It has been said on this blog several times: Good writing can save bad art. What has not yet been said is the nuance, and that is that these good writers understand the limitations of their art, some even having chosen these limitations, and make up for it by actually knowing things about panel composition and timing, as well as making their writing not only fit these limitations but sometimes even take advantage of them. Perhaps it hasn't been said yet because it's so fucking obvious, but if you don't understand this as you upload your 'ironically bad' pixellated stickman comics to DrunkDuck thinking that they'll be the next Order of the Stick, then you just might not have the good writing to save your bad art, or even good writing at all. And if you try to tell an epic adventure story using copy-paste puppets so terribly drawn that they would be able to scare children, you just might be Cheshire Crossing.
The epic adventure story in question is set in the year 1910, and centered around the three female protagonists of The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan in a multiverse where the fantasy worlds of late-Victorian children's literature exist. Though the concept might sound annoying it can be done right, but a look at the cover of the first comic immediately dispels any notion that this is such a case.
And as you can see, I wasn't kidding about the scaring children part. Really, it's kinda neat how the cover neatly encapsulates all that is wrong with the comic's art. It's all there: the terrible copy-paste to the point where all the characters are based on the same template; the templates themselves being horrific in both senses of being bad and inspiring horror; the soulless, pointless, looking-yonder expressions; and the fucking crossed arms, Jesus Christ.
You may also notice the box in the upper-left corner giving an issue number and a release date, which is surely a sign from the stars that I am tied by fate to keep mentioning The Wotch, as it reminds me of the fact that my arch-nemesis does the same with its chapters. But Cheshire Crossing takes this almost cute mimicry of actual comics a step further, by actually releasing in whole issues of 20-odd pages. Which is a pretty stupid thing to do because when your comic looks like Cheshire Crossing, you're going to need all the immediate art feedback you can get. But considering that the wholly-copy-paste method is almost chosen specifically to avoid improvement forever, and the fact that the author is already working on issue #4 with no improvement, and the fact that webcomic readers in general never give criticism much less good ones, I suppose immediate feedback wouldn't have helped anyway.
You see the thing is that the creator, Andy Weir, actually knows his art is bad. He even calls himself the "World's Laziest Cartoonist", a title I dispute only because what he does is to cartooning like what the shit I took this morning is to sculpture. But since there are seventy-four pages of this shit spread over two years, it must be that like a million other webcomic jerks, Andy looked at what he had and thought, "Good enough." No. It's. Fucking. NOT. Aside from looking just fucking terrible, it becomes fucking ridiculous when it's trying to tell a story. Action scenes become lifeless, dramatic scenes become laughable, and emotional scenes become eldritch horrors from the darkest depths of the Uncanny Valley, the visual equivalent of a freshly-reanimated frankenstein trying to mimic its master's speech, its black, swollen tongue rotting in its mouth as it stumbles over the syllables, ultimately resulting in an inhuman, disharmonious wail that somehow reminds all of its listeners of their own terrifying mortality.
But as bad as these templates are, with all the women having freakish proportions and all the men having the bodies of prepubescent boys, somehow through what can only be bad-webcomic-magic the art manages to look worse when it goes off-model. And nobody crosses their arms this fucking much God dammit.
If your art fails so catastrophically at its goals of evoking excitement, sympathy, or even fanservice, then it is not 'good enough' to tell your story or any story ever. It doesn't matter how grandiose or well-crafted your vision is if you build your webcomic house out of bricks of shit, because then all you have to show for your blueprints is a pile of shit.
And I can't even judge the quality of the blueprints because the art is so bad that I can't tell where the writing ends and the shitty art begins. Is the pacing off because the plotting sucks, or because the artist only has one angle and one level of detail at his disposal? Is the dialogue bland because it's badly written, or is it because it's coming out of the mouths of disfigured puppets who all look exactly fucking alike? But it almost doesn't matter, because the end result will be the same good writing or bad if you force it through the comicking equivalent of the little-known Photoshop filter called 'Cover everything with shit'.
So for the love of God, Andy, either start learning how to actually fucking draw or get an artist to do it for you. Even if all you can scrape up is some 13-year-old from devianTART it would still be an improvement over what you have now, because the 13-year-old at least has a chance to improve, however small, while what you're doing now is setting yourself up so that you'll never improve, ever.
The epic adventure story in question is set in the year 1910, and centered around the three female protagonists of The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan in a multiverse where the fantasy worlds of late-Victorian children's literature exist. Though the concept might sound annoying it can be done right, but a look at the cover of the first comic immediately dispels any notion that this is such a case.
And as you can see, I wasn't kidding about the scaring children part. Really, it's kinda neat how the cover neatly encapsulates all that is wrong with the comic's art. It's all there: the terrible copy-paste to the point where all the characters are based on the same template; the templates themselves being horrific in both senses of being bad and inspiring horror; the soulless, pointless, looking-yonder expressions; and the fucking crossed arms, Jesus Christ.
You may also notice the box in the upper-left corner giving an issue number and a release date, which is surely a sign from the stars that I am tied by fate to keep mentioning The Wotch, as it reminds me of the fact that my arch-nemesis does the same with its chapters. But Cheshire Crossing takes this almost cute mimicry of actual comics a step further, by actually releasing in whole issues of 20-odd pages. Which is a pretty stupid thing to do because when your comic looks like Cheshire Crossing, you're going to need all the immediate art feedback you can get. But considering that the wholly-copy-paste method is almost chosen specifically to avoid improvement forever, and the fact that the author is already working on issue #4 with no improvement, and the fact that webcomic readers in general never give criticism much less good ones, I suppose immediate feedback wouldn't have helped anyway.
You see the thing is that the creator, Andy Weir, actually knows his art is bad. He even calls himself the "World's Laziest Cartoonist", a title I dispute only because what he does is to cartooning like what the shit I took this morning is to sculpture. But since there are seventy-four pages of this shit spread over two years, it must be that like a million other webcomic jerks, Andy looked at what he had and thought, "Good enough." No. It's. Fucking. NOT. Aside from looking just fucking terrible, it becomes fucking ridiculous when it's trying to tell a story. Action scenes become lifeless, dramatic scenes become laughable, and emotional scenes become eldritch horrors from the darkest depths of the Uncanny Valley, the visual equivalent of a freshly-reanimated frankenstein trying to mimic its master's speech, its black, swollen tongue rotting in its mouth as it stumbles over the syllables, ultimately resulting in an inhuman, disharmonious wail that somehow reminds all of its listeners of their own terrifying mortality.
But as bad as these templates are, with all the women having freakish proportions and all the men having the bodies of prepubescent boys, somehow through what can only be bad-webcomic-magic the art manages to look worse when it goes off-model. And nobody crosses their arms this fucking much God dammit.
If your art fails so catastrophically at its goals of evoking excitement, sympathy, or even fanservice, then it is not 'good enough' to tell your story or any story ever. It doesn't matter how grandiose or well-crafted your vision is if you build your webcomic house out of bricks of shit, because then all you have to show for your blueprints is a pile of shit.
And I can't even judge the quality of the blueprints because the art is so bad that I can't tell where the writing ends and the shitty art begins. Is the pacing off because the plotting sucks, or because the artist only has one angle and one level of detail at his disposal? Is the dialogue bland because it's badly written, or is it because it's coming out of the mouths of disfigured puppets who all look exactly fucking alike? But it almost doesn't matter, because the end result will be the same good writing or bad if you force it through the comicking equivalent of the little-known Photoshop filter called 'Cover everything with shit'.
So for the love of God, Andy, either start learning how to actually fucking draw or get an artist to do it for you. Even if all you can scrape up is some 13-year-old from devianTART it would still be an improvement over what you have now, because the 13-year-old at least has a chance to improve, however small, while what you're doing now is setting yourself up so that you'll never improve, ever.
114 comments:
- Wow. A case of the "CAD lifeless stare", much? Indeed, the art really, really fucks up the story and premise. I mean, draw something with your hands, not in Goddamn Paint. dA isn't bad if you look past the weeaboos, the people who think that photography is shooting an unfunny photo of your friend from a shitty cellphone cam, and the dumbass fanartists.
- Only mildly related, but I fucking hate Gothic Alice.
- This comic makes me sad, because 'Victoriandom Hearts with really creepy art' sounds like an awesome idea. But the result is this.
- Ouch... Short review, a little light on the venom, but this one speaks for itself. That thing is god-awful on the eyes. Also, as long as Fables is still beign published, no one sould even bother with adapting fairy tales. You're just not gonna do as good a job.
- I used to think I could competently line and make something like a comic look good in Flash MX (more or less the same concept as Adobe Illustrator; they're both vector art programs). Then I realized there's really no way to make the shading look passable at all in it, and I dumped the idea. Of course, since Derpferp McCopypaste here doesn't even bother with shading, that thought must never have occurred to him. And what confuses me here is that he took a picture, then drew lines around it, and still managed to fuck it up. where the hell did that massive indention on the bottom of the hand come from? Was the character this hand belongs to in some terrible accident involving a sword and his own stupidity and the doctors didn't bother to sew it back together quite right? And I don't know how he can make the characters look that bloody lifeless in their expressions. I even use a similar eye shape most of the time in my own drawings (though I have been debating dropping them until I can successfully draw a fully realistic face and then devise a new one afterward) and they at least don't look like someone just injected about 27 liters of botox into each of their faces. Actually, I think it's how the actual eyes themselves never change shape or bounding or something like that, just a minor tweak of the eyebrows. My point is the art in this makes me want to go out and destroy every copy of Adobe Illustrator for allowing something like this to be created. I hardly looked at the writing, just skimmed over it. Ever since The Broken Mirror my eyes have threatened to explode themselves if I ever read anything that mercilessly long winded and boring, so I have to be extra careful. Also, those two links on the "looks worse" part are borked. Something with it going through Blogspot before the website url or something.
- So it's like "Lost Girls", except without the sex, great art, and great writing? Good plan!
- It could be worse. There could be some emo kid that ends up as a hero. Ouch, my brain.
- He's right, though; they look horrifyingly worse.
- It's like Alan Moore and David Gonterman had a big retarded baby. And thank you for waiting whilst I went to get some ice creams but they are now melting oh how im prop er r r r r r r r r r
- Does this author communicate with Gonterman, by any chance? This comic seems like his cup of tea. Love how Wendy and Dorothy's faces are a total paste & recolor job on the cover of the issue. One would think he would at least endeavor to make sure the cover, at least, didn't look like a total hack job.
- There are some mis-linked strips in this sequence: And nobody crosses their arms this fucking much God dammit. Also, by saying the visual equivalent of a freshly-reanimated frankenstein You surely mean Frankenstein's MONSTER, not Frankenstein himself... Well, whatever - I guess I'm just a bit anal retentive...
- Oh, man. The emotional scenes are ... well, I don't want to say hilarious, because that might give the author too much credit ... but man did they make me laugh.
- O.o THAT was emotional scene too? Really? I laughed. Creepy creepy art.
- You surely mean Frankenstein's MONSTER, not Frankenstein himself... Well, whatever - I guess I'm just a bit anal retentive... I'd say that's definitely being anal. Most people are comfortable with calling Frankenstein's monster Frankenstein. The monster part is pretty much implied unless you're saying Dr. Frankenstein. It's okay though, I still love you.
- After reading about 8 pages, I think the art makes the writing seem much worse. If you rip the writing away from the "art", it's not so bad. It's not like, an astonishing work of fiction, but it's kind of an interesting idea. Each character actually seems to have a character voice, which a lot of webcomics can't do for some reason. I'm not saying it's good though, I'm just glancing. I can't be arsed to read more and find out where the plot goes.
- Ted David, you're the worst reviewer. All you did was bitch about the art! You should have at least spent one paragraph on the horrible, horrible writing. I didn't think they could make Lost Girls worse, but apparently if you take out all the weirdly drawn porn and the reputation of Alan Moore's Beard, you sure can!
- You surely mean Frankenstein's MONSTER, not Frankenstein himself... Well, Frankenstein's monster is something of an estranged son to the good doctor, and his actions are certainly characterized by a desire for family and companionship.
- So, are you implying that it would be fine for him to go by the good Doctor's last name, since he's virtually a son to him? Well, that line of thinking is kind of convincing.
- It's three Kim Possibles fighting some other Kim Possibles.
- NEVER MIND THAT, I HAVEN'T FINISHED WHINING ABOUT HOW TERRIBLE LICD IS AND HOW ANYONE WHO DOESN'T AGREE WITH ME 100% THAT IT'S WORSE THAN AUSCHWITZ IS A FUCKING STUPID DOUCHEBAG AAAAAAAAAAA RUGURGUGL (Doctor enters: Now Zee, you know what happens when you don't take your meds.)
- Well, if we're gonna bring up LICD again . . . Everyone keeps talking about how great the art is, but the art hasn't always been great. And the latest art actually has a lot of B^U going on, only from several different angles. B^U is B^U
- devianTART Been reading Encyclopedia Dramatica? :(
- What does B^U stand for?
- B^U stands for the face that EVERYONE in CAD makes when they talk. ALWAYS. Eldritch horrors I find it highly offensive being compared to this piece of shit.
- You know, Solomon was right. It's kind of amusing to be attacked out of all proportion by squirmy losers who can't stand to see anything they like criticized, but it gets samey-samey real quick. I'll be sure to pop a few Xanax in the mail for you, precious.
- And nobody crosses their arms this fucking much God dammit. Of course people do! It is called "Emo Defense Mechanism #3". In a gig with 200-300 people, a third part(at least) are always just standing there, meshing both the crossed-arms stance and the stare that suggests somebody might not be there 100%. Let us not forget the hilarious attire(it also applies to Indie enthusiasts, but those guys are aware of their goddawful taste, so fuck 'em). Nothing against Emo kids(whatever that means), but they are so silly at a fairly often rate of time... ... Oh, and this is one fugly webcomic, both in terms of writing and drawing.
- that was just awful, no matter what they were doing you could line them up and match their faces, their chests, those eyes (well, except Alice's, woo-hoo, one change on the template. Yay, wave a flag). I'm going to try to read it, just to find out why Peter Pan is a girl. P.S. Jesus, I couldnt see the word varication so I hit the handicap button and you here 3 to 5 people talking at once.
- ha, wrong use of 'hear'. Damn it, I've probably set of the retard detector.
- well, that was an easy read enough... Apparently the boy who would never grow up, grew up enough to be a comical pervert. I'm not sure why that makes me feel so outraged, but it does.
- Hey, wait, are you seriously asserting that the art in Order of the Stick is bad? Because, uh, it isn't. Sure, it's stick figures, but they emote and he can visually tell a story quite well.
- I guess I just have poor taste, because this art doesn't really fill me with rage, horror, or disgust. There are some places where I kind of like it. I mean, there's obviously a lot of lazy-arse copy-pasting going on, and the expressions are far too static to convey any real emotion. So it's not good art for storytelling. But the individual panels look nice enough. I wish I could use MS Paint that well.
- Well well well, it looks like you've finally decided to take down a real "fat cat"! Looks like there's finally some retribution for the soul searching crowd! It just goes to show that giving new meaning to the term "corruptable" isn't enough to save you from the icy sting of criticism. Now I'm not one to harp, but the ideas that go through this comic are really inadequate. This comic sets the bottom line at a level that I didn't know was even possible. But really, this is all about me, Sonty Mick, saying hats off to you! You've taken a great opportunity to spread truth! -Sonty Mick
- Wait a minute wilst I get some horrendously bad art. I swear I was having The Wotch flashbacks every step of the way with the uninspired garbage, but I guess Man Onymous can actually be bothered to sketch out HIS crap, whereas this yo-yo apparently is to lazy to do ANYTHING but type completely uninspired dialogue. DEAR LORD IT BURNS!
- Using vector programs is cheating. And at risk of bringing the wrath of the graphic novel fanboys on myself yet again, I'll say that I found the idea of Lost Girls to be incredibly creepy and I have no idea why Alan Moore would want to make a porno based on children's books.
- I guess I just have poor taste... You do. There's no qualifying it. You have terrible taste if you think this art is anything but shit.
- Lol, I like how he drew the scientists ass in the "worse" link.
- Lilith: It's just one of those Rule 34 things, I guess. What I don't understand is why people assume that Alice automatically ends up psychologically scarred for life and goes back to murder the denizens of her little temporary dream world for the minor sin of being confusing and occasionally reciting bad poetry at her. The other two, I can understand, seeing as they were in constant danger of their lives. But do they end up turning all gothy and death-obsessed? Of course not! Only the girl with the completely innocent experience starts dressing in black and setting off the Loli detectors. I mean, I spent the majority of my time in little fantasy worlds as a kid, and I ended up merely bipolar, not emo. My fashion-conscious sister wears more black than I do.
- Frankenstein wasn't even a Doctor. Someone needs to make a Webcomic about the book version of Frankenstein. Why do people keep making "Even more novel-accurate than the previous novel-accurate movie!" Dracula remakes - but every Frankenstein remake is about some doctor in a castle making a lightning-powered retard? The hell is that about? You got plenty of material there. There's guns. Yes - the book monster carries guns near the end. There's murder. The book monster is a calculating, stare-in-your-window-late-at-night murderer. His moral problems aren't the problems of a giant retard who's nice inside, but is big and scary, and sometimes does bad things because he panics (that's a very different literary classic). He hates humans - for very good reason. You got Frankenstein - a man with nothing left to lose, who swears to kill his own creation. You got him chasing the monster through the countryside, and into the north. He's armed, he's crazy, and he's after a creature that could kill him with a flick of the hand. There's potential there - more potential than we can find in that "Lenny Made of Corpses" thing that's been done a hundred times over, ever since the old movie. ... No, wait. Scratch that. I just realized how easy it'd be to take that material, and make it into something horrible. ... And we just saw what a web-comic based on literary classics looks like. Fuck my idea.
- The fairy-tale gone bad scenario has been done time and time again, and it's been done much better than this before. The Alice in this comic (other than having a very bad tendency to cross her arms every two seconds) pretty much looks like the one from American McGee's Alice. And Alan Moore's "Lost Girls" was the first thing I thought of, really. Thank god there's no sex scenes in this comic... And on an unrelated note, I just noticed that head down in the bottom right corner of the blog. From Stardust the Super Wizard, isn't it? The guy who gets his head enlarged, his body shrunk and is then tossed into a black hole?
- Good writing can save bad art. Just look at Dilbert.
- The story it self is decent. It's not terrible, but it's not overwhelmingly awesome either. But the art is fucking atrocious. The characters show no emotions what so ever. When Dorothy is looking sad, all she is doing is look at the floor. Her face makes zero changes. I've seen this style of art done where the different facial expressions and body language are actually "drawn." This guy doesn't even try to do it. He's happy with his emotionless-vector-art.
- who the fuck is ted david?
- Luprand: But out of the three, Alice in Wonderland is the one tale that's OMG so fashionable in Japan and every gothic lolita fan is obsessed over it. That' and that is the one that is truly under public domain,so it's FREE to use the setting and characters.
- Nikki said... I'm going to try to read it, just to find out why Peter Pan is a girl. Maybe because that's Wendy, not Peter Pan. Just because the comic is stupid doesn't mean you have to be.
- I thought your nemesis was Dominic Deegan....
- Hey, wait, are you seriously asserting that the art in Order of the Stick is bad? No, he's not. Read more closely. "[...] these good writers understand the limitations of their art, some even having chosen these limitations, and make up for it by actually knowing things about panel composition and timing. [...]" And to paraphrase, people who don't know this yet hope to be the next OotS are generally failures. I can't blame you for missing this one, though—it's a bit hard to understand, buried within two huge run-on sentences as it is. To Ted, if he hasn't decided to flee the comments section ala Solomon: I'm glad you decided to keep things short. Much better than the tl;dr ramblefest that your first one was. But I advise you to read more of your work to yourself to avoid awkwardness.
- Isn't Wizard of Oz in public domain, too? And before you go assuming that Alice is the only one who's gotten the gothic treatment, need I remind you all of Todd McFarlane's Twisted World of Oz?
- I remember this strip from when Eric "Websnark" Burns reviewed it: http://www.websnark.com/archives/2006/08/also_theres_a_g.html This was one of the many things that made me question why everyone was creaming themselves over Eric Burns when it is clear he has the worst taste in all things entertainment. And when he happens to like something that I like (usually for the wrong reasons), it almost kills it for me.
- That link came out bad. archives/2006/08/also_theres_a_g.html should follow websnark.com
- Hey, wait, are you seriously asserting that the art in Order of the Stick is bad? That's not how I read it at all. I read it that retard wannabes go "adurrrr OotS has a simple art style so I can put up horrible stick figures and be a webcomic star too" while failing to notice that Rich Burlew is actually rather proficient within his chosen medium, and a good story-and-joke teller too. I would be very surprised to see Order of the Stick appear in this blog, even on the strength of art alone.
- Re Frankenstein: And I think you're still missing a lot of the nuances of the story. The monster--who has no name, and is really just 'the monster'-- initially wanted to have a place in society, wanted to be a part of the world that he had been thrust into. He was completely rejected, and turned almost immediately murderous, with no remorse and no real desire for redemption. Frankenstein, on the other hand, is a complete puss. Really. Read the book. He creates this subhuman creature, has a little panic attack about it, and then completely abandons him and never mentions him again to anyone. His greatest hope is that the monster will just disappear. When the monster does reappear and starts killing off his family he... well, he has another little panic attack. And faints. Three times. Oh, and cries. He doesn't actually DO anything about it, though, until his wife is killed. Oh, then he's going to hunt the monster down and kill it. But first, he's going to faint again... I hate Frankenstein, and I kept hoping the monster would bash his head in. Anyway, it's still a more interesting story than the 'bolts in the neck-mad scientist' Frankenstein people keep pooing out. Oh, and I'd like to third the notion that he's saying that people THINK of OoTS's art as being simplistic, and so assume that they can get away with being ironically simplistic, without realizing that OoTS has a great understanding of a lot of the comic world. Just... with stick figures.
- I thought your nemesis was Dominic Deegan.... Deegan is John Solomon's nemesis. Pay attention to who wrote the review. You have terrible taste if you think this art is anything but shit. As a whole, yes, it's bad. I said a few individual panels look nice. And by that, I mean only when ripped completely out of context and not taken as part of a comic narrative.
- I remember this strip from when Eric "Websnark" Burns reviewed it: http://www.websnark.com/archives/2006/08/also_theres_a_g.html "Weir maintains Lost Girls is just Cheshire Crossing slashfic, since Cheshire Crossing came first." What. The. Fuck. Come on, I can't believe he could say something like this even in jest!
- I think you need to review this: http://www.tfsnewworld.com/index.php?date=20030130
- I feel Eric Burns is good at what he does...which is writing fruity, pretentious, over-thought essays about inane bullshit. When he gushes over a comic that's actually worth a darn, it's even more embarrasing. How could he actually look at THIS steaming pile and be impressed? Then I remember this is the guy who thinks mediocrities like Least I Could Do, Home on the Strange and Narbonic are worthy, the person who said about The Broken Mirror "This story is hard to read...It is hard to read in part because they're so good. You care about these characters. You care deeply for Galen, in the first chapter. You care because you recognize some of yourself in him. You believe him. You believe this story. And when horrific things happen you believe them too. You feel viscerally about them. You want to shield the eyes of others reading them, because this is going to fucking hurt. So. I don't know how I feel about this strip. I can't help but extol its brilliance. These two understand their medium desperately well. But I'm not sure my own fragile ego can take reading it on a regular basis. I might not be strong enough. So basically, if you're a big soppy-eyed nerdlinger, Cheshire Crossing might just be the thing for you.
- Doing what Alan Moore does, except doing it completely fucking retarded. Aping the art style of Disney's Kim Possible, except completely fucking retarded. There are not enough ditches in the world for these people to just go and lay down in.
- Ugh. I'm sick and tired of people giving classic children's stories the gothic/dark/emo treatment and FAILING. I love Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I also really like The Wizard of Oz and Peter Pan. They are great stories. I think it's cool when people do different adaptations of them, like American McGee's Alice (yes, Alice was gothed up, but I think it was done well) and Wicked. I didn't even think Lost Girls was bad. The art didn't impress me that much and the premise isn't really my bag, but it was at least well thought out. Shit like this just fucking sucks and should be outlawed. When I see tripe like Cheshire Crossing (I can't bring myself to actually read it, but I'm assuming it's like others I've read), I can't help but think "have these assholes actually read the original stories?". They just bank on the now-cliche "creepy little girl" idea because of the many retards who eat this stuff up, especially if the characters are given Gothic Lolita dresses. Oh, and don't forget their complete lack of knowledge about the Victorian Era.
- Yeah, the words "desperately well" really do sum up the work and life view of Mr. Eric Burns. The guy is just an embarassingly bad writer, and I have no idea why anyone pays the least amount of attention to him. Of course, last time I went by Websnark, he was still posting unreadable 20-paragraph essays about his throroughly unremarkable and uninteresting personal life. Does he actually even write about webcomics anymore? Not that I'm encouraging him to start again, mind you.
- When I read that Eric Burns review, I just imagine it in the voice of Hedonism Bot. A webcomic about an character abused in childhood? How deliciously absurd!
- It has been said on this blog several times: Good writing can save bad art. And every time, it makes absolutely no sense. How can good writing possibly save bad art? How can it overcome always being crudely depicted? Do you believe writing is all dialogue? Of course, since the number of webcomics with good art is limited to... one, what you guys are really saying is that comics with bad art can be good through their (still bad, as you can't have good comic writing without good art) writing in comparison to other comics with bad art.
- Ideally, a comic should do what it's supposed to do. If a comic is supposed to "WOW" people with good art, then it should have good art. If a comic is supposed to be funny, then it should make me laugh. If a webcomic makes me laugh, then I could care less if its art isn't quite up to par. (The only exceptions would be if the art is somehow intrusive to the enjoyment of the comic, ie, being too dark to see the panels or too jumbled to tell what's going on, or character designs that are so hideous they make me nauseus to look at - of course, anything that I can't look at isn't going to make me laugh anyway.) Ideally, a great comic could have both great art and writing, but that's kind of like expecting every movie to be Citizen Kane. Things like that are going to be rare and special. Another issue is what defines good writing. (I've brought this up on other blogs before, this is probably the only one where it has a chance of not being ignored in favor of harping on a typo.) Writing is something that takes time, practice, and maturity to get good at. I am suspicious that many webcomic authors are not people who have been writing for years and years, but rather the comic you see is the first thing outside of highschool writing projects that they've done. Problem is that there really is no motivation to ever mature or improve when anything and everything that's put into webcomic form is immediately considered a "sacred cow" immune from all criticism by the mysterious droves of followers these things attract.
- I find it amazing no one has mentioned Casey and Andy, Andy Weir's first comic. The art was marginally better, and it was much better written, though it focused more on gag a day rather than long term plots. I found it quite baffling that he decided to drop it and start cheshire crossing, which I couldn't stand from day 1.
- you can't have good comic writing without good art This is a ridiculous statement. Achewood has art that is just barely adequate (and sometimes not even that), but it succeeds creatively because Chris Onstad is an exceedingly gifted writer who knows how to create deep, well-rounded characters with distinct voices. Dilbert and The Far Side are both pretty shitty to look at, but does it matter? Would either one be any funnier if their respective artists had a better grasp of anatomy, shading and perspective? Doonesbury's early years were saddled with artwork that barely rose above the level of chicken scratchings, and it only won Trudeau a fucking Pulitzer... but hey, that's just the opinion of respected professionals in the field and not Some Guy on the Internet, so what does that prove anyway? To say you can't have good comic writing without good art is nonsensical, and no more true than the inverse would be. I shouldn't even have to point out that the history of comics is LITTERED with works that sport terrific artwork and irredeemably bad writing. People are still going to remember Achewood fondly twenty years from now and still retain vivid memories of its characters and storylines, and it will have nothing to do with the fact that the strip looks like it's drawn on the back of index cards.
- If a comic is supposed to be funny, then it should make me laugh. And art affects humor. You've never read a speech bubble first and looked at the art and only then laugh at a joke? No matter how good your jokes are, you're going to struggle with making your readers laugh if all you can draw is B^U. Ideally, a great comic could have both great art and writing, but that's kind of like expecting every movie to be Citizen Kane. Things like that are going to be rare and special. No, that's kind of like expecting a movie to have a competent script and competent directing. Being well-made is not an incredible thing outside of comics and cartoons.
- Achewood has art that is just barely adequate (and sometimes not even that), but it succeeds creatively because Chris Onstad is an exceedingly gifted writer who knows how to create deep, well-rounded characters with distinct voices. Again, webcomics, with the exception of ONE, have terrible art. Achewood is considered good in comparison to other webcomics, which tend to have even worse art than it. Would either one be any funnier if their respective artists had a better grasp of anatomy, shading and perspective? Do you believe these are the things that decide good comic art? Doonesbury's early years were saddled with artwork that barely rose above the level of chicken scratchings, and it only won Trudeau a fucking Pulitzer... but hey, that's just the opinion of respected professionals in the field and not Some Guy on the Internet, so what does that prove anyway? Modern newspaper comics, like webcomics, have near-universally terrible art. A comic with mediocre art winning an award in such an environment is not an impressive thing. To say you can't have good comic writing without good art is nonsensical Yes, it's NONSENSICAL to say that visuals, and the ability to depict said visuals, have any bearing on writing. Again, is writing all dialogue to you? I shouldn't even have to point out that the history of comics is LITTERED with works that sport terrific artwork and irredeemably bad writing. No, it isn't. Just having great art is rare enough in comics. Great art paired with terrible writing is extremely rare.
- This is definitely a case where better art might help...but damn if CC isn't some of the most pretentious dung I've ever read, webcomic-wise. Another artist, a capable one could probably make things look better but nothing can be done for the writing. It's almost as if ol' Andy is so taken with the premise of his work that he thinks it's "uniqueness" is enough to coast by on, like the art is really good enough, with the women with freakishly narrow waists and all. And of course, that it's a po-mo take on Victorian era children's stories is more than enough to satisfy some of the fans. Never mind the overall quality. Oh and by the way: http://www.websnark.com/archives/2007/03/this_may_be_the.html Burns' full fruity-ass review of TBM. OH HE MENTIONS A CONCEPT FROM AN RPG WHAT A SHOCK
- this_may_be_the.html, that is, dammit I'ma big dumb.
- No, that's kind of like expecting a movie to have a competent script and competent directing. You mean "great" script and "great" directing. There are a lot of webcomics out there with "competent" art. There are a lot of movies out there that are "competent"ly made. Don't confuse the two adjectives, or imply that "great" comics are only equivalent to "competent" movies. Do you believe these are the things that decide good comic art? Well, shoot. Maybe this is my ignorance talking, but you've stumped me, sir/ma'am. Since you've implied with your question that good anatomy, shading and perspective don't decide good comic art, and you've opposed elo's "if the art is able to express the creator's original intent and doesn't keep the audience from enjoying the work"—what decides good comic art to you? And I don't get what point you're trying to prove by asking the question "Is writing all dialogue to you?" Are you saying that the art is somehow also...writing? Granted, lettering is an art all its own, and one that could generally do with a lot of improvement across the internet. But 'lettering' is not included in this blog's definition of 'writing', so...
- Oh boy, another snotty elitist who's just SO above it all. I think I will abstain from arguing with it any further and spare myself the fuckin' grief.
- You mean "great" script and "great" directing. There are a lot of webcomics out there with "competent" art. No, there aren't. There is precisely one. What's your idea of a webcomic with competent art? Well, shoot. Maybe this is my ignorance talking, but you've stumped me, sir/ma'am. Since you've implied with your question that good anatomy, shading and perspective don't decide good comic art, and you've opposed elo's "if the art is able to express the creator's original intent and doesn't keep the audience from enjoying the work"—what decides good comic art to you? Facial expression, acting, poses, atmosphere... Things like anatomy are obviously important, but they aren't the only important things in comics like people who think comics with bad art can have good writing seem to think. They think comics like Order of the Stick are just "simple" when the guy who draws it can't draw more than one facial expression and can't even move stick figures well. And I don't get what point you're trying to prove by asking the question "Is writing all dialogue to you?" Are you saying that the art is somehow also...writing? ...Yes? Visuals are written? Basically, by saying comics with bad art can have good writing, you're saying that novels that describe things terribly can have good writing.
- Oh boy, another snotty elitist who's just SO above it all. I think I will abstain from arguing with it any further and spare myself the fuckin' grief. Yes, I'm a snotty elitist because... I argued my point logically. You could just say that you have no counter-argument, you know.
- There is precisely one. Which one is that, anyway?
- None that you're likely to listen to, since your mind is clearly made up already. Try not to be so god damned satisfied with yourself for being a garden-variety snob.
- Which one is that, anyway? PBF. I suppose Lackadaisy as well. I forgot about it.
- I explained my feelings on this subject of the interrelation of art and writing in comics many many blog entries ago. It seems relevant, so I'll restate the short version here. There are three levels at which art can function in a comic. Level 1: The art does not interfere with the telling of the story. Things look like what they're supposed to be. Panel layouts can be followed without the aid of arrows. People can read this comic and know what's going on. Level 2: The art enhances the telling of the story. Style is appropriate to tone of the story. Layout and expressions incite a visceral reader reaction beyond what's being described. The comic is now capable of succeeding at "show, don't tell." Level 3: The art transcends what is merely necessary to the comic and can be admired on its own merits. The artist's style is unmistakably original, character designs are highly varied within the style chosen, great care is put into backgrounds. If you are looking at things this way, it is obvious that art (at least, as it relates to comics) can only ever be as good as the writing behind it. After all, how can the style be appropriate to the tone if the writing isn't sophisticated enough to have a tone? How can character designs be effective if all the characters are shallow? Art can still be pretty and make you want to look at it even if the writing is crap, but it does not make the comic itself succeed at being a good comic.
- What's your idea of a webcomic with competent art? Since it's open in another tab, I'll say Nobody Scores. Special bonus because he has some of the nicest lettering I've seen in an online comic. The problem is that you are using an extremely broad definition of the word 'writing'. If you want to keep thinking of it that way, fine—but here is what the rest of the world says. Writing is text. To take a snippet from the OED, "a sequence of letters or symbols forming coherent words." This means that not even the way those words are laid out upon the page has anything to do with a comic's writing—even though the medium is extremely visual. A comic can have bad art. Just because the pictures can (and should) tell a story, the quality of those pictures has nothing to do with its writing. Pacing? Yes. Descriptiveness? Certainly. Not writing. A comic can have bad writing. This is what's in the dialogue bubbles and text boxes. (Unless the comic has no words, in which case it has no writing.) It still has pacing, planning, and a lot of the other elements encompassed in what you like to call 'writing'.
- I think good solid planning, plot development, pacing, dialogue, page construction and character description can make up for mediocre art. The above are usually associated with the "writing" aspect of comic-making. It's not just dialogue; there's plenty of things that involve the left side of the brain. I think the argument turns out mostly to be that if the medium involved is too mediocre - or worse - then the important aspects of this "writing" can not take advantage of itself and deliver to its audience. So perhaps "good writing can excuse bad art" can be rephrased as "good development can still succeed through a less than stellar medium", which would then make its opposite "good development cannot succeed through an unsuitable quality medium". ---- Just in case Ted's reading these, just want you to know that I look forward to your posts a lot. Keep up the good work!
- I'm pretty sure Calvin and Hobbes is an excellent example of average art and tremendous writing. Just throwing that one out there. And who the fuck would buy those shitty McFarlene figures anyways? They look so ridiculous and retarded.
- Out of curiosity, what do you think of the art of Octopus Pie? Horribleville? Rice Boy? Lucid TV? Dr. McNinja? Is the art in these 'competent' enough for you or is there some fatal flaw that makes any of them bad? And no, writing is not all dialogue to me or else the first paragraph of this review would have gone different. Writing comics also requires you to know how to convey timing, detail, and expression through the visual half, and more. But a comic can do these things with purposefully simple visuals, though granted some comics are hampered by it. For the record I think that The Order of the Stick is hampered by it, but not enough to lessen the story or make it not a good comic. And in some cases the writing is so that conveying detail and expression don't even need to be done, though such examples tend to be non-traditional. Again, the example of Achewood has come up. Is it really hampered at all by its visuals?
- And before you go assuming that Alice is the only one who's gotten the gothic treatment, need I remind you all of Todd McFarlane's Twisted World of Oz? UGH I had never heard of this, and now I will never be able to un-see it. Fuck you, tehkou. Fuck you hard.
- For anybody looking for a webcomic that really can stand on the strength of its art alone, check out Perfect Stars oh god so beautiful
- not to say that its writing isn't great! because its writing is great!
- And art affects humor. You've never read a speech bubble first and looked at the art and only then laugh at a joke? Art can definitely affect humor. That isn't what I'm saying at all. But let me ask you this - have you ever read any WRITTEN work that has no pictures at all and laughed at anything? I realize that's sort of going off-subject a bit, but part of the reason I became interested in this blog is because I've been arguing against people for years who seem to think you can take any unfunny joke and put it in a webcomic and suddenly is LOLarious because there's A FACIAL EXPRESSION that goes along with it, and oh yeah, it's now superior to any form of written work ever. No matter how good your jokes are, you're going to struggle with making your readers laugh if all you can draw is B^U. Of course not! In fact, improper use of facial expressions can suck the humor right out of something. (Read the entry on VGcats for one example.) For another, this is an example I brought up on another forum: 1. Dominic Deegan Comic 2. Dominic Durgan Rewrite I actually think the rewrite makes more sense. In the original, the look on Dominic's face in the second panel suggests to me that he's either disgusted at the idea of the cat being afraid of a mouse, or he doesn't believe the cat saw a mouse. In either case, popping immediately to "OMG! MOUSE!" in the third panel seems unlikely and forced just for the sake of having a punchline. In the rewrite, I can kind of imagine the suggested thought going through his mind with that expression. No, that's kind of like expecting a movie to have a competent script and competent directing. So you'd say Citizen Kane is only just "competent" and there are lots of examples of movies that are at that level or greater? Being well-made is not an incredible thing outside of comics and cartoons. And I never once suggested that. I said that those do exist, but they're rare. Someone mentioned Calvin & Hobbes as being a great comic with average art, but I actually do think that comic had great art, and Charles Schulz agreed as per the foreward in one of the books. Bill Waterson could even draw competently in several different styles, like in the fantasy sequences where Calvin would imagine himself as a dinosaur, or the one where Calvin and Susy Derkins were pretending to be doctors.
- Bill Watterson isn't the greatest example because he was actually a brilliant illustrator, and just chose to use a simpler format for his strips. It comes out so clearly in his works with Spaceman Spiff and all the other imaginative personas Calvin would take on. The idea still stands, though, that comics are ideally tied to one another in support, and both may still hold up even if one leg of the concept is a bit lacking. You know what's a good example of good writing with mediocre art? Cough it up to taste, but Pictures for Sad Children has some really good writing But the artist himself can't really draw beyond the realm that's shown here. It's certainly an acceptable medium though, because he doesn't need much more than the representations of voices to make his points.
- huh. That middle paragraph's a little.... vague. At best. "The idea still stands, though, that writing and art in comics are ideally tied to one another in support, and both may still hold up even if one leg of the concept is a bit lacking."
- That's the thing about being a competent comic artist--realizing that a joke has to be inherently funny before you apply facial expressions to it. I have the same problem with the "OMG wacky!" webcomics out there; they seem to think that having a drawing attached to their wackiness somehow makes it the HEIGHT of comic brilliance. I blame Monty Python and Eddie Izzard. Srsly. They were/are wacky with a purpose and a message--I'm going to hesitantly describe the Pythons as the first to do this--and they've raised a *few* generations of people who think that putting a hat on a dinosaur is soooo funny because it makes no sense. "Raaar!" says the dinosaur with the hat. "I have hemorrhoids!" and the little comic creator shits themself, thinking that they have reached the pinnacle of humour. So... complete wackiness doesn't equal funny in the same way that visuals attached to a bad joke doesn't equal funny. Is what I'm saying.
- Goddamn there's some odd comics out there.
- Hey, look at Dinosaur Comic. North has been using the same panel for four years, and people still come back and laugh. But, the pixel art is decent, and as above, Dilbert and Archewood have mediocre art, but they still make people laugh. In this case, writing sucks and so does the art, a one-two punch. The premise is good, but... Jesus.
- Thanks for t'link to Pictures for Sad Children, raz, looks like I've got another comic to add to my reading list. Seems a bit like Achewood, if Roast Beef were the only character. And very good.
- You guys just don't *GET* it, maaan This comic is a genius collage of subtly camouflaged social criticism about important subject matters like mary p...poppins
- I don't wanna turn this into a "Frankenstein!" debate... ... But Frankenstein was not a wuss. He's a "wuss" if you compare him to modern protagonists - the ones who, when faced with a giant monster, will take out a shot-gun, flip side-ways in slow-motion, kick an exploding barrel in the monster's direction, then walk away heroically from the ensuing fireball. Back when Frankenstein was written, though? They didn't do that junk. Back then, monsters were scary - and a realistic protagonist was supposed to treat them as such. What was he supposed to do, anyway? The monster is physically stronger, faster, but still manages to be stealthy. He can't find the monster, unless the monster wants him to. There was no way a rational human being would even think of fighting it - and he didn't, so long as he was rational. Calling him a wuss because he is justifiably scared of a genuinely frightening creature, during a period where such fear was commonplace, and even natural is stupid - and reeks of the sort of modern machoism that comes from being exposed to movies and books where the hero isn't "brave" unless he can take on an enemy army and win. The original point of Frankenstein is that is was a monster. Yes, it was the folly of man to make it - it was the folly of man that they could not accept it - but to expect them to react different to the creature is dumb. The response to it was universally human. It didn't meet a minority of meanies and cowards. Things wouldn't have been different if it had been made by Brave McDaring, and the family it came to turned out to be "good people". The human response to it was natural - which is the entire friggin' tragedy of it. The fault is with humans - not with individual characters. The individual characters act as expected - and most of them are genuinely good people. The Monster himself knew that Frankenstein was a good (nay, great) person. It still did what it did. It regretted it profoundly - but it still did it - because it, too, was human. Calling people in older fiction "wusses" for showing fear in the face of the terrible and unnatural is dumb.
- But let me ask you this - have you ever read any WRITTEN work that has no pictures at all and laughed at anything? Yes. But novel humor tends to be much different from comic humor. And just because another medium can't take advantage of something doesn't mean we shouldn't in a medium where we can. Of course not! In fact, improper use of facial expressions can suck the humor right out of something. (Read the entry on VGcats for one example.) Except VGCats' facial expressions are bad. They're minor variations on anime cliches. It's like saying "Of course natural dialogue isn't a good thing! Just look at The Broken Mirror!" So you'd say Citizen Kane is only just "competent" and there are lots of examples of movies that are at that level or greater? No, I'd say competent art and writing in comics is equivalent to competent directing and writing in movies. Not Citizen Kane. And I never once suggested that. I said that those do exist, but they're rare. And why should well-made comics be rare?
- Anonymous, I think you misread the bit about VGcats...
- ! I take some small umbrage with the fact that you're insisting that my opinions are stupid... but I've had a horrible day, so that's not really surprising. Allow me to elucidate what I was attempting to say about Herr Doktor. Yes, I will admit that I pick on him for doing things like crying and fainting--things that, given the situation, are very much within the realm of realistic reactions--but I don't feel he's a wimp because of those things. Rather, I felt that he was a wimp and those reactions only furthered my opinion. I question him and his reactions during the entire story because he created a very large mess and refused to do anything about until he had been shown that Very Bad Things were going to happen. To be frank, I agree with the monster's side of things--it was a terrible thing to create a being, and then abandon it to it's fate, alone and afraid. I feel that the monster turned to murder only because he felt that he had no other recourse, because Frankenstein had left him with nothing else. I'm not saying that Frankenstein should have created another companion... but it was certainly his doing that created the monster, and certainly his doing that his creation was abandoned, alone and friendless. He has *no sympathy* until the time when he is adversely affected... and even then, the death of his own brother wasn't enough to sway him. He put his newlywed wife in a very foreseeable danger, and then cried foul when that danger occurred. I call him a wimp because he had it within his power to do something about the mess he had created--even if it meant accepting the monster, and giving it the human affection it craved--and he didn't. And when the monster reacted, it somehow still wasn't Frankenstein's fault. I guess that's point I'm trying to make with my tl;dr post here. I find Frankenstein to be gutless because he was unwilling, at several crucial junctures, to take some responsibilities towards righting his wrongs, and I call him a wimp because I feel sympathetic towards the monster, who was only as good as he had learned to be. I haven't (I hope) watched too many modern movies to be swayed by the pumped up action hero. Rather, I've been immersed in a sea of early writings over the past year or so (and even my whole life, really. I love Dame Christie and Sir Doyle) and even within the context of the time period, I question Frankenstein's reactions. Heh, I do commend you on getting through my post, however. I have a bad habit of using 10 words where 1 suffices.
- --I'm going to hesitantly describe the Pythons as the first to do this-- Whenever you see this phrase, you can usually respond to it with "except for the Goons" and be right, whatever the context.
- The Goons was fucking awesome. Monty Python was, too, but everyone's seen that already. Anyone who enjoys Python but has never heard Goons should do so ASAP.
- I was going to say something about Lost Girls, but I see now that it's been said already. And I don't really have anything to say about the comic except that it's embarrassingly awful. So I'll just go ahead and recommend that people read Lost Girls, becaus it's fucking amazing.
- A comic can have bad writing. This is what's in the dialogue bubbles and text boxes. (Unless the comic has no words, in which case it has no writing.) It still has pacing, planning, and a lot of the other elements encompassed in what you like to call 'writing'. What? No, you're wrong. The "writing" of a comic is like the "writing" of a movie, and is everything in the script: dialogue, stage directions, etc. The "art" of a comic is the translation of that into a comic strip. In a strip with a separate writer and artist, the writer will ordinarily write out what happens and hand it off to the artist, who draws it. This is similar to a comic book writer, who is the person who plots out what happens. Since Alan Moore has been brought up in this thread, here's a link to his script for The Killing Joke. Note how he describes everything that happens in the comic. He's ridiculously verbose, but you get the idea: the Writer is responsible for far more than just the words that appear. I think you're thinking of "lettering".
- Will you just shut up already? Where do you get off thinking anybody gives a crap about what you think? Do you have any idea how wrong you are? I mean where do you get your facts? Some blog "written" by a fat, out-of-work drunk living in a FEMA-condemned hovel with a toaster oven and a microwave who can't shit two words together and steals Internet access from the KFC down the street? Debunking your points are almost not even worth the effort, but, well, fuck it. One Google search and three minutes later and I prove you wrong Here, Here, and Here. In fact, I've already taken you to the shed myself. So don't even go there. Honestly, reading your junk turns my stomach. You come off like a spoiled Italian Tour Guide with bad shoes, spouting off nonsense like a broken sprinkler without the good sense to avail yourself of a Slip 'N Slide. Do you actually believe the bowel movements you churn out? Like that one about how we all just need to look at the problem like you do? As if you are looking at anything other than a collage of miasma. You remind me of a Speak 'N Spell on low battery power, you WANT to make a point, you TRY to make a point, but you just.. don't.. have.. the.. ability. I'd openly mock you, but I'm busy eating my couscous. You know what your problem is? You think you're not a total, fucking idiot. But you are. Everything you say, everything you write just proves, again and again, what a total blowhole you are. And don't get me started on your little pet theory. I mean I've banged my head against substances smarter than that. I've crapped ideas with more intellect than that one. My pet ferret has humped random water dispensers with more brains than you. Still, I have to give credit where credit is due. So guess I don't have to give you any credit. I mean your most ridiculously obvious grand point has been done to death, proven wrong time and again, and turned into a late night skit featuring Jack Black and Howie Mandel. Why do you even bother? God, I clicked over with the same eagerness you get when you pass an accident. You KNOW there are gonna be bodies, but you HAVE to look, because you just don't see TRIPE like this every day. I want to take a moment to point out one specific instance of idiocy in your grand opus of stupidity. While making your larger point, you sited that one example. Well first, that guy's a raving cock-twit, and he has about as much credibility as Jack Palance on Viagra. Second, if you really look at the facts (novel concept for you, I know) you'll see that only a total reamer like yourself would come to your conclusion. I mean the numbers just don't support your hopeless case. They friggin' REFUTE it! HOW DUMB ARE YOU? I've probably made you cry by now. I don't care. You should cry. Cry forgiveness for the 2 minutes and 37 seconds I spent reading your literary sewage that I'll never get back. It's a part of my life you stole, you rat bastard. I hope you're happy. Actually no, I hope you choke on your dog's penis and drown. Except that might be cruel to the dog. Thanks for reading.
- That last Anonymous post was the most fantastic thing all day. You just don't often get to see that kind of crazy in your ordinary day-to-day course of doin' things.
- That last Anonymous post was the most fantastic thing all day. You just don't often get to see that kind of crazy in your ordinary day-to-day course of doin' things. I think it was a copypasta. I skimmed it, but it looks like nowhere in there does it actually say who or what it's taking about. It's just solid, random, ambiguous insults.
- It's almost definitely a copypasta, since two of the three links provided (the only two I clicked on) took me to pages about Atlantis and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Umm... interesting, assuredly, but somehow completely irrelevant to any of the discussions at hand. So! Oh, and I feel like a mighty twit for not knowing about the Goons. Thanks Richard!
- I hope you choke on your dog's penis and drown. Except that might be cruel to the dog. Ha! The joke's on you! THIS ISN'T MY DOG! ...seriously, WTF? That came out of nowhere, was directed at no one in particular, and made little sense. It seems to be some sort of generic mash-up of the usual put-downs of someone else's post, which is kind of funny, I guess, but this is a place where we encourage SPECIFIC put-downs and reasoning behind them. Doesn't seem to have much place here, and is too long for most of us to bother reading. Copypasta, tl;dr, etc. richard: Thanks for mentioning the Goon show, I'd never heard of it before. I'm listening to it now and laughing my ass off.
- *shudders* There are no words to describe how utterly craptastical this comic is. Well, the ones in the review are damned accurate, but . . . just, ugh. I honestly thought the link to the melting nanny page was supposed to be the funny one until I went back and read a bit - which, by the way, nearly made my poor brain explode. WHERE are the backstories? The actual depth to any character? I mean, this premise and even the setup could concievably be done well if there was any fleshing out done at all. Maybe if we knew anything beyond "Alice = bitchy heroine," "Wendy = gung-ho / clueless heroine" and "Dorothy = round-out heroine," we'd actually give a damn about what they're doing. It's like somebody set the pacing for warp and the "voice" factor on shallow, then drew mindless squiggles on Paint and slapped it onto a page. For Christssakes, my seven-year-old niece saw the page open in my browser and laughed her ass off. That said, I love the blog. Would add something else intelligent, but it's 3am, and this steaming idiocy has sapped what's left of my brain.
- WHERE are the backstories? In the Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan. He chose three characters he didn't have to write a backstory for!
- @Mike: Unfortunately, he also didn't bother to read any of the said backstories, because I'll be surprised if Alice is ever shown to be Gothic. Or black-haired, even. (She's blonde.) Seriously, does the 'World's Laziest Cartoonist' even expect anyone not to call him out on exactly HOW lazy he was?
- I'm surprised this is JUST about the art. The writing and I'm sorry, the premise as well, are hidious. The idea behind it sounds like somthing that a fat/goth/emo/weeaboo 14 year old girl would find interesting. And to see this comes from a 20+ year old male is just disturbing. Leave the classics alone. Don't screw them up.
- The more I think about this thing, the more it feels like a pale ripoff of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, as opposed to Lost Girls.
- I'm surprised this is JUST about the art. The writing and I'm sorry, the premise as well, are hidious. That's what we're here for. It's interactive comedy.
- It turns out that Powerup Comics has more crossed arms than Cheshire Crossing, but not by much,
- Wow, this comic is great! The first time I saw Kim Possible I thought, "I like this, but it could do with less effort and an even more horrifically overused setting." And here it finally is!
- it sucks
- When I heard the premise for "Cheshire Crossing" I thought, yikes, guys, that's been done already in alan moore's 'the lost girls' and also in 'fables' 2 hugely successful books with great art and writing. honestly, why even bother? I reprimanded myself and remembered to always keep an open mind, after all, if I hadn't, then I would never have discovered "Dr. Mcninja" "8-bit theatre" or "head trip" 3 of the greatest of that very rare creature known as the good webcomic. so I steeled myself to view the horrible sight that awaited me and clicked the first embedded link in your hilarious review. damn.It's so much worse than I thought. what the hell is the deal with alice having black hair? is this guy channeling frank beddor's Alyss Heart? because if he is, then I totally have to kill him. it is bad, bad, bad, bad art. I think that the story is pretty decent actually (from what I've seen) and could benefit from someone who not only actually knew HOW to draw, but actually knew TO draw in the first place instead of using stupid MS paint. blah... the absolute best part was this gem here: "...the visual equivalent of a freshly-reanimated frankenstein trying to mimic its master's speech, its black, swollen tongue rotting in its mouth as it stumbles over the syllables, ultimately resulting in an inhuman, disharmonious wail that somehow reminds all of its listeners of their own terrifying mortality..." that is about the most awesome damn thing I've ever read. would it be cool if I used that quote in the book I'm writing this summer? love the blog, and stay cynical! -dearly devoted fan, BoyGenius 1991
- John Solomon is Charlie Brooker.
