It may be my own highly cynical nature that makes me wary of anything that incorporates an exclamation mark into its title, or it may be the fact that history has proven time and again that anything that incorporates an exclamation mark into its title is either Airplane! or utter shit. Since Zap! is what I'm looking at today, that kinda narrows down the choices.
Formerly Zap! in Space!, which had twice the exclamation marks and therefore was a better title for warning people about its content, Zap! started off with that strange kind of art where you're unsure whether it was done in MSPaint or not. It probably was. But hey, look at it these days! It's polished, professional and practically pleasant to look at. What a pity that is literally the only positive thing it has going for it.
Being able to draw something nice is negated when you've drawn something that's also stupid, then made it do stupid things and capped it all off with some stupid words coming out of its stupid mouth. Practical knowledge of anatomy and perspective is utterly worthless when you're putting it into drawing pictures of eight-dicked anthropomorphic tigers shitting into the mouths of anthropomorphic dragon-dolphin hybrids wearing diapers. Fuckin' Shakespeare could have written an epic play about two households, both alike in flatulence, and no matter how flowery the language, no matter how clever the wit, it'd still be three fucking hours of fart jokes.
Zap! is neither furry porn nor fart jokes, although that might at least have gotten it a larger audience. It's still just the same kind of colossal waste of space, however. What little plot it has is lifted right out of the collective Japanese cultural subconscious and transplanted without any alteration whatsoever. Check this: the main character, Zap, has amnesia. Not only that, but he's got spiky blond hair and a mysterious mystery villain/nemesis who used to be his friend and has long, effeminate hair.
For those of you thinking "Hey, wait, isn't this Final Fantasy 7?" you are entirely correct but no sweat brah it's all cool because instead of ridiculous-looking swords they have psychic powers that manifest as glowy shit - and sometimes guns. Space-guns. In space! But you know, it's actually not quite as horribly stereotypical as you might gather from that link - no, it's worse. The ridiculous space-crew (in space!) that Mr. Zap seems to be rolling with for the purposes of exploring this cliché plot - pointlessly, because you know how it's going to end since it's just that cliché - comprises of Sassy Intellectual Robot, Big Furry Strong Guy, Beautiful But Jaded Female Love Interest and Spunky Tomboy Engineer Girl. Combine that with Zap being Hero With Powers He Never Knew then by God I think we're so deep in cliché territory that I can barely breathe due to the overwhelming unoriginality.
Zap! Is! Shit! That's all you need to know. There's nothing about it that isn't shit. In fact the only entertainment value you're likely to get out of this crap is how laughable it is. For example, there's a character who's a feline alien - that is, a catgirl. She's on the villain's side and acts pretty much exactly how you'd expect "villainous catgirl" to act, just a lot more dull. But the best part is that she sports the most retarded wardrobe I've ever seen in a webcomic. She wears an ass-cape. That's a cape. For her ass. While I'm sure Tetsuya Nomura is furiously jackin' it to that very concept, us normal human beings have to go "What the Hell, an ass-cape?" The rest of the cast all wear varying degrees of ridiculousness, but the chick with curtains covering her backside wins by a mile.
But, besides a monotonous re-hashing of FF7's plot as enacted by a group of badly-dressed mongoloid circus freaks, what can you - the humble reader - expect from this piece of shit? The answer is nothing, absolutely nothing whatsoever. Any moment of action feels like a mundane cutscene, any moment of drama feels like a mundane cutscene, everything just feels like one fucking never-ending cutscene. Which means it succeeds at being exactly like FF7, I suppose, but it accomplishes nothing else. The characters are so mired in their stereotypes they're actually capable of irritating the fuck out of you with how scripted their behaviour is. Every move they make is telegraphed painfully, you know what they'll do before they do it because the stock character is burned into your mind. You cannot empathise with them because they are just so fucking cliché. Being able to sum up the main character as "happy-go-lucky guy who is very powerful with his powerful power but he does not know it" is basically like barfing up the last three decades of shonen animé without the slightest trace of the originality that made 2% of those shows worth watching.
The writer or writers (I didn't bother to check how many people were involved, because I don't care) are utterly superfluous to this endeavour. There's no reveal, no mystery, you don't think "Oh my, I wonder what will happen!" You're basically reading Frankenstein's webcomic, sewn together from the mouldering clichés of existing plots and then brought to life with 1.21 gigawatts of blatant greed. That's all there is to Zap!, it's just a homogeneous front for Paypal donations. Find me one iota of creativity that went into making any part of it and I'll take back every word I said - a hollow promise, since it can't be done.
That's really quite the sad thing about Zap! - it's not repugnantly misogynistic, like Dominic Deegan or Shredded Moose. It's not devoted to creepy Internet fetishes, like El Goonish Shive or The Wotch. It's just overwhelmingly bland and tiresome, which makes it most like The Broken Mirror. There are differences - Zap! gives off an air of desperation, of "I want to be Japanese SO BADLY" instead of Broken Mirror's feculent stench of "I am a brilliant writer, all my cats tell me so". But any difference in the flavours doesn't change the fact that they're still bland peas in a pod.
I suggest you go read something that's more exciting and original than Zap!, like Ctrl+Alt+Del. Or, y'know, a good webcomic. They exist! They're out there! They're absolutely nothing like Zap!, of course, but that's the very reason why they're good.
Formerly Zap! in Space!, which had twice the exclamation marks and therefore was a better title for warning people about its content, Zap! started off with that strange kind of art where you're unsure whether it was done in MSPaint or not. It probably was. But hey, look at it these days! It's polished, professional and practically pleasant to look at. What a pity that is literally the only positive thing it has going for it.
Being able to draw something nice is negated when you've drawn something that's also stupid, then made it do stupid things and capped it all off with some stupid words coming out of its stupid mouth. Practical knowledge of anatomy and perspective is utterly worthless when you're putting it into drawing pictures of eight-dicked anthropomorphic tigers shitting into the mouths of anthropomorphic dragon-dolphin hybrids wearing diapers. Fuckin' Shakespeare could have written an epic play about two households, both alike in flatulence, and no matter how flowery the language, no matter how clever the wit, it'd still be three fucking hours of fart jokes.
Zap! is neither furry porn nor fart jokes, although that might at least have gotten it a larger audience. It's still just the same kind of colossal waste of space, however. What little plot it has is lifted right out of the collective Japanese cultural subconscious and transplanted without any alteration whatsoever. Check this: the main character, Zap, has amnesia. Not only that, but he's got spiky blond hair and a mysterious mystery villain/nemesis who used to be his friend and has long, effeminate hair.
For those of you thinking "Hey, wait, isn't this Final Fantasy 7?" you are entirely correct but no sweat brah it's all cool because instead of ridiculous-looking swords they have psychic powers that manifest as glowy shit - and sometimes guns. Space-guns. In space! But you know, it's actually not quite as horribly stereotypical as you might gather from that link - no, it's worse. The ridiculous space-crew (in space!) that Mr. Zap seems to be rolling with for the purposes of exploring this cliché plot - pointlessly, because you know how it's going to end since it's just that cliché - comprises of Sassy Intellectual Robot, Big Furry Strong Guy, Beautiful But Jaded Female Love Interest and Spunky Tomboy Engineer Girl. Combine that with Zap being Hero With Powers He Never Knew then by God I think we're so deep in cliché territory that I can barely breathe due to the overwhelming unoriginality.
Zap! Is! Shit! That's all you need to know. There's nothing about it that isn't shit. In fact the only entertainment value you're likely to get out of this crap is how laughable it is. For example, there's a character who's a feline alien - that is, a catgirl. She's on the villain's side and acts pretty much exactly how you'd expect "villainous catgirl" to act, just a lot more dull. But the best part is that she sports the most retarded wardrobe I've ever seen in a webcomic. She wears an ass-cape. That's a cape. For her ass. While I'm sure Tetsuya Nomura is furiously jackin' it to that very concept, us normal human beings have to go "What the Hell, an ass-cape?" The rest of the cast all wear varying degrees of ridiculousness, but the chick with curtains covering her backside wins by a mile.
But, besides a monotonous re-hashing of FF7's plot as enacted by a group of badly-dressed mongoloid circus freaks, what can you - the humble reader - expect from this piece of shit? The answer is nothing, absolutely nothing whatsoever. Any moment of action feels like a mundane cutscene, any moment of drama feels like a mundane cutscene, everything just feels like one fucking never-ending cutscene. Which means it succeeds at being exactly like FF7, I suppose, but it accomplishes nothing else. The characters are so mired in their stereotypes they're actually capable of irritating the fuck out of you with how scripted their behaviour is. Every move they make is telegraphed painfully, you know what they'll do before they do it because the stock character is burned into your mind. You cannot empathise with them because they are just so fucking cliché. Being able to sum up the main character as "happy-go-lucky guy who is very powerful with his powerful power but he does not know it" is basically like barfing up the last three decades of shonen animé without the slightest trace of the originality that made 2% of those shows worth watching.
The writer or writers (I didn't bother to check how many people were involved, because I don't care) are utterly superfluous to this endeavour. There's no reveal, no mystery, you don't think "Oh my, I wonder what will happen!" You're basically reading Frankenstein's webcomic, sewn together from the mouldering clichés of existing plots and then brought to life with 1.21 gigawatts of blatant greed. That's all there is to Zap!, it's just a homogeneous front for Paypal donations. Find me one iota of creativity that went into making any part of it and I'll take back every word I said - a hollow promise, since it can't be done.
That's really quite the sad thing about Zap! - it's not repugnantly misogynistic, like Dominic Deegan or Shredded Moose. It's not devoted to creepy Internet fetishes, like El Goonish Shive or The Wotch. It's just overwhelmingly bland and tiresome, which makes it most like The Broken Mirror. There are differences - Zap! gives off an air of desperation, of "I want to be Japanese SO BADLY" instead of Broken Mirror's feculent stench of "I am a brilliant writer, all my cats tell me so". But any difference in the flavours doesn't change the fact that they're still bland peas in a pod.
I suggest you go read something that's more exciting and original than Zap!, like Ctrl+Alt+Del. Or, y'know, a good webcomic. They exist! They're out there! They're absolutely nothing like Zap!, of course, but that's the very reason why they're good.
37 comments:
- The thing that actually annoys me the most about Zap! is that it moves at about 4 panels per week, if we're lucky. The most recent update was 2 panels. I realize that it's a hobby and therefore the creators have outside responsibilities, but you can't tell me it took you a week to write and draw those two panels.
- The thing which annoys me the most is, as I said, the fact that it's so damn cliché. If the artist stopped having such a boner for ridiculously retarded character designs and the writer was exchanged for someone who could actually fucking write, then a good webcomic could be made. Well, maybe a passable webcomic. Let's not get carried away here. I can see how the low panel count could tick people off, too, but I personally don't see it. After all, I know exactly where the plot is going. It's not even telegraphed, it's like it's letting you read the script over its shoulder.
- Yeah, I can't exactly get worked up over the slow pace of a comic whose story is completely uninteresting anyway.
- Ass-cape, huh? What the hell were they thinking?
- Unlike most of the webcomics you've mauled, I actually read Zap! Thinking about it now, though, I don't actually know why. I ploughed through the archives one afternoon when I had nothing better to do and found it mildly diverting, and have kept up with it since.. until now. Reading your post prompted me to reassess why the hell I'm waiting for it to update every week, and I'm forced to conclude there's no damn reason at all.
- On the plus side, you can easily tell how it'll end (if it ever does (which isn't likely)) so you won't really miss anything.
- John Solomon: On the plus side, you can easily tell how it'll end (if it ever does (which isn't likely)) That reminds me of something: why is it most webcomics never fucking end? Why do they just keep going until they've become a convoluted mess and run everything that was once mildly amusing (and a lot of things that weren't) into the ground? Hasn't any webcomic jerk heard of quitting while you're ahead or at least, oh say I don't know, concluding a story?
- why is it most webcomics never fucking end? As ZP put it, "futile money spinning." If you sort through enough of the comments following the VG Cats review, there was some mention about Ransoomair contemplating quitting, then Solomon saying, "He'd be an idiot to kill his cash cow." I think it's mostly because these bad web comics have bad writing. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any of the reviews on this blog that trash the art and praise the writing (except maybe the comments concerning early Shortpacked.) As such, bad writing doesn't know how to stop, let alone how to end a story.
- They'll spend years mercilessly pummelling the shit out of a horse-shaped stain on the ground before daring to even contemplate ending their webcomic.
- That's pretty unfortunate. Several webcomics could benefit from ending. Sure, they could benefit more from not having existed in the first place, but ending isn't a bad second best since it's sort of impossible to unwrite a webcomic without a time machine.
- List of webcomics that have ended: Housd This Comic Sucks Concerned Bob and George Weird Comix Cartridge Comics (except then it started back up because they wanted to spite us) Monkey Business Uhhh... those are all the ones I know. Webcomics slated to end in the foreseeable future: Sluggy Freelance 8-Bit Theater, maybe? Probably not, since it was originally conceived as just a sprite comic, not specifically FF1.
- Okay, everyone's been saying it's completely predictable how Zap! will end because of how cookie cutter the characters and scenarios are. Any people here care to place their bets for a person not well-versed in sci-fi clichés? You won't be spoiling anything, because if it is really just a re-hashed and tired conclusion than only the writer is to blame! Also it could really get under their skin. The person who writes Order Of The Stick for example mentioned something to the effect of "Please don't say how you think things will happen, I don't like my plot being guessed and if my plot gets guessed I'll change my plot because I don't like people guessing my plot" and so far everything he's written has been fresh and original. It'd be a community service, guys.
- Kid Radd's another example of a webcomic that ended.
- Dear John Solomon, did you know that our beloved Elanor Cooper of the Broken Mirror fame had a crush on you? http://forums.comicgenesis.com /viewtopic.php?t=79807&postdays= 0&postorder=asc&start=40
- "Hasn't any webcomic jerk heard of quitting while you're ahead or at least, oh say I don't know, concluding a story?" Has any comic jerk heard of quitting while you're ahead? Newspaper strips, superhero comics, manga... the people who write and draw them crank out reams and reams of material even decades after they've stopped being the least bit interesting. Since most webcomics artists are emulating newspaper comics and manga, it's not surprising that they just go on and on. As for Zap! First of all, that title is really odd for a manga. It makes you think of 50s style two-fisted astronauts beating up moon men, not cat girls and really effeminate psychics. It should have a title made up of three words that don't make any sense together, like "Space Potato Grebel" or something. This is a mean thing to say, but I'm fairly convinced that Zap! is written by a computer. There's no way a human could create something so devoid of originality and personality. Come on, it's not that hard to be creative! Just think of something Final Fantasy 7 did, and do something different. Maybe let the main girl beat the shit out of the bad guys for once, instead of being protected by the hero's inner power. Or make Sephiroth a surly dwarf with lots of body hair. Sure, it's hard to make something really amazing and different, but it seems to me like it would be equally hard to make something this unoriginal.
- >>That reminds me of something: why is it most webcomics never fucking end? Why do they just keep going until they've become a convoluted mess and run everything that was once mildly amusing (and a lot of things that weren't) into the ground? Hasn't any webcomic jerk heard of quitting while you're ahead or at least, oh say I don't know, concluding a story?<< Money.
- Anyone who actually finishes his/her web comics? Daniel Kim.
- Most webcomics don't end because the creator gets busy with school, a job, a relationship, etc., or they get a "real" (paid) comic gig that actually pays real cash money, and they don't have time to finish their original comic. At the same time they likely realize what a crapfest their first webcomic was anyway, and bury it. Webcomics are still pretty much seen as the training ground for pro work, not pro work in and of themselves (except in rare instances). On an unrelated note, I'm surprised that according to Project Wonderful, Zap is getting so many hits from this blog. It's currently listed as the first source, percentage-wise.
- Unlike most of the webcomics you've mauled, I actually read Zap! Thinking about it now, though, I don't actually know why. I ploughed through the archives one afternoon when I had nothing better to do and found it mildly diverting, and have kept up with it since.. until now. Most webcomics are just mild diversions. People don't generally read them seriously apart from a few rabid fans. The problem there isn't the readers, it's the creators. They don't write them well enough to be anything people want to really read outside of total boredom.
- Anyone who actually puts thought into ending their webcomic is the exact sort of person you don't WANT to end their comic, if only because they at least seem to give a shit about what the work represents. I had one of those moments this past weekend. Scary as fuck, especially when you consider I'm probably one of the few folks who comes in with a story from the get-go. (Yay for avoiding Cerebus Syndrome by already starting there!) Unfortunately, unless I find a way to accelerate my pacing from more than once-a-week, it'll take 25 years to get there. Oy. (And yes, I did the calculations on that.) ACTUAL time will probably be half that once I start working at a pace that doesn't scream "I'm a college student first!", or even less if I decide to kill it at an earlier point in the story. Yes, it's insane. At least I KNOW I'm gonna be at this for a while, even with an actual plot in mind all along.
- I think if the charectors weren't so unapealing I might get into it, as I'm not familiar with many comics, movies, or games, I doubt I'd notice the most of the cliches. But the substitution of stupidity for humor really gets to me. Why does the main man always have to be stupid and the girl stuck up? I was marginally interested in the comic until I had to wait months to get back to the plotline because of a series of stupid gags. Bleh. Does anyone know of a webcomic that is actuallly good that doesn't ramble about forever?
- At Rachel: You seriously are going to like...try to keep a webcomic going for over 12 years? On another note: I just read the first few of your comics and I wasn't really sure what was going on. I had to actually read the "story" section to find out. You might want to consider revising at some point for new readers. Also, please get a better comic format. Slim and vertical is only good for short gag comics. Right now it feels really claustrophobic.
- I have to disagree with a tiny part of your review Solomon. I read about 4 pages of Zap! and it's definitely shit. I mean, super horribly shitty. But as terrible as it is, it's still better than reading nexus of all shitty webcomics that is Ctrl+Alt+Del - so I disagree with your recommended downgrade.
- At the Anon who replied: To be fair, the 12/25 year estimate is based on if I actually complete the entire trilogy of what I've planned out. I've built in "Kill Points" to the plot (aimed to break it up into a general trilogy, as I said) so if I get totally sick of things, I can stop at those points, call it a comic, and the average reader could just think I had planned to leave it there all along. The first kill point should be reached within another 4-5 years, which I think we can both agree is far more reasonable. As for the format change, I only did the thin, vertical format early on as those strips originally appeared on DeviantArt (a site that, unfortunately, tends to prefer vertical strips) before I picked up decent hosting. A "better" starting point would actually be the second storyline, which is in full-bleed ratio and gets rid of most of those format issues you were concerned about. I recommend you try it again from there (it 'should' be page 12-13)and see if it doesn't make a little more sense to you now. If you want to continue the discussion, please contact me through my own blog or email, and let John have his space back. :-p
- I have to disagree with a tiny part of your review Solomon. I read about 4 pages of Zap! and it's definitely shit. I mean, super horribly shitty. But as terrible as it is, it's still better than reading nexus of all shitty webcomics that is Ctrl+Alt+Del - so I disagree with your recommended downgrade. Oh for fuck's sake. First you people whine that I'm as subtle as a brick to the face, now you miss a joke when it's only slightly obscured. Fuck you.
- Hmm. You're not up to your usual vitriol here, John. Maybe Zap! is a little too middle of the road for you?
- Hmm. You're not up to your usual vitriol here, John. Maybe Zap! is a little too middle of the road for you? "Be more angry, John." "Be less angry, John." You can't see, but I am just furiously flipping you off over here.
- Pictures or it didn't happen, John!
- Hey, you should try to be more angry. Though, you shouldn't be so angry all the time. ...kiddin' ;D Really, I'm glad to see you're back, man. People need a kick in the ass.
- ...anything that incorporates an exclamation mark into its title is either Airplane! or utter shit. What about "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!"?
- 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" is utter shit. Surprise! Hm. I'm mildly disappointed that, out of all the ended comics named, Sarah Ellerton wasn't named (or I missed it). Mildly, I say. Glad to see you back. Granted, I don't always entirely agree with you, but you're pretty fucking entertaining.
- Exclamation marks are the work of uncultured heathens.
- Good webcomics are too few and far between and usually hard to find.
- Zap! was also never called "Zap! In Space!" or anything other than "Zap!" This is a common misconception because the url is zapinspace.com (presumably because just zap was taken). Also, a trope is not a cliché (the Wrench Wench you mentioned, in particular, is a trope, not a cliché, and I noted a few other things you mentioned that are not clichés but rather tropes or archetypes). Tropes and archetypes are not generally considered "bad" in fiction. Even clichés can be tolerable, or even good, in the hands of the right author. To quote George RR Martin, "originality is overated." Frankly, I could care less about clichés (and tropes) so long as the story is compelling. Martin's novels are pretty heavily based on real history (The War of the Roses, particularly) and chock full of fantasy clichés and tropes. But they are still some of the best works of fantasy ever written. On the other hand, The Inheritance Trilogy is also a morass of clichés and tropes, and is one of the worst-written pieces of garbage (from both a technical standpoint and a more subjective viewpoint) ever to appear on a store shelf. I am not claiming that Zap! is a work of literary genius or that you don't have valid points about its predictability or use of clichés. Yes, I read it. It's light entertainment for a boring Monday morning at work. But I don't think it's the greatest webcomic ever, nor am I, as some might dismiss me as, a rabid fan. I simply think that someone should point out that some of your arguments lack a solid basis. And since I'm certain that I'm going to get your standard response to someone who dares to disagree with your opinion (ie, "you're an idiot"), you can save yourself the typing time and just skip that step. We can just assume that you typed it, I read it, and I rolled my eyes and moved on.
- ccoa: Your point wold be valid, if the cliches used in Zap! (OH NO I USED AN EXCLAMATION POINT) didn't drown the story like a dinosaur in a tar pit. Also, I'm dedcuting points form your argument for the tired old ploy of "I'm an Internet Tough Person who uses lots of words and doesn't care about your opinion"
- John Solomon is Charlie Brooker.
- He's dead, dieing or dead, I will bet real money on this. ...when I have money, that is...
