if, y'know, it's not their fault they suck.
What the Hell is "legendary fail" anyway?
So, this review of Pasta Defenestrator Helicopter will not be making fun of JDR in the slightest. The webcomic itself will not escape so easily.
Rasta Offender Gyroscope begins with Stephanie from Lazy Town if she was a muppet. The next page is yet more pink with some vague sketches on it. Now, if this epic pace keeps up, I'll be sixty pages in before anything happens. I can only imagine waiting a whole week between these pages, and the crushing disappointment that faithful fans of the still-young Wastrel Rear-Fender Spirochete must have felt when they are confronted with a page from Barbie's diary.
The next two pages, pages "one" and "two" proper, shows us some guy with no mouth purchasing the Stephanie muppet, which is apparently a sex doll. This is a cracking start. Considering this comic runs at one page a week, according to the schedule, it's taken a month for us to find out that this guy is a famous doctor and he digs prepubescent girls. Also nobody seems to care that he digs prepubescent girls. This does not bode well for the story. On the plus side, this just screams for a crossover with Dominic Deegan.
Apparently this famous doctor is a loon. Luckily by page seven he's recovered and is giving a lecture. This is a common occurence in Camel Contender Tightrope. You see, rather than introducing us to a strange and new world through subtle means, it makes us sit through a Goddamn science class in order to make sure we understand every single nuance about every single pseudoscience particle. Inevitably it all boils down to how rad jelly-like substances are, because that's just how JDR rolls. This isn't a jab at JDR personally, but you'd think that one of these days one of his/her stories could not involve jelly as a key MacGuffin.
Thirteen pages in and we've got child rape. Or possibly just regular rape, I can't tell if the red-headed one is supposed to be over 18 or not. In any case, it's handled rather poorly. Rape is not an acceptable substitute for character development, people! Also, everyone seems to be named after colours. Maybe it's me, but you'd think that they'd run out of names after maybe two generations.
It is page sixteen where we get to the inevitable homosexuality thing. Again, I am saying nothing against JDR personally here, but in every single story there always has to be something about homosexuality, bisexuality, trisexuality or anything but good ol' heterosexuality. There are entire species that are homosexual, reproducing via test tube babies. Now, while it's okay to let your personal beliefs colour what you write, there are limits. You cannot have it in every story, nor can you write every story about it. Otherwise you are suffering from a lack of imagination. But, moving on.
After some more pseudoscience-type stuff and a guy with the worst haircut in recorded history, Dr. Aoi finally gets his freak on with Muppet Stephanie. There's some passing misogyny, and now I'm getting so tired of so little happening that I'm skipping ahead. You would do the exact same thing in my shoes. It just seems to be alternating between depressed (and raped) redhead, family of yokels and sexually repressed doctor exploring zany universes.
Okay, so, page forty. This is more surreal than any of the universes we've seen so for. "NO DAUGHTER OF MINE IS GAY! I'LL KILL YOU!" "Actually it was a joke." "Oh, fine, dinner's at six."
Now for the BIG REVEAL! Their god is actually a scientist from long, long ago! Oh snap, never heard that one before. Mainly because I have never read any science fiction published between the years of 1910 and 2007. Anyway, this cliché is swiftly followed by the SECOND BIG REVEAL! Some piece of crap that Dr. Aoi nicked from an alternate universe can animate inanimate objects! No guesses for where he's going to try and cram it next. Hint: the same place as his penis has been.
That ought to make for some awkward conversation.
Let's take a pause from trudging through the archives to sum up what we've seen so far. A guy with a ridiculous nose and even more ridiculous hair is a sexually repressed freak with a Lolita fetish. He's in charge of some kind of government-funded research into finding alternate worlds to colonise. The omnipresent world religion involves a god called Godan and the rather odd doctrine that all worlds are suitable for human life. Evidence to the contrary emerges as they explore the alternate universes for the first time, and the whole thing degenerates into clumsy socio-political commentary that doesn't really work considering it's set in a world where our socio-political climate doesn't exist. It's all very well to show gay people getting curbstomped due to religious intolerance, but when you live on a floating island inside a huge tube surrounded by freaky alternate universes, it kinda loses its edge.
A story has to be one thing or the other. Is this one of les voyages extraordinaires and you are showing the reader into a world they never even dared to dream of? Is this a cruel mirror to show mankind the faults it might not so readily accept head-on, so it can better itself? Because mixing the two would make a mess, and that mess is called Tassle Extender Zoetrope.
Jesus. Still, this leads to Stephamuppet gaining sentience. Some time after that, panty shots. The Japanese do them better, it seems. Some time later the whole thing goes into motherfucking puppet-vision, and it's about this point that I realise I am bored to tears with this storyline.
It reads like Baby's First Attempt To Copy Golden Age Sci-Fi. The god-is-a-scientist twist, the exploration of mathematical universe crap... really, this is basically like a speculative fiction novel from 1957 - and the novel would do it better. There would be less of the homosexuality-related preaching, and practically zero cases of "Oh, religion is SO BAD and also men are JERKS".
It's just... not good. There's very little emotional investment in the characters, because they read more like caricatures. Everything's exaggerated, there's no nuance to it. The plot is actually going by very quickly, but it's paced so badly that you think it's taking forever to do anything. Things happen over the course of a single page, and then there's eight more pages of text, text text. The talking head stuff is pretty damn bad - not the worst, no, that prize belongs to another comic I'll lambaste at a later date. But it's pretty damn bad.
The art, which I've made a dig at now and again with my brief plot rundown, is crude. Crude is the exactly right word for it. It's laden with photoshop effects and detail and attempts to look stylised, but it's crude. Heads do not retain their appropriate shape. People change proportions, things don't look the same twice, it's all... crude. Check out the gibbon arms on this guy here in the centre panel. It's like reading an MSPaint comic, but maybe slightly better. Only, with a terrible story.
Rascal Western Europe is such a meandering waste of time I am left with a feeling of listless irritation after getting through around a hundred pages, which is halfway. Glancing through the rest, it doesn't seem to get better, and any story that doesn't grab you right off the bat is poor writing.
So, there you go. Master Carpenter Holy-Pope is a bad webcomic. It has a bad storyline, which is chiefly caused by weak characters and bad pacing, and bad art, which is the result of attempts to be stylised without a decent grounding in the basics. You have to know what things look like before you can twist them, after all. This goes for writing, too. Without an understanding of simple narrative, such as pacing or character exploration, you cannot hope to build an epic.
And I did all that without once saying JDR is a crazy nutjob.
Which is why I'm not going to do it. Over the last few reviews, the Dominic Deegan one especially, I've had people shaking their fists at me from the safety of anonymous comments, calling me out on being a petty and jealous kind of guy who is obviously super-jealous of their beloved lord and master. Now, although sensible people know that it is possible to hate a creation and/or its creator without being envious of it (and I would seriously, honestly, truly rather die than be responsible for Dominic Deegan), there are those who like to say my reviews are "LEGENDARY FAIL" because I am talking shit about the guy responsible for the webcomic. As if, y'know, it's not their fault they suck.
What the Hell is "legendary fail" anyway?
So, this review of Pasta Defenestrator Helicopter will not be making fun of JDR in the slightest. The webcomic itself will not escape so easily.
Rasta Offender Gyroscope begins with Stephanie from Lazy Town if she was a muppet. The next page is yet more pink with some vague sketches on it. Now, if this epic pace keeps up, I'll be sixty pages in before anything happens. I can only imagine waiting a whole week between these pages, and the crushing disappointment that faithful fans of the still-young Wastrel Rear-Fender Spirochete must have felt when they are confronted with a page from Barbie's diary.
The next two pages, pages "one" and "two" proper, shows us some guy with no mouth purchasing the Stephanie muppet, which is apparently a sex doll. This is a cracking start. Considering this comic runs at one page a week, according to the schedule, it's taken a month for us to find out that this guy is a famous doctor and he digs prepubescent girls. Also nobody seems to care that he digs prepubescent girls. This does not bode well for the story. On the plus side, this just screams for a crossover with Dominic Deegan.
Apparently this famous doctor is a loon. Luckily by page seven he's recovered and is giving a lecture. This is a common occurence in Camel Contender Tightrope. You see, rather than introducing us to a strange and new world through subtle means, it makes us sit through a Goddamn science class in order to make sure we understand every single nuance about every single pseudoscience particle. Inevitably it all boils down to how rad jelly-like substances are, because that's just how JDR rolls. This isn't a jab at JDR personally, but you'd think that one of these days one of his/her stories could not involve jelly as a key MacGuffin.
Thirteen pages in and we've got child rape. Or possibly just regular rape, I can't tell if the red-headed one is supposed to be over 18 or not. In any case, it's handled rather poorly. Rape is not an acceptable substitute for character development, people! Also, everyone seems to be named after colours. Maybe it's me, but you'd think that they'd run out of names after maybe two generations.
It is page sixteen where we get to the inevitable homosexuality thing. Again, I am saying nothing against JDR personally here, but in every single story there always has to be something about homosexuality, bisexuality, trisexuality or anything but good ol' heterosexuality. There are entire species that are homosexual, reproducing via test tube babies. Now, while it's okay to let your personal beliefs colour what you write, there are limits. You cannot have it in every story, nor can you write every story about it. Otherwise you are suffering from a lack of imagination. But, moving on.
After some more pseudoscience-type stuff and a guy with the worst haircut in recorded history, Dr. Aoi finally gets his freak on with Muppet Stephanie. There's some passing misogyny, and now I'm getting so tired of so little happening that I'm skipping ahead. You would do the exact same thing in my shoes. It just seems to be alternating between depressed (and raped) redhead, family of yokels and sexually repressed doctor exploring zany universes.
Okay, so, page forty. This is more surreal than any of the universes we've seen so for. "NO DAUGHTER OF MINE IS GAY! I'LL KILL YOU!" "Actually it was a joke." "Oh, fine, dinner's at six."
Now for the BIG REVEAL! Their god is actually a scientist from long, long ago! Oh snap, never heard that one before. Mainly because I have never read any science fiction published between the years of 1910 and 2007. Anyway, this cliché is swiftly followed by the SECOND BIG REVEAL! Some piece of crap that Dr. Aoi nicked from an alternate universe can animate inanimate objects! No guesses for where he's going to try and cram it next. Hint: the same place as his penis has been.
That ought to make for some awkward conversation.
Let's take a pause from trudging through the archives to sum up what we've seen so far. A guy with a ridiculous nose and even more ridiculous hair is a sexually repressed freak with a Lolita fetish. He's in charge of some kind of government-funded research into finding alternate worlds to colonise. The omnipresent world religion involves a god called Godan and the rather odd doctrine that all worlds are suitable for human life. Evidence to the contrary emerges as they explore the alternate universes for the first time, and the whole thing degenerates into clumsy socio-political commentary that doesn't really work considering it's set in a world where our socio-political climate doesn't exist. It's all very well to show gay people getting curbstomped due to religious intolerance, but when you live on a floating island inside a huge tube surrounded by freaky alternate universes, it kinda loses its edge.
A story has to be one thing or the other. Is this one of les voyages extraordinaires and you are showing the reader into a world they never even dared to dream of? Is this a cruel mirror to show mankind the faults it might not so readily accept head-on, so it can better itself? Because mixing the two would make a mess, and that mess is called Tassle Extender Zoetrope.
Jesus. Still, this leads to Stephamuppet gaining sentience. Some time after that, panty shots. The Japanese do them better, it seems. Some time later the whole thing goes into motherfucking puppet-vision, and it's about this point that I realise I am bored to tears with this storyline.
It reads like Baby's First Attempt To Copy Golden Age Sci-Fi. The god-is-a-scientist twist, the exploration of mathematical universe crap... really, this is basically like a speculative fiction novel from 1957 - and the novel would do it better. There would be less of the homosexuality-related preaching, and practically zero cases of "Oh, religion is SO BAD and also men are JERKS".
It's just... not good. There's very little emotional investment in the characters, because they read more like caricatures. Everything's exaggerated, there's no nuance to it. The plot is actually going by very quickly, but it's paced so badly that you think it's taking forever to do anything. Things happen over the course of a single page, and then there's eight more pages of text, text text. The talking head stuff is pretty damn bad - not the worst, no, that prize belongs to another comic I'll lambaste at a later date. But it's pretty damn bad.
The art, which I've made a dig at now and again with my brief plot rundown, is crude. Crude is the exactly right word for it. It's laden with photoshop effects and detail and attempts to look stylised, but it's crude. Heads do not retain their appropriate shape. People change proportions, things don't look the same twice, it's all... crude. Check out the gibbon arms on this guy here in the centre panel. It's like reading an MSPaint comic, but maybe slightly better. Only, with a terrible story.
Rascal Western Europe is such a meandering waste of time I am left with a feeling of listless irritation after getting through around a hundred pages, which is halfway. Glancing through the rest, it doesn't seem to get better, and any story that doesn't grab you right off the bat is poor writing.
So, there you go. Master Carpenter Holy-Pope is a bad webcomic. It has a bad storyline, which is chiefly caused by weak characters and bad pacing, and bad art, which is the result of attempts to be stylised without a decent grounding in the basics. You have to know what things look like before you can twist them, after all. This goes for writing, too. Without an understanding of simple narrative, such as pacing or character exploration, you cannot hope to build an epic.
And I did all that without once saying JDR is a crazy nutjob.
69 comments:
- I dunno, this one didn't seem to have the energy of your other reviews. It was kinda vague, like it was written based on glancing through the first few pages and winging the rest with cliff-notes. I think you're doing a seriously awesome job here, but the reviews just don't have the same impact if you rush them.
- Hey John, you don't have to do the entire webcomics sphere in the space of a week. Pace yourself a bit!
- You're absolutely right, it is written like old school sci-fi novels. However, you miss the point about how those novels were almost always chock full of social commentary, despite being set in a different society. The idea is that its easier to look at the problems with an unbiased eye if it is not directly criticizing the world you live in..
- anonymouse #1: in order to stop various morons from going "UR JUST JEALOUS OF MOOKIE-SAMA" I decided to do this one without resorting harsh words or personal attacks. I think I did quite well on it. tychomonger: That's what I said. I quote: "Is this a cruel mirror to show mankind the faults it might not so readily accept head-on, so it can better itself?" My point was it alternates between "CHECK OUT THESE INTERESTING UNIVERSES THAT I MADE!!!" with a lot of explanation, and then tries to shoehorn the social commentary in but there's no room. The feel of the story changes. One minute you think it's supposed to be some brave new frontier exploration epic, then it's following the mundane details of some family. I can't decide what it is, and it suffers for it. JDR is no master storyteller, he/she can't do this shit.
- Wow. Never heard of this webcomic before, but I followed your link and it's terrible. I don't think you used that word often enough in your review. Terrible.
- What is with these footnotes? All of them are longer than the actual comic! Also, "nakimono" is Japanese for 'dead guy'. I'm sure he feels clever about using the dictionary.
- You do have a small point, in that the character interaction is stunted in PDH, she is just too busy laying out the groundwork for the big finish. Honestly, the emotional character interaction has never been her focus in this story, it is supposed to be as incidental as it feels. You can only get a glimpse of the lives these people lead as they're moved around as pawns in a gigantic Time War. The abused Chartreuse was only there to give Heliotrope a moral dilemma. Why did she need to have a moral dilemma? To help her make a choice about genocide in the upcoming finale. If you want to read something by Jennifer Diane Reitz where she focuses more on the characters, read the comic To Save Her. She is quite capable of telling a compelling character driven story when she wants to.
- No she's not.
- Riiiiiight. Let's see. Almost zero constructive criticism. Instead you spend all your time making fun of its title and saying how ludicrous it is without grasping the concept that it is science fantasy... and thus part of its charm lies in the fact that it is so alien to mundane storytelling. Did you even bother to read the comic all the way through? Or did you skim a dozen or so issues and shape your opinion off of that? Now I will admit, you do have some justifiable grief with Dominic Deegan. The idiocy of the rape story, especially with her later "falling" for her rapist... pathetic. It could have been done much better. It would have focused far better on the horror of this crime done to save a life... but far better never to have touched upon the story at all. I give you a D+ for effort. But seriously. Constructive criticism is far more effective in telling cartoonists where they have failed, and what they can do to fix those failings. Robert A. Howard, Tangents Webcomic Reviews http://www.tangents.us
- I agree with Robert a.k.a. Tangent, constructive criticism actually inspires people to improve sometimes, and shit stirring just gets you attention. The criticism need not even be polite. Take for example Josh Lesnick and how he criticizes the art of other comics. He is very rude, but he does point out real problems and how to improve on them.
- Tangents fantastic (in quality of writing) review of PDH can be found here. http://tangent.panel2panel.com/tan-ch-0326.html#1 Now, I do warn you, there are serveral polysyllabic words, Mr.Solomon. Also Tangent has read the entire comic.
- Robert, I've read all of Pustule Dependent Heatstroke and I agree with Mr. Solomon when he says that the comic is a humongous fucking peice of shit. I look at that comic for the same reason people can't help but stare at a trainwreck. I can tell you why Solomon didn't waste time with "constructive criticism", you fucking faggot, it's because JDR is a fucking nutcase who won't brook criticism from anyone, much less her own "family" whom she's made a public spectacle of abusing and controlling (thank you Portal of Evil) Oh, and a real quick look over your TOTALLY OBJECTIVE AND WELL-WRITTEN website about webcomics, it seems you really like to keep up with not only worthless garbage like PDH, but El Goonish Shive and Megatokyo as well. You wouldn't know what a good comic was to save your life. Go eat a bag of hell, Robert.
- Wow, you're totally not John Solomon.
- Come on, pretentious webcomic blog guy, you have to give John Solomon some credit for managing to review Postal Offender Periscope without going ad hominem on the truly mental creator.
- Ah, how brave. Posting anonymously to attack people. At the very least create an account with a pseudonym so you can take pride in your insults. Though I suppose the account-creation system might be beyond you. It's simple. Go to Google, get a gmail account, and use that to log in. And I sincerely doubt you've read my site other than the main page. I've been writing reviews over two years now and have reviewed close to a hundred different comics. And in this time, I've shown respect for the effort that people put into this craft. Even if you don't like the story, even if you don't like the art, respect the comic and the effort that goes into it. That lack of respect is telling. A German film critics, Lotte H. Eisner, of the 1920's once said, that it is very easy to put everything down, but the art of criticism starts with being constructive. Robert A. Howard, Tangents Webcomic Reviews http://www.tangents.us
- At Least Robert has the guts to use his real name. Yes I understand that I'm not using my real name. That fact is not lost on me.
- Huh, I'm honestly surprised to see such articulateness and overbearing condescension coming from someone who read and enjoyed Zortic. Oh, and in the words of 20th century American journalist Mignon McLaughlin (anyone can do quotes); "Nobody wants constructive criticism. It's all we can do to put up with constructive praise". In the world of bad webcomics, only one half of that is true. Go on, have a guess which. Love, Brave New Pseudonym
- "Even if you don't like the story, even if you don't like the art, respect the comic and the effort that goes into it. That lack of respect is telling." If we ought to respect someone based purely on the amount of effort they put into something, regardless of how terrible we find the resulting product, then aren't you more than a bit of a hypocrite for failing to show "respect" for Dominic Deegan with your earlier comments, Robert?
- Wait, Tangents? Gave-a-favorable-review-to-The Wotch Tangents? Look, being able to string a sentence together, or even a whole lot of sentences a hundred times over the years does not make you a good reviewer. Being politer than the Dalai Lama does not make you a good reviewer. No, you need things like insight. Wit. The judgment to tell that the compressed brick of shit you are holding in your hands is not, in fact, a delicious bar of chocolate. So far you're lacking all three, but who knows? Keep at it, champ. Maybe one day one of these traits will suddenly spring forth from somewhere in your body. And if you're going to resort to things like 'why don't YOU use your real name' please preface your posts with it so no one has to bother with the rest, as you wouldn't the same for us. And one more thing about constructive criticism: People like you sure love it. You and that Websnark guy and whoever else is famous in webcomics constructive criticism be nice to the authors yadda yadda yadda. You've been doing it for years. And the terrible webcomics have been not improving for years. How many more years are you going to give it before realizing that it doesn't work?
- Because I do respect the work that goes into Dominic Deegan. I have reviewed that comic several times. I enjoy it even. But I felt that storyline was... not well thought-out. Nor do I particularly like the current one. To be honest, DD should have ended after the Chosen storyline was through. It was the Epic Climax. To go on afterward was... empty. He's done a good show of it, sure. But it hasn't been as good. Robert A. Howard, Tangents Webcomic Reviews http://www.tangents.us
- Hahaha, you still run that site, Rob? And The Wotch... jesus, man. Still fellating Maritza and Jamie for a little bit of e-penis? I lost track after the fifteenth "I'm leaving forever, goodbye".
- The mere fact you kept track up until the fifteenth proves you're not worth the time it'd take to insult you. Goodbye forever, Syrg--that's sixteen, so you don't have to bother taking off your shoes to make the count. Rob H.
- Robert, Robert.... you stupid internet high-minded faggot. I don't give a flying fuck if you think I'm a coward for not posting my internet nickname or not. The bottom line is comics are (should be) a simple, funny, NOT HARD TO GRASP kinda thing, and you can't understand that. That's why a lot of people don't care for Pastel Defender, Megatokyo, and El Goonish Shive, and you do.
- "Because I do respect the work that goes into Dominic Deegan. I have reviewed that comic several times. I enjoy it even." Robert, if my opinion of you wasn't already hovering around the level of "worthless cockholster" due to your positive review of The Wotch, it certainly just arrived there now.
- Robert, you live in your parents' basement. You write shitty reviews of shitty webcomics. You are Failure personified. GET AIDS.
- You're just jealous because robert has more internet friends than you I mean everyone loves kittens right *wry grin wry grin wry grin* Fucking couldn't stand your high-horse-fucking ass on the CRFH boards and you're not bareable anywhere else either you furry worshipping failure of a writer/human being
- "Robert, Robert.... you stupid internet high-minded faggot. I don't give a flying fuck if you think I'm a coward for not posting my internet nickname or not. The bottom line is comics are (should be) a simple, funny, NOT HARD TO GRASP kinda thing, and you can't understand that. That's why a lot of people don't care for Pastel Defender, Megatokyo, and El Goonish Shive, and you do." Nothing wrong with complex comics! The problem is comics that are terrible. Like, say, most of what's covered in Tangents. RMG
- If your opinion(s) of me actually mattered, that might even mean something to me. But posting multiple times pretending to be several people in a half-fast attempt to "cut me down" is just sad. No doubt you feel I write "shitty" reviews because you can't understand half the words. Well, I have a solution. Return to high school and earn your diploma. Or you could always pull out a dictionary and look the words up... but then again, you'd have to look up the words defining the words you're looking up. If you truly feel comics need to be simplistic and funny... then pick up the newspaper and read Garfield. At least you'll get the simplistic part. Rob H.
- is it more funny or pathetic that robert can't comprehend the cold hard fact that, indeed multiple people are tired of his stupid shit you are a pariah on how many webcomics forums for your stupid condescending fanfiction writing bullshit and still can't grasp this? You have more internet enemies that disgusting animal related fetishes, you sick fuckhole. You are a pathetic person, and no matter how many times you post trying to convince everyone that no, you are above this and blah blah BLAH we all know your fat, horrible, failure ass is crying on the inside and we like it.
- "If your opinion(s) of me actually mattered, that might even mean something to me." Didn't you say you were leaving, Robert?
- Yes, PDH is quite possibly one of the most epic fails in the history of failure, but you have no damn business calling the author "he" when "she" is a "she". Way to ruin a perfectly charming jab at something that needed jabbed with transphobic idiocy!
- Dude, trust me on this. I work with gender-dysphoria and other similar conditions. JDR isn't a transsexual, but a very, very disturbed person with some serious self-loathing. That's an entirely different story, though. Let's just focus on the comic review, okay?
- Uh oh, looks like Tangents dude got us! We're all just J. Solomon puppet accounts! I guess we're just not clever enough to pull the wool over his eyes. I mean, shit, we're not even smart enough to get El Goonish Shive or the Wotch!
- I know I'd need a fucking Excel spreadsheet to keep track of all of the gender-bending going on in those comics, Benjamin. Much like those people who have memorized all of the specifications for their favorite giant robots or science fiction spacecraft, I suspect that Robert believes that his ability to keep track of Who's Got A Vagina This Week in The Wotch without the aid of customized software makes him intelligent.
- This comment box has certainly devolved into a swirling vortex of fecal matter. In fact, I feel it necessary to apologize on everyone else's behalf, so "Sorry, John." I'm not certain if idiocy is contagious, or if the internet actually does just attract the criminally unintelligent, but in either case, some rather sluggish individuals have made their way to your forums. It's too bad that fire doesn't have the same effect on internet slugs as it does on real ones, or I'd suggest they keep at it. Also... people thought Pastel was actually good? I'm a bit disgusted, really. I mean, my mind cannot even begin to truly react to this phenomenon. Honestly, I don't know what else to type. So I'm just going to stop, because I don't want my brain to seize and end up comatose.
- Yeah, there's a difference between making something complex and making something completely fucking incoherent, and I suppose PDH falls into the latter category.
- "Legendary fail" is a 4chan catchphrase. Basically it lets you know that a bunch of wapanese quarter-wits are furious at you. Which is awesome.
- Dear john. I wish to exploit your reviews to get MY webcomic more fame. I do this, because i know i suck, and i don't really care about anyone elese than myself. http://pugh.smackjeeves.com if you're against gays, or would like to see the cesspool of boy love manga that is smackjeeves, head to http://somethingnew.smackjeeves.com Yours A guy exploiting other people for selfish gains.
- Mr. Robert A. Howard of Tangents, this morning I went to the bathroom and took an epic shit - and I mean epic. We're talking bowel movements that Vikings would sing about. It was the most monumental dump I've ever taken in my entire life. On account of the massive effort it took to disgorge it from my backside in ten minutes of grunting, sweating and muttered resolutions to have more fibre in my diet, I demand you respect both me and my shit.
- Well fucking shock and surprise, Robert here is one of JDR's forum bootlickers. "Don't mind that mean old review, here's one of my nice friendly cockslobbing ones!" Nice one, Robert. Oh wait JDR doesn't have a cock anymore does he
- You forgot about the random emphasis of words! Read the boldface words aloud, trying to emphasize them correctly. You'll die. Also, yeah, worst comic ever.
- You'd seriously rather die than be the creator of a popular online strip? And really seriously, not just Internet-seriously? Man, that takes guts. If I was kidnapped by some psycho and found myself taped to a bed with the artistic responsibility for a webcomic superglued to one hand and a gun to the other, I'd probably pick the webcomic. I'm a coward like that. OK, how about this one. Would you prefer to be the guy who found a girlfriend (and then wife) in the fandom for his online comic, or be smothered in honey and dropped in a pit of fire ants?
- ha ha you think PDH is popular
- Those looking for reasons PDH is awful really need look no further than 181-183 in the archives (with 182 being unsafe for work viewing.) You get JDR's classic lack of understanding of how to, you know, draw, emphasis from hell, necessary footnotes to convey what the comic can't, and, frankly, the sex doll being portrayed as childlike and naive, and then getting it on. It's gross. PDH, if you read it as it comes out, is more or less a train-wreck in slow motion. Taking it in all at once would be a horrible experience, but one piece at a time it can be kind of funny, if you ignore the deep sadness of it all. I mean, look at the arms in this.
- Seems Tangent's been busy celebrating his e-victory over a blog: "*sigh* You know, I almost kinda feel bad now for baiting his "fanbase" after I was done lambasting the wannabe for his pathetic excuse for webcomic commentary. Especially after the fact. Though I must admit, I did manage a few zingers at that crowd which undoubtedly left them scratching their heads and their butts and wondering "duh, what did that mean? I think I got burned..." " Which zingers were these? The quote he probably dragged right out of the Reader's Digest Quotable Quotes pages? Oh, and it hardly takes much bravery to use your own name if you're only ever going to hand out compliments. Hugs, B.N Pseudonym Esq
- It also doesn't take much bravery to have a review site that doesn't accept user comments.
- Oh hahah this is fucking golden. As for you, Robert A. Howard, get your fat basement-dwelling ass back here. *grins* We're not done with you yet. *beats a kitten with a dead baby duck* "But what I truly despise, moreso than the little anonymous flower children who don't dare put even a pseudonym to their insults, is the fact that this "Solomon" chap showed absolutely no respect for the craftsmanship that went into building these comics." You're one of JDR's asskissers on her forum and you're playing the whole white knight bullshit game because you honestly believe that a turd can be polished. Also, you stated that you "zinged" us and left us "scratching our heads", and honestly I can't find anything close to that in any of your responses here. You told me to go read Garfield and finish high school but I'm still not particularly butthurt at this moment. I think you kind of failed there. *refries some beans and kittens* I'll say it again, Robert A. Howard, you cannot polish a turd. Perhaps you can convince yourself that you pwned a weblog with whatever "zingers" you dreamed up, but the honest fact of the matter is you're proud of defending a fucking terrible webcomic. Here's your "constructive criticism", neckbeard -- you will die alone never knowing the embrace of a woman. PS: lol
- I was disgusted by this comic just by reading this review. This comic is just... horrible.
- Mayeb I should make a masturbatory post talking about how I have "zinged" people and I am truly the alpha male of this here Internet! Oh wait, I'm not a fucking mongoloid with an inferiority complex. Nevermind, then.
- Pastel isn't a bad webcomic and Jennifer shouldn't feel bad. If you want a webcomic that follows its theoretical genre (say old-style sci-fi since you are harping on that) religiously, I'm sure there are plenty of those on the internet. However, I have to admit that I'm a fan of Jennifer's other work so I know that she has her own genre. One must ask, Solomon, why do you read webcomics if you find homosexuality boring? It's hard to think of a webcomic (good or otherwise) that lacks it. I find it interesting that you question the dark mirror / surreality dichotomy of Pastel without acknowledging the fact that the people involved are all humans, and descended from earthlings. Perhaps you didn't get that far or didn't realize it? Or as is more likely, I imagine you didn't care. Anyhow, I found the combination quite appropriate for a "fish out of water" civilization that has developed past that phase in an environment alien to its origins. One wonders what your opinions of "Stranger in a Strange Land" are, since there are many parallels, most of which are things you pointed out as faults of Pastel. Perhaps you just don't grok science fiction. Feel free to respond by acting stupid.
- "Perhaps you just don't grok science fiction." Nothing I could possibly say could make this sentence any funnier.
- Ahahahahahahaha oh God someone compared PDH to an actual book ahahahahahahaha. Anonymous bitch, I write science fiction. What JDR writes is not science fiction. It's shit.
- "A German film critics, Lotte H. Eisner, of the 1920's once said, that it is very easy to put everything down" It's also fun!
- Thing is, writers don't decide what science fiction is, readers do.
- What the fuck are you on? That isn't true at all.
- Dear god john, why would you punish yourself by reading anything written by JDR!! Anyone with common sence ;which isnt so common; can tell its bad and anyone who reads it wont be convinced oltherwise. Are you a Fuckin' masochist or something?
- I cilcked on a few of the links. Pardon me while I gouge my eyes out with a melon baller. Seriously, who reads this shit?
- You can say "Who reads this shit?" as many times as you like, but that doesn't stop shitty webcomics from having scores of avid fans. No, I don't know why either. I suspect it is because they are stupid.
- "One must ask, Solomon, why do you read webcomics if you find homosexuality boring? It's hard to think of a webcomic (good or otherwise) that lacks it." Penny Arcade Sam and Fuzzy Questionable Content Nothing Nice to Say and plenty of others that have it show up, but not as a major theme, such as in Pastel Defender Heliotrope. Solomon probably meant he was tired of the ones that use it as a major theme to constantly come back to.
- Don't bother explaining, these people are idiots. You say "Constantly babbling on about the same fucking themes in everything you do is stupid" and they interpret it as "DUR DUR DUR ME HATE FAGZ" And people wonder why I have to get across my point like a brick to the face.
- I have to admit I enjoyed PDH for a while, the whole crazy multiverse thing is kind of entertaining to try and figure out, and I liked that part of Unicorn Jelly. Plus the bad art is kinda hilarious at the particular awkward moments. Then there was that fight scene between the awkwardly raped poorly drawn lesbian madwoman and the magic muppet love doll with no feet. And the muppet shouted her ninjutsu and made the poorly drawn crazy lesbian naked and retarded at the same time, who was then torn apart bodily by the crowd. That's when I realized the comic was shit. -Charles Frederick
- In the interest of avoiding often harped-about online cowardice, I have chosen to preface my post with my Real Name. My name is Miles. I write novels, and this comic strip isn't fit to suck Dick Cheney's asshole. If the creator of this comic wanted to inspire a sense of wonder, he/she/it did a fine job. I am still wonder-struck by the fact that anyone would willingly take blame for such a ridiculous piece of shit, much less consider it credit. PS: Like Hemmingway, but unlike Robert, I realize that huge words and complex sentences can't salvage shitty writing. They usually make it shittier.
- I actually read it, because I thought the interactions of Heliotrope and Fushia were interesting, but....blarrrrgh. I want that hour of my life back. I didn't even bother to read most of the pages (any page without those two characters was not read) and it still made almost no sense. We ought to be paid for reading that crap.
- Man, if you think this is bad, you should try out Tales of MU. It's not a web-comic, but rather a web-novel(?), but man, both the story and the author are really sick in the head. It is a story deserving of some good old John Solomon bashing action.
- "Motherfucking Puppet Vision" Unbeknownst to all, the encyclopedia dramatica article is copy pasted straight from reality. I can't believe I missed this one. Batfuck insane.
- You know Robert, the point of reviewing something isn't to compliment the artist. It is to tell apart shit from the good stuff. Respecting effort of people shouldn't get in the way of your review. It's the same thing that John does when he talks about the author and how much he sucks. Just because someone would cry when you told him his webcomic is bad, doesn't make it better in any way. So maybe you should stop fishing for compliments and stay the fuck away from this place as there are almost no arguments you can win here.
- John Solomon is Charlie Brooker.
- I did not read the entire thing, and I do agree that the comic does go too slowly! It just couldn't keep me interested; there wasn't enough action, just minute details. But I disagree with the part about the topics JDR chooses, regarding sexuality. First of all, she DOES incorporate heterosexuality into it,(the doctor is heterosexual, and so is that other lady who fancies him). Besides, why should sexuality have an effect on how you go along with a story? Personally, I find heterosexuality boring, but tolerable. Most stories indeed have only heterosexuality in them, but nobody is complaining about that. Okay, I'm done now.
- The problem JDR has is that, frankly, she hasn't grasped the fact that comics and games have evolved since the 1970-80s. Nothing against her, I found her serious site on transsexuality very interesting, but the comics made my head hurt bad. These are not webcomics. They are the descendents of the proto manga that JDR grew up with in the 60-70s
