Even John 'I write ten-thousand-word rants about Dominic Deegan' Solomon thinks that if Dominic Deegan were crabs, then The Wotch would be full-blown syphilis. So what is this terrible comic? The easiest way to describe it would be to say that it is a PG-13 wank comic for transgender- and transformation-fetishists. It would be even easier to describe it as a comic that is fucking terrible to the point of being offensive in every conceivable category, and the only webcomic in my long career of viewing terrible webcomics that has actually brought me close to the point of heaving with but a single panel of a page. (Specifically, the fourth panel of this one.)
I could probably end the review here, because nobody who clicks that link will need words to tell just how terrible a comic this is, and nobody who is unable to tell will be able to be convinced with words, or anything short of blunt force trauma to the head. But I won't.
So why is The Wotch an irredeemably terrible fucking piece of shit? First off, the art. Just look at it. Unless the current comic up on that site is a guest comic and you have to go back a few times to see their latest original masterpiece, whatever loads on that page is enough. It doesn't matter if you read this and try it now or five years from now, because five years ago it was near-exactly the fucking same, except done with colored pencils instead of shitty photoshop filters. Undoubtedly the artist defends this utter lack of improvement as a 'style' (and in fact does), but it should be clear that if you are unable to draw furniture, people, fingers, desks, bookshelves, grocery shelves, backgrounds, streets, houses, buildings, libraries, bedrooms, walls, doors, bleachers, boxes, or even straight lines, then you don't have a 'style'. You have what's known as shitty art, and not just regular shitty art, but completely, totally, irredeemably shitty art, because in each of those pages linked the link word is only one thing wrong with the page. No matter what page it is, it will also have shitty two-tone photoshop gradient backgrounds, shitty perspective on every panel where there is perspective, shitty linework, shitty character designs, shitty fill tool coloring, and shitty whatever else is drawn! Ironically, The Wotch's art is so fucking terrible that it takes less time to explain what's wrong with it than it would for its slightly better-drawn terrible webcomic brethren because there are no specific techniques the artist has a long way to go in or specific defects with design or anatomy. It's all the same shit shittiness through and through, and it fucking looks like it was drawn by a six-year-old, absolutely no exaggeration. And if you're unable to see that immediately, or even after clicking those links and getting a nice big sample of the art, then you simply lack the capacity to distinguish quality of any scale whatsoever as a human being. That is to say, you're mentally disabled. And ironically, the biggest argument against the 'art' in The Wotch is in the comic itself, in the form of some sort of spinoff/subcomic that runs on Sundays by a different artist, which shows that art can be done in the same 'style' as The Wotch and NOT be immediately vomit-inducing. This too.
And amazingly, it takes two people to create this abomination: one Anne Onymous, principal author and artist, and divorced former grad student most likely in his mid-to-late twenties; and one Robin Ericson, co-author and colorist, who if I recall correctly is a father of some sort and likely in his thirties or older. And if you are unfortunate enough to have even a passing knowledge of The Wotch, you would know that two of the three main characters are Anne Onymous and Robin Ericson! Self-inserts much? At least Mookie made his self-insert character have a different name, and the same gender. And actually, they are self-inserts in at least two big ways, one of which you might not know. First off it is in the wish-fulfillment sense. As I've said, The Wotch is a transformation/transgender-fetish comic, and it's obvious right off the bat that the author has transgender issues himself, his online persona being a fifteen-year-old girl and all. Simply put, the comic basically exists to act out its authors' (and its fans') transformation and transgender fetishes. Of course, the FAQ says:
Yep. Non-sexual. Just for fun. Oh really? Yeah, I guess I can believe that.
Of course, the comic's not all random dudes getting transformed into unrealistically-proportioned women. That's because it's not random! There's a plot behind it! And I spent so much time on telling you all the immediately obvious ways in which this comic is the most terrible thing in the universe that I didn't even get to what the story is until now, possibly because it is one of the stupidest fucking clichéd pieces of shit ever. The plot is that a girl is granted the 'magicks of the Wotch' one time at band camp, and must face various magical perils as she trains her own magical powers until she can fulfill some sort of prophecy involving an evil magical man called a 'Worlock' in another dimension. Oh, and the magic has a tendency to change people's genders around or make furries out of them or both, and the people whose genders and genetic codes she changes the most often are her closest friends, because gender changing is hilarious.
Of course, it's not only her two best friends that periodically get turned into girls. Sometimes Anne gets a bit sloppy in her magic, and sometimes a villain, whose magic also coincidentally changes people's genders and/or transforms them, rolls into town, and a lot of innocent bystanders suddenly find themselves with an urge to go clothes shopping or baking pies or some other misogynistic cliché. But that's okay! Because they like changing genders! And even if they don't know it, it's all for the best! Fuck yeah! Anne Onymous, at least have the balls you curse yourself for being born with to admit it. Your comic is jerkoff material for transformation fetishists, despite the PG-13 rating you desperately strive to uphold, and appropriately its characters are as realistic as, or even less so than, those of pornographic films. Maybe you could write a storyline where your characters' actions have plausible consequences and everyone isn't all peaches and cream boy-howdy-do-I-secretly-want-to-be-a-man/woman/hermaphrodite/unicorn, but there is absolutely no fucking chance in hell that would ever happen because that just might make you and your fans feel a slight twinge of guilt when you lay down to masturbate (with the penises you curse yourselves for being born with) to the mental images of your magically gender-changed characters. And we can't have that.
But that's not all! Let me tell you the other way The Wotch is a giant, horrific, self-insert fantasy, which has to do with the origins of the comic. You see, The Wotch, especially in its first chapters, is basically the putting to paper of the collected roleplaying adventures of a transformation/transgender-enthusiast chatroom circle of friends. Nearly every main and secondary character is based on one of these friends, with their most common transformations/transgenders in the story assumedly based on these real-life people's fetishes. And it should have stayed that way: a comic for a bunch of grown men and possibly women that spend their days on an internet chatroom pretending to be statues and werewolves and shit. I would have never heard of them, they would have never heard of me, and everything would be just fuckin' peachy.
But somehow it didn't, and The Wotch got fans. Enough fans for it to rake in thousands of dollars in donations a month. For serious. As of this writing smack-dab in the middle of August The Wotch has raised $700 so far, which means it will probably break $1500 by the end of the month. With 13 comic pages a month if that—The Wotch does tons of fillers and has shitloads of missed days, missed weeks, and even missed months—that averages out to more than $100 a page for something that looks like it was drawn in ten minutes by a fourth-grader in art class. Enough fans to have a shitty community that hosts two dozen other comics, most of which are worse than The Wotch, and also enough to count comic artists better than itself among its fans, who are somehow blind to its stark shittiness. And enough fans to have a spinoff comic called Cheer! that actually seems to have decent art and writing, which means that it's Da Vinci and Shakespeare combined in comparison to its wretched progenitor. And in my opinion that is the biggest tragedy of all in this sordid tale: that even if he did bring it on himself, a webcomic artist with even the tiniest ray of promise will forever be shackled to the albatross that is The Wotch.
And so to end, I would like to address the makers of The Wotch with a hearty fuck you, except I won't. It's your fans that I will tell to go fuck themselves, because they're the ones paying you more in a year than a fifth of the American workforce earns with actual jobs. And besides, to be honest, in your shoes, I would be doing exactly the same thing. It's a damn sweet gig! Three hundred dollars a week for three ten-minute retard scribbles! It would be drug-mule levels of debasement except making The Wotch would probably pay better and I won't have to get frisked by Customs. And nobody will ever know what I really think of the comic I make and the fans that drool over it. That would be bad for the figurine-selling business. I'd just put on a mask and be pleasant to everyone, praising every piece of fanart or fanfic that is turned in by my sycophantic fans. I'd read this post and secretly cackle to myself, knowing that an entire army of such haters would not change the opinion of my money-hating fanbase even a little. Nor would it disrupt the steady flow of internet lucre a single bit. The guilt and the shame would be overwhelming, but money is a salve that cures all such wounds.
And that's the worst part. You could be doing this right now and nobody would ever know.
I could probably end the review here, because nobody who clicks that link will need words to tell just how terrible a comic this is, and nobody who is unable to tell will be able to be convinced with words, or anything short of blunt force trauma to the head. But I won't.
So why is The Wotch an irredeemably terrible fucking piece of shit? First off, the art. Just look at it. Unless the current comic up on that site is a guest comic and you have to go back a few times to see their latest original masterpiece, whatever loads on that page is enough. It doesn't matter if you read this and try it now or five years from now, because five years ago it was near-exactly the fucking same, except done with colored pencils instead of shitty photoshop filters. Undoubtedly the artist defends this utter lack of improvement as a 'style' (and in fact does), but it should be clear that if you are unable to draw furniture, people, fingers, desks, bookshelves, grocery shelves, backgrounds, streets, houses, buildings, libraries, bedrooms, walls, doors, bleachers, boxes, or even straight lines, then you don't have a 'style'. You have what's known as shitty art, and not just regular shitty art, but completely, totally, irredeemably shitty art, because in each of those pages linked the link word is only one thing wrong with the page. No matter what page it is, it will also have shitty two-tone photoshop gradient backgrounds, shitty perspective on every panel where there is perspective, shitty linework, shitty character designs, shitty fill tool coloring, and shitty whatever else is drawn! Ironically, The Wotch's art is so fucking terrible that it takes less time to explain what's wrong with it than it would for its slightly better-drawn terrible webcomic brethren because there are no specific techniques the artist has a long way to go in or specific defects with design or anatomy. It's all the same shit shittiness through and through, and it fucking looks like it was drawn by a six-year-old, absolutely no exaggeration. And if you're unable to see that immediately, or even after clicking those links and getting a nice big sample of the art, then you simply lack the capacity to distinguish quality of any scale whatsoever as a human being. That is to say, you're mentally disabled. And ironically, the biggest argument against the 'art' in The Wotch is in the comic itself, in the form of some sort of spinoff/subcomic that runs on Sundays by a different artist, which shows that art can be done in the same 'style' as The Wotch and NOT be immediately vomit-inducing. This too.
And amazingly, it takes two people to create this abomination: one Anne Onymous, principal author and artist, and divorced former grad student most likely in his mid-to-late twenties; and one Robin Ericson, co-author and colorist, who if I recall correctly is a father of some sort and likely in his thirties or older. And if you are unfortunate enough to have even a passing knowledge of The Wotch, you would know that two of the three main characters are Anne Onymous and Robin Ericson! Self-inserts much? At least Mookie made his self-insert character have a different name, and the same gender. And actually, they are self-inserts in at least two big ways, one of which you might not know. First off it is in the wish-fulfillment sense. As I've said, The Wotch is a transformation/transgender-fetish comic, and it's obvious right off the bat that the author has transgender issues himself, his online persona being a fifteen-year-old girl and all. Simply put, the comic basically exists to act out its authors' (and its fans') transformation and transgender fetishes. Of course, the FAQ says:
4. What's with all the transformation (TF) and transgender (TG) stuff in this webcomic?
We like it and think it's fun and interesting. Next question.
5. Isn't that stuff sexual in nature?
No. Inherently TF and TG stuff have nothing to do with sex; in fact, here at the Wotch, we enforce the rule that everything here is PG-13 or less. This is intended to be a friendly, fun comic suitable for everybody.
Yep. Non-sexual. Just for fun. Oh really? Yeah, I guess I can believe that.
Of course, the comic's not all random dudes getting transformed into unrealistically-proportioned women. That's because it's not random! There's a plot behind it! And I spent so much time on telling you all the immediately obvious ways in which this comic is the most terrible thing in the universe that I didn't even get to what the story is until now, possibly because it is one of the stupidest fucking clichéd pieces of shit ever. The plot is that a girl is granted the 'magicks of the Wotch' one time at band camp, and must face various magical perils as she trains her own magical powers until she can fulfill some sort of prophecy involving an evil magical man called a 'Worlock' in another dimension. Oh, and the magic has a tendency to change people's genders around or make furries out of them or both, and the people whose genders and genetic codes she changes the most often are her closest friends, because gender changing is hilarious.
Of course, it's not only her two best friends that periodically get turned into girls. Sometimes Anne gets a bit sloppy in her magic, and sometimes a villain, whose magic also coincidentally changes people's genders and/or transforms them, rolls into town, and a lot of innocent bystanders suddenly find themselves with an urge to go clothes shopping or baking pies or some other misogynistic cliché. But that's okay! Because they like changing genders! And even if they don't know it, it's all for the best! Fuck yeah! Anne Onymous, at least have the balls you curse yourself for being born with to admit it. Your comic is jerkoff material for transformation fetishists, despite the PG-13 rating you desperately strive to uphold, and appropriately its characters are as realistic as, or even less so than, those of pornographic films. Maybe you could write a storyline where your characters' actions have plausible consequences and everyone isn't all peaches and cream boy-howdy-do-I-secretly-want-to-be-a-man/woman/hermaphrodite/unicorn, but there is absolutely no fucking chance in hell that would ever happen because that just might make you and your fans feel a slight twinge of guilt when you lay down to masturbate (with the penises you curse yourselves for being born with) to the mental images of your magically gender-changed characters. And we can't have that.
But that's not all! Let me tell you the other way The Wotch is a giant, horrific, self-insert fantasy, which has to do with the origins of the comic. You see, The Wotch, especially in its first chapters, is basically the putting to paper of the collected roleplaying adventures of a transformation/transgender-enthusiast chatroom circle of friends. Nearly every main and secondary character is based on one of these friends, with their most common transformations/transgenders in the story assumedly based on these real-life people's fetishes. And it should have stayed that way: a comic for a bunch of grown men and possibly women that spend their days on an internet chatroom pretending to be statues and werewolves and shit. I would have never heard of them, they would have never heard of me, and everything would be just fuckin' peachy.
But somehow it didn't, and The Wotch got fans. Enough fans for it to rake in thousands of dollars in donations a month. For serious. As of this writing smack-dab in the middle of August The Wotch has raised $700 so far, which means it will probably break $1500 by the end of the month. With 13 comic pages a month if that—The Wotch does tons of fillers and has shitloads of missed days, missed weeks, and even missed months—that averages out to more than $100 a page for something that looks like it was drawn in ten minutes by a fourth-grader in art class. Enough fans to have a shitty community that hosts two dozen other comics, most of which are worse than The Wotch, and also enough to count comic artists better than itself among its fans, who are somehow blind to its stark shittiness. And enough fans to have a spinoff comic called Cheer! that actually seems to have decent art and writing, which means that it's Da Vinci and Shakespeare combined in comparison to its wretched progenitor. And in my opinion that is the biggest tragedy of all in this sordid tale: that even if he did bring it on himself, a webcomic artist with even the tiniest ray of promise will forever be shackled to the albatross that is The Wotch.
And so to end, I would like to address the makers of The Wotch with a hearty fuck you, except I won't. It's your fans that I will tell to go fuck themselves, because they're the ones paying you more in a year than a fifth of the American workforce earns with actual jobs. And besides, to be honest, in your shoes, I would be doing exactly the same thing. It's a damn sweet gig! Three hundred dollars a week for three ten-minute retard scribbles! It would be drug-mule levels of debasement except making The Wotch would probably pay better and I won't have to get frisked by Customs. And nobody will ever know what I really think of the comic I make and the fans that drool over it. That would be bad for the figurine-selling business. I'd just put on a mask and be pleasant to everyone, praising every piece of fanart or fanfic that is turned in by my sycophantic fans. I'd read this post and secretly cackle to myself, knowing that an entire army of such haters would not change the opinion of my money-hating fanbase even a little. Nor would it disrupt the steady flow of internet lucre a single bit. The guilt and the shame would be overwhelming, but money is a salve that cures all such wounds.
And that's the worst part. You could be doing this right now and nobody would ever know.
107 comments:
- http://wiki.thewotch.com/Katie_McBride Katie is a werecat, cursed to transform into a catlike form every night of a full moon, and the two nights surrounding it. In this form, she has increased strength, speed, reflexes, jumping ability, and larger breasts. Uh huh. Non-sexual.*****
- That is pretty terrible--and I had no fucking idea it was that bad. Reading the Anne Onymous interview I thought "hmm, not my thing but maybe ok" but GOOD CHRIST. Though I still think CRFM is the worst webcomic yet. Nice work.
- CRFM? I meant CRFH of course.
- If you're going to do a comic about people randomly turning into women, you should maybe learn how to draw basic female anatomy. Though I would actually argue that the later art is a little better than the original stuff (the original stuff looks David Gonterman-esque, while the later stuff does not, which can only be a step up). The misogyny is rather sickening, though. If you want to be a woman, shouldn't you love and admire women? Why would you portray them as such mindless, empty-headed creatures? (And while we're at it, when did long hair and torso-revealing clothing become a singularly female trait?) Don't even get me started on the udder-people. But I guess it's pathetic of me to complain. After all, it's not like I'm making thousands of dollars on a webcomic. Who cares about my opinion?
- Was it even necessary to say anything ? Could have just linked the site and said "No Comment"
- This comic was shit when I was 15. I'm 21 now and I'm glad to see that the more things change the more they stay the same. Can't wait to see what's next, but I have a feeling it can't possibly be any worse than this pile of festering dog crap.
- Say what you will about El Goonish Shive, but at least it never had a middle aged teacher decide he'd rather be a Japanese schoolgirl so he can go to slumber parties and kiss boys.
- tehkou: So you don't like midriffs? Even though that's what girls often wear? Looks like someone is as oblivious about women as the Woych authors.
- People are actually making money off of this? WHAT THE CHRIST??
- "The misogyny is rather sickening, though. If you want to be a woman, shouldn't you love and admire women? Why would you portray them as such mindless, empty-headed creatures?" They don't want to be women, at least, I think that they probably don't. Indeed, probably most TG fetishists are horrible sexists. If you ask me, fundamentally where this all comes from for most people (if you'll permit me to do some bullshit psychoanalysis), is that the traits they see in women are ones they want to express in themselves, but they feel constrained and prevented from doing so by social expectation. Instead, since traditionally womanly traits are inseparable from BEING a woman to them, they'll fantasise about being a woman. This sort of builds inside of them until they begin to fetishise the idea of "femininity". This'll be nothing like any actual woman any more, it'll be a grotesque (sometimes VERY grotesque), usually oversexualised charicature.
- If people are actually donating money for this mediocre fetishist mindfuckery then I just lost faith in all of humanity.
- Toast, what is with your strange sensitivity about midriff-revealing shirts? Are you a woman who really likes to wear them, or a man who really likes to look at them, or what? I mean, I'm just wondering, since you were getting all prickly about it on the last thread too, and now you're apparently picking an argument about it where there is no argument. Read my post again and see if I actually said anything about hating midriffs or believing that women never wore them. No? Okay then! For the record, I re-read the comic that initially got my ire up, and apparently, turning men into bubble-headed women with long hair and fetishy costumes was just apparently a trait of that one particular villain. Which is still kind of weird, but in a way that offends me less. This comic still makes me sad, though.
- yup. the wotch is really bad. warps yound minds. and the fact your post would need seven hundred tons of bleeps to censor it?...
- Hahaha, the moron brigade has finally rallied.
- I can happily say that I make about twice as much money in a month than these guys do... but I have to work a lot harder for it. So... do comics really exist that are worse than this? I can't really see how you can get more bottom-of-the-barrel than this.
- I think PDH has crappier, less consistent artwork, but at least it doesn't explicitly advertise a tg fetish theme as it's main hook.
- Jesus shitfuck. Why does every single transgender comic save for maybe TWO end up like this? Its fucking offensive. And this is coming from a transgendered person. Fuck this shit, its all become a fetish thing and its making people like me look like some sort of fucking pervert. I will burn the very internet to the ground if shit like The Wotch keeps getting shat out onto it.
- Fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck. Man. I wonder how many young minds I IRREVOCABLY SCARRED from all of that cussin'. You're so right, Anonymous Wotch Fan. CENSORSHIP SAVES CHILDREN. You perfect imbecile.
- At what point did I say I was a fan? I called the comic blatently offensive and something that had been shit onto the internet.
- I'd also like to point out the horrible *noise effects!* thing. I didn't notice it, but it is horrible and it sticks out and oh, how I hate it so.
- I'd like to know what kind of sounds "*float over top*" and "*runs up stairs*" make. Someone owes "Anne Onymous" a punch in the face.
- *Floats over the top* is probably the Jetson's car noise, while *runs up stairs* can be compared to *the sound of one hand clapping*
- You've convinced me! Time to join the webcomic bandwagon! :D
- Is there an internet-based corollary to the "There's a sucker born every minute" saying?
- Anne's a man? Where's this bit of info come from? Also, that's damn creepy.
- Anne being a man comes from it being 'leaked' somewhere on the depths of the internet before, as well as Anne's answer to that question in that interview: "2) If there are two of you, is one of you male, the other female (not specifying which is who), or are the genders of your aliases a smokescreen as well? Anne: Here, I'm going to just say what we always say: if this is a big deal to someone, then they will likely not enjoy the comic anyway. In other words: no comment. Take that as you will. :)" He couldn't have made it more obvious with a neon sign.
- This is even worse than El Goonish Shive...
- I definitely agree about the "style" thing- an inability to draw properly isn't validated just because you never learn to draw any better. It just makes you an incompetent jackass. Whoever pays money for this shit would be doing the world a favour by spreading themselves thinly across the underside of a train.
- And when I say "pay money" I suppose I really mean "gives donations", although that's really much, much worse.
- I used to read this comic - I read it for quite a while. I even (urgh) donated to it once. All the while I knew exactly how bad the art was, but I somehow considered the comic amusing. I stopped reading it about a year ago when I stopped finding it amusing. Looking back, I can't fathom why I ever did. It's the same fucking thing over and over. "KA-GIRL!" Christ.
- Am I the only feeling like they could put together a shittily drawn, half-assed written comic and get a following big enough to be able to pay my rent in donations? I mean, if these two shitsticks can do it, why the hell can't I?
- Are you prepared to make it a webcomic with storylines based around sexual kinks, producing dozens and dozes of strips that are nothing more than cheap masturbation fodder? Because that's how these webcomics work: they gather fans by exploiting a shared fetish. If you can do that and not feel disgusted with yourself, why not try? It means raking in loads of fucking cash by stimulating the skeezy boners of thousands of nerds, so basically you'll be like a discount whore.
- Again with the faux-anime bullshit. It is to vomit. Note to aspiring webcartoonists: anime is a terrible, terrible "style," hopelessly clichéd, cloying and irritating. DON'T IMITATE IT. But if you must, LEARN HOW TO FUCKING DRAW FIRST. You'll disgrace yourselves slightly less if you have at least some grasp on anatomy, construction and perspective to back up your shitty, embarrassing kekeke krap. But who am I kidding... like you're going to bother honing your chops when you're in such a goddamn hurry to jerk off over drawings of wolf tits.
- this comic is essentially the awkward, shoddily-drawn adolescence of just about every webcomic ever made except it never grew out of it it's like some sort of downs-afflicted midget, stunted and undeveloped physically and mentally- in both writing and art it's not the "fetishistic garbage for money" angle that should inspire true guilt in anne's gender-confused heart, it's the fact that this comic's creators have drawn and written something consistently for years with no stimulus to improve in either category that alone should drive any self-respecting artist mad (although i wouldn't put down sanity as a prominent trait of anyone who can create this shit)
- I feel like the worst part about the Wotch is that it pretends to not be wank material. But it is wank material, and it looks like it was drawn by children featuring children. And it makes me sick. Oh so sick. Most of the webcomics you've shown here are varying degrees of bad and offensive, but this is pretty fucking awful. Honest to God, I'd call my congressman if I didn't suspect he was already a reader.
- any self-respecting artist Yeah here's a major mistake: nobody who does a webcomic thus far featured on YWiBaYSFB (with the exception of David Willis) is anywhere close to being a self-respecting artist. Even David Willis isn't one, as far as I can see. Too much drama. If you're a self-respecting artist, you tend not to put crappy shit on the Internet.
- Listen the inside scoop is this. "Anne" and "Robin" didn't even come up with the characters, ideas, and plotlines for their webcomic. They took them from other people's games at the irc channel they used to frequent.
- Everything that is bad about this comic has already been elaborated on by the review and in the comments but the one thing that really gets to me about comics like the Wotch and EGS are the suggestions that any detractors are motivated purely by bigotry, ignorance, etc. If it's bigoted to not think very highly of webcomic fandoms made of of spazbos, creepy guys wanking over the thought of turning into schoolgirls, and people who ten, fifteen years after high school still see the world through a "virtuous, creative, open minded geeks vs. evil mundanes/jocks/bullies/authority figures" filter, well then...
- I just read this question from the interview: 5) How do you feel about webcomics "critics" (Websnark, John Solomon [!], etc.) Anne: I don't really read them, but I know some have said good things and some bad. Everyone's entitled to their opinion, of course. I try to learn from the criticisms, too. Some things, though, people are just going to disagree with, and I'm not going to change my plans or my tone or style just because a critic doesn't like it. I'm happy for the honor of being reviewed, though. It's always nice to be noticed. Looks like someone won't be reading this...
- Of course not. Shitty, worthless hacks who don't have any desire to improve never want to read about criticism. They think that appearing to be "above" it makes thme look professional, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Or they read it in order to get indignant and post about how the review in question just doesn't "get" their work. Or something of that nature, anyway. This nets them a 30-page forums thread of FAN BLOWJOBS, WOO WOO WOO WOOOOOO
- I've (grudgingly) read through a good chunk of the archives before on an incredibly boring day at the end of my school year last year, and it is indeed really bad. Funny thing, the school had put up the websense blocking program which had blocked all comics under the keyword of "Entertainment"; yet The Wotch was clearly unaffected by this. Worst hour I ever killed.
- Am I the only feeling like they could put together a shittily drawn, half-assed written comic and get a following big enough to be able to pay my rent in donations? My biggest beef with the state of webcomics is not the "shittily drawn, half-assed written" stuff. That I simply ignore, except for the amusement I get reading about it here. No, my complaint rests with those webcartoonists who do have some degree of writing and artistic talent, enough to hook me in, but then stop updating with even a goddamn hint of regularity. Sometimes the cartoonist will post a lame excuse like "I have finals" or "My girlfriend/boyfriend/imaginary-friend left me boo hoo and I can't focus on the comic now." Have these morons ever heard of creating a buffer of strips in advance? That's what professional cartoonists, paid or otherwise, do so that when shit happens, as it tends to, they can still update regularly. Then they create another buffer of strips. Lather, rinse, repeat. Then you get the schmucks who stop updating for long periods and simply disappear from the Internet, leaving their dwindling readers wondering whether the comic is over or "on hiatus," also whether the cartoonist is in traction, dead, or most likely, doesn't give fuck all about maintaining a professional reputation. (Even more annoying are the fanboys who respond to any query as to what's happened to the comic with "STFU asshole you're not paying for it so STFU." I know very well I'm not paying for it, but if I've been following a well-written and drawn comic for a long time and it suddenly stops for weeks on end with no sign of the author, I have the right to ask what's going on and suggest that the author maybe show up.) Finally, there's the hypocrisy of webcartoonists who pull this shit and then complain that "webcomics don't get no respect." Gee, wonder why. If you want to be treated as a professional, then act like one. Make sure you have enough strips under your belt at all times to cover contingencies. If there's a genuinely tragic reason you can't update for some time, let your readers know. If you've decided to end the comic, which is certainly your right, let your readers know. That's professionalism.
- Glyph, someone had to trigger that rant from you. Who did that? On my own example: The guy that does Sinfest, Tatsuya, did that about a year ago. It didn't update for like a month and you had no idea if he was done or not. Granted, he's always been an aloof kind of guy, but it would have been nice to know if he was taking a break or if he was done or whatever was going on.
- A few webcartoonists inspired my rant, Mike, but there are two who come foremost to mind because I really did like their work. The first is, in fact, Tatsuya of Sinfest, who's blown off his comic without notice rather more than once, by the way. And the Sinfest forum regulars totally wet their pull-ups when anyone dares ask (even politely) what's happened to the comic. The second is Francesco "Ces" Marciuliano of Medium Large. Last December his Mon-Fri comic stopped updating for months without explanation. "What's going on" queries were similarly baa-ed down by the sheep-like fanboys. Finally his wife Carol who runs the Drink at Work comedy site that hosted the strip (and from whom he'd apparently just separated, as others managed to suss out), mentioned in the comments section of one strip, as opposed to front and centre on the main comic page, that Medium Large would be moving, archive and all, to a new site with new strips. On went another few months. Finally in early June Ces (or his webmaster) posted the first five fucking strips from 2005 on medium-large.com, and since then...nothing, nada, nichts.
- This comic is proof we need to round up fetishists and place them in special isolation camps, so they can’t harm anybody with their insane shit.
- Being the petty, spiteful sort that I am, may I just take this opportunity to state that the Sinfest forumers are the worst bunch of attention-whoring, shit-talking, wanna-be-cool fucksticks on the entire Internet? At least the comic's fun to look at sometimes.
- Given the focus on webcomics as making people lose their faith in humanity, causing them to vomit and otherwise feel generally unhappy I assume that everyone here is 100% ok with the actions and opinions of every single religion, political party, celebrity, political activist group, television station, film, every other website on the net and the number of people living in poverty and/or starving.
- Given the patheticness of your post, I assume that everyone here is 100% sure that you are a faggot.
- To answer your question Anonymous 20:15, I'm certainly 100% okay with you living in poverty and/or starving.
- Oh you guys, we can't kid ourselves. The man is right. We've been self-centered and cruel. Let's all quit this mean-spirited blogging business and go sing at the children's hospital. Thank you, anonymous, for showing us the error of our ways. If only everyone had your perspective, there would be no suffering in the world.
- Given the focus on webcomics... blah... people living in poverty and/or starving Ah, the mating cry of the preachy idiot with no sense of humour. Twice today I have seen someone argue with this sort of "how can you care about _____ when there's worse things happening?" logic, and it never stops being annoying. People are allowed little things like "hyperbole" and exaggeration for the sake of humour, something people who argue like you do always seem to lack ability to comprehend.
- Tehkou: I didn't write that comment. Some fag pretending to be me did. I make it a point to never misspell something that's right in the banner headline, and therefore right in my fucking face. And if I do ever make a typo, I'll put up a correction in a following post. Furthermore, I wouldn't have berated you on the midriff comment, because I actually agree with you. In this case instead of being an actual portrayal of what girl's do wear, the authors managed to turn that into a stereotype of what all girls wear in a sad attempt to make the characters look sexual. So fuck it, I'm putting a link with my name from now on. (Even though I'm aware it won't stop some faggots from pretending to be me). That being said, I could only look at one of The Wotch's comics before closing the browser tab and saying "No fucking thank you." John, you have a greater will than I do.
- Actually, I jerk off to the pain and suffering of the world. But webcomics like The Wotch are so creepy its difficult to masturbate at all. Now honestly, which is the greater sin, mr anonymous?
- I could only look at one of The Wotch's comics before closing the browser tab and saying "No fucking thank you." John, you have a greater will than I do. This was actually the work of YWB newcomer Ted David. I also cannot read The Wotch without feeling physically nauseated.
- This was actually the work of YWB newcomer Ted David. Kudos to Ted then. I'm going to TRY to look at least more than one comic (despite the horrid burning sensation in my eyes) to garner a better opinion myself, although I'm damn sure it won't change in the least fucking bit considering the godawful art and transgender furry shit. Also, instead of posting under my pseudonym/SA account name, I'm going to just post anonymously to avoid a whole bunch of drama bullshit that this blog can do without. So if anyone posts with the name "Obligatory Toast," or even signs with it, it's not me and never will be me.
- Toastie got whipped by a mere troll, guess his soul suffers from hemophilia.
- Her, Tehkou. I'm female. I don't consider myself whipped until I've stopped supporting this blog entirely. I am however a little touchy when it comes to some stupid fuck pretending to be me. I also don't want to be considered on par with the same kind of drama whore Robert Tangents is, so I'll kindly leave this "Ohnoes!1 Someone is using my name for eeeevil!" crap alone and won't bring it up again.
- Another great "review," John. So, is Misfile on your list at all? Considering the shitty manga-style and that the whole comic is about TG, it's gotta be on there somwhere.
- I first encountered The Wotch a couple of weeks before this post, linked to the comic from Wikipedia's "List of Self-sustaining Webcomics". Now I've seen some terrible webcomics (some of which I came to be aware of via this blog), but frankly The Wotch is the first one that I found flat-out disturbing. People don't just get their genders crossed here, they get their whole entire personalities painted over and their memories erased, and somehow this is supposed to be okay? Somehow this is supposed to be funny? When a middle-school teacher is transformed, body and mind, into a Japanese exchange student, that's not humor, that's identity rape. At least Pastel Defender Heliotrope was so out-there batshit insane that it couldn't be taken seriously.
- It's cool, it's cool: all that identity rape is done purely for the sexual gratification of others.
- Although with characters so fucking flat and bland, who really gives a shit what happens to them?
- Another great "review," John. And well done to everyone smart enough to read the whole thing but not smart enough to realise I didn't write it. Why would I begin a review talking about myself in the third person? Unless... it wasn't me. Which it wasn't.
- Another great "review" [that you yourself did not write], John.
- Thanks, though I think it's barely satisfactory myself. I didn't even touch on the asterisked actions that everybody knows and hates as well as about a half dozen other things.
- Wow, I've been bored the past few days, so I decided to read through the archives to see if you where right about the comic or not. It was like commiting seppuku with an axe. The sheer ammount of filler was too much to stand. You only really mentioned the art and the transformation stuff, but the writing and the storylines where much worse themselves.
- Yeah but the main reason the stories and writing sucks is because they're only there so that the writers can cram in as many different fetishes and transformations as possible. Well the main reason really is that the writers are terrible at writing, but as long as they keep having their stories be just long strings of excuses to change various characters' genders they're not going to improve. And they're certainly not going to stop doing that, especially when it somehow brings in that much money for that little effort. I wouldn't.
- Oh no! I has been impersonated, my poor name dragged through teh muck. Female anonymous, the whipping comment was not from me, but by some sad, insecure person who just wishes they had all my cool factor. Toast: Oh, I'm so glad that wasn't actually you. I have always enjoyed your comments in the past so seeing you apparently go insane made me sad.
- Rather good points here. Maybe it's finally about time for me to stop reading this for good, no matter if the genie side-story (that one drawn by someone else) is not quite as bad. (When your reading list gets 100+ in size, some comics simply get stuck in there and you just keep reading habitually, even if you haven't liked them in ages. Wakeup calls like this do come handy.) ((PS. I can also confirm "Anne" being a man.))
- Dude (lady?) above me: Drop the guy at Me and You and Mary-Sue a line, then, if you can confirm that. Odds are he'd kiss you.
- It's patently obvious for a lot of reasons anyway. 1. He all but admits it in that interview. 2. What sort of woman is interested in TG? (The answer: one that isn't real) 3. As if women in that particular fetish aren't rare enough, how many women do you honestly think are into breast expansion fetishism? 'Cause "Anne" is.
- There are TG women out there. One would just assume that... you know, being women, they'd be more interested in women turning into men than the vice versa.
- "Toast: Oh, I'm so glad that wasn't actually you. I have always enjoyed your comments in the past so seeing you apparently go insane made me sad." I thought Solomon's blog had a strict "No Ass-Tonguing" rule. Though once tehkou found out that there was a girl on the blog, he thought this was his chance for an unlikely cybering.
- Okay, okay, they're real, but quite evidently rare, since women turning into males occupies about 0.00001% of TG material.
- Fetishism is pretty rare and almost entirely limited to men (All of whom are terrible human wrecks) but sadly enough, there are some (also insane) women who get in on it. Also, Ted might want to withdraw his "support" of the guest artist who apparently does the style "almost tolerably" when he sees the man's other works: http://kdingo.net/champ/pics/main.php
- I don't see how having a weird kink makes you a "terrible human wreck".
- "Your comic is jerkoff material for transformation fetishists, despite the PG-13 rating you desperately strive to uphold, and appropriately its characters are as realistic as, or even less so than, those of pornographic films." I'll have you know I'm very realistic, mister. Man I don't even know what that would mean if I was "unrealistic."
- Sorry aesop. I should have realized what an insult it would be to your honorable profession to have it be compared to The Wotch.
- >I don't see how having a weird kink makes you a "terrible human wreck" Look at the readers of The Wotch, or El Goonish Shive, or any furry comic. It's the one thing all fetishists have in common - they're all human wreckage.
- I'm coming here from the perspective of someone who IS a tg fetishist. And while I'll agree that Wotch, EGS readers et all are human wrecks, just having the kink doesn't necessarily make you one.
- > Just having the kink doesn't necessarily make you one. I would suggest you check yourself in to some form of therapy and see what traumas are lurking in your past. Something has to be wrong with you for you to have a fetish.
- Actually, no. A fetish isn't always a sign of trauma (and generally isn't, unless one moves beyond "fetish" into "obsession"). Sometimes, it's just a behavioral quirk. Sorry to nitpick. Psych major.
- I'm glad you paid special attention to the truly sick amount of donation money this horrible comic rakes in, because even moreso than how bad every single other thing about it is, the fact that they can make a LIVING off of this trash is what really makes me want it to die a horrible screaming death. admittedly, my own webcomic has its share of fans that are only in it for the fetish wank potential. but, unlike The Wotch, my comic's plot is not a microscopic satellite orbiting around a giant fucking sun made of gratuitous masturbatory transformation shit. and that's why I'll never win at the internet! :<
- Sorry aesop. I should have realized what an insult it would be to your honorable profession to have it be compared to The Wotch. No worries. I just want all the little kiddies out there wacking it to the Wotch to know they could be wacking it to well proportioned people instead!
- > I would suggest you check yourself in to some form of therapy and see what traumas are lurking in your past. Something has to be wrong with you for you to have a fetish. Sorry, but I had probably the most mundane childhood ever. I had maybe one traumatic incident I can think of (the death of my grandfather when I was too young to understand it) which, while pretty neatly explaining my severe fear of death, doesn't seem to offer much insight into the "this men turning into women thing sure is arousing!" thing. Plus you seem to be implying that I should be looking to get rid of it, which I don't understand. It's an enjoyable thing for me, but at the same time it remains a small, very private part of my life, and I don't really see how having it makes any difference either way.
- You know, I didn't find the comic too offensive... ...until I read up on Mingmei. Now, a guy turning into a girl is one thing. But everything about this character is disgusting. First, you've got a middle aged man turned into Japanese schoolgirl, fuku and all. Then, you've got the name. Even though he's supposed to be some Japanese exchange student now, he's got one of the most ridiculously stereotypical Chinese names the author could think of. Nobody cares, though, because hey! All those slanty eyed yellow folk are exactly the same, so why does it matter? All that matters is how sexy those barely legal vixens look on the cover of Hong Kong Hookers XVI. I was willing to give this comic the benefit of the doubt, but now I've given up on it completely.
- >>Dude (lady?) above me: Drop the >>guy at Me and You and Mary-Sue a >>line, then, if you can confirm >>that. Odds are he'd kiss you. No can do, sorry; this was a confession in a long since deleted forum thread. Also, saying this as someone who does have a kink for gender-swapping: if The Wotch really is supposed to be a wank comic, it's doing a fucking terrible job at that, too. It's not the slightest bit arousing, unless you maybe also get off on furries, mythological creatures, schoolkids, and shitty art. So, which case do you think would be worse? - most of the fans really having all of those fetishes, or most of them just cluelessly thinking that it's actually a good comic?
- Long-deleted? Fuck. YOU GOT MY HOPES UP, UNNAMED FORUM-READER.
- The Wotch is terrible. I read it for about a week and a few days in I was only visiting just to laugh at how horrible it was and how lame the people on that site are. You think the comic was bad? Check out thier forums. It's a melting pot of many failures that plauge the internet, and it's not just furries, transexuals, and transexual furries. They may have this real friendly vibe at front, but if you click around you'll really see just how twisted these freaks are. Whatever you do don't bother going into their chatroom or they'll turn you into a cute red furred Foxgirl with big boobies, a miniskirt, and high heels. The Wotch community: Closet fetishests, roleplaying dorks, and elitist nerds. All of which would gladly trade in their dick and scrotum for tits and a vagina.
- This comic reminds me of another god awful piece of crap that focuses on gender bending bullshit, el goonish shive. Actually the similarities between it and the Wotch are almost identical, right down to their piss poor art style. The only difference I believe is that the artist doesn't try and pretend he's a female by hiding his identity.
- Good Lord, this is fucking horrible. Is this made by the same gender-insane fetishist who writes "Flying Suit Reiko" and all its filthy spawn?
- I think is entire 'genre' (no need for TG/TF to have it's own genre, it falls under the category of "Shit") spawns nothing but disgust. Take a look at this piece of shit MSF High made by some Weeaboo who has gots people shilling out the cash for her shitty art. Oh-ho, whats this on the first page? A Role Playing Book for the comic! For $20 (plus s&h) you can play a furry tranny - for reals, not just faking it. http://msfhigh.com/ Moral of the story: photoshop begets shit. Shit begets money.
- As for the comment about anime style sucking, it doesn't. Cheap anime style does, but if you look at some actually decent anime, it works really well. As for this comic: Awful. I admit that I find VG Cats amusing, which means it takes very, very little to get at least a laugh from me. Even less to get a pitying giggle. I just felt ill looking at the art in this. I don't give a damn about fetishists, but when you make that the center of a whole comic, you have a fucking problem.
- I'm IP banned from http://www.thewotch.com/ . Is this awesome? (Y/N)
- Most emphatically Y.
- Thanks for that, then. I filled their entire wiki with goatse. <3 By the way, I also alerted the chans.
- http://wiki.thewotch.com/Jason_Grey is http://foenix.livejournal.com/
- Oh what a delightful surprise, the jerk responsible for Kismetropolis posts on that guy's blog/journal. Looks like bad webcomics are incestual.
- I happen to enjoy this comic, but there's a really nasty one that deserves to be reviewed called Sailor Sun. http://www.sailorsun.org/
- God that argument goes on for ages. (along of with alot of name calling involving cigarretes and bundles of sticks...) Anyway if your looking for an even worse fetishist comic try Abstract Gender, which has illustration work that would make you gouge out your own eyes, along with all the properties of misogynistic viewpoint that applies to most of these TG works. (With the men being emotionally repressed, a character literally says boys shouldn't cry, and features all the stereotypes on women under the sun) And another would be Misfile, which whilst being competently illustrated, the style is practically been taken straight from a "How to Draw Manga" techniques book, and strangely the illustrations have got worse rather than better as the story has progressed. As for the storyline, which has this long struggle for the main character who tries to keep a hold of their 'masculinity', after being TG'ed. Which again hand picks all the stereotypes it can muster for each gender, and then packages itself off as being a challenge to traditional values. There's some annoying points in there like the fact the main characters mother is a lingerie model (who once he changes gender, the mother tries draw the character into working in that frame of business), at various points the character makes out that men are in charge (without any kind of social analysis, it's just something the charactor seems to accept and at no point is that point-of-view challenged), along with incredibly ignorant stereotyping of women.
- John Solomon is Charlie Brooker.
- You and your readers truly are a bunch of clueless, homophobic/TGphobic trolls, aren't you?
- wow... i didn't think people could get so riled up over something free on the internet... it isnt hurting anyone
- Well, I'm not getting riled up by their getting riled up. I'm not the biggest fan of The Wotch, but I do read it occasionally. But then, I used to watch Goodbye, Charlie whenever it came on TV, too. Fun article. Thanks for the perspective. Weird out.
- How could you not mention the terrible Latin used by Man-onymouse? Any page on which a spell is cast ends up as some terrible butchery of the language. One piece, intended to turn female characters back to males, was "feminae parare numquam", which translates as "never prepare women". And then there's the page layout. First HTML page I've ever seen which needs a loading screen.
- This blog entry and most of the replies are making me lose my faith in the existence of intelligent life on Earth... :P First of all, just because YOU see an innocent webcomic as "wank material for fetishist", it doesn't mean that something's wrong with its author or the readers. It means that there's something wrong with YOU. I've been reading The Wotch for quite a long time, and I've never imagined that someone could see it as a comic for fetishists before I found a link to this blog post on Wikipedia. I read The Wotch because it's funny and it has an interesting storyline. And I think most other fans read it for the same reason. :) As for the art style, personally it doesn't bother me, and I think it's quite nice actually. :) There's also one very ironic thing I've noticed on here... a few people who commented accused Wotch fans of being "elitist" and "human wrecks". And that's coming from a bunch of people who see an innocent PG13 comic as "wank material" and see themselves as better than the people who read it. Wow :P
- Aha. Ahaha. No.
- Yes. :P