The Penny Arcade Kickstarter

I don't like Penny Arcade.  So much so I refuse to link to it on this site.  I know it's popular, extremely popular, and that doesn't help me like it any better.  I've read numerous strips because it seems the go-to strip for when someone wants to post a "witty" reply dealing with video games.  The jokes are all the same and tired and often stupid.

So what do I think about their Kickstarter?  Oh, you didn't hear about this?  Well, simply put, Penny Arcade is trying to raise money (million dollars or so) and will dump it's advertising, ALL it's advertising, if they do.  They'll make it, I'm sure, but how do I feel about the entire thing?  Well, honestly, it feels backwards to me.

Most comics, the VAST majority of them in fact, do not make money.  At all.  None, zip, zero, nada.  They might get a little money from some advertisers, but not enough to do the comic full time.  If anything, many just flat out beg for cash.  So getting a steady advertising fund is a big step, one that allows them to go full time.  Penny Arcade crossed that line a LONG time ago, and became the single greatest webcomic success story of all time.

So to me, Kickstarter is going back to begging for money.  They don't NEED it, of course, they have the advertising, but it feels as if they're taking advantage of their audience.  As I said, they WILL get that money, and much of that is because their fans are kind of die hard.  And I generally think they're kind of stupid too.  That's my bias towards the comic right there, so don't take it too personally.

At the same time, I'm hearing things that might make PA better.  Specifically that various publishers have been PAYING them to make comics about their games.  This might explain why a lot of those comics annoy me, they're paid advertising.  If they hit their goal, that goes away.  PA becomes independent again, and maybe, just maybe, they'll start becoming less awful.  I don't know if that will happen, but there's a chance.

I'm not sure what to think about this overall.  I've idly speculated that PA is making fun of Kickstarter with this (look at some of their benefits), but even that doesn't seem to stick.  In the end, I just don't like PA, so this won't change my mind.  It will use it's fans to get rid of advertising, but given that most comics would KILL to get that advertising, I can't cheer for them.

Until next time kiddies.

Wild Webcomic Reviews 165 - 169

Another batch of old reviews as I have nothing this week.  It's been hot as hell around here, so comic stuff hasn't been foremost on my mind as of late.

January 03, 2009

165. U.F.O. - I almost swear this whole comic is just an excuse for the artist to draw girls in their panties. Almost. Otherwise it's just a silly romp with lots of people being killed for their 'funk.' Sadly, no, it is not funky funk, it's some weird plot device funk. Yes, I was disappointed that it wasn't funkier. It is moderately funny, if goofy, and despite the lack of true funk, I'll probably keep reading it, assuming they get back to making new comics. . .

TODAY - Well it DID update again, and at quite a good pace until SOMETHING happened in April of this year and nothing since then.  It's alright still, just alright, and if it updates some more, it'll be still on my read list but nothing that holds me to it.

166. Hopscotch - Most webcomics seem to settle into some epic storyline with no proper end in sight, or become a long series of gags that go on forever. Hopscotch doesn't. It is a short story in graphic form, and in fact you could strip all the art away and it would still be a pretty good story by itself. It is short, and complete, so worth it if you have an hour or so. I think the guy is an idiot, BTW, but whatever.

TODAY - Nothing further to add on this one.

167. Queen of Wands - This comic was the first creation of the author of Punch an' Pie, which I throughly enjoy, so I had decent expectations going into QoW. And it met them, surprisingly enough. It isn't perfect, there's a lot of backstory/flashback things that are FILLED with words and angst and emo that I really, REALLY could have done without, but when the comic was in the "here and now" it flowed pretty well and made sense the whole way through. I am kind of glad I didn't start reading it when it was active, because I probably would have dropped it after a while, but as a dead comic, I'm fine with it. There is an commentary version of the archives, but I didn't read that (said to be spoiler filled), but I might go back some time just to see what they were thinking behind the scenes. Half wish more comics did that.

TODAY - Still haven't gotten back to those commentaries.  Mostly laziness on my part, but again, I wasn't strictly in love with the strip when I read it.  Maybe someday.

168. The Call of Whatever - From one dead comic to another, this one with a Lovecraftian twist. This is just a fun little comic, and you really don't HAVE to have any working knowledge of the Cthulu Mythos to enjoy it, but it helps. Even then, there's probably somethings that will go clear over your head. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing that it ended when it did. In someways, I would have liked to see it go on, but then, they pretty much played out all the good jokes by that point and it would have just settled into a mud of mediocrity or something worse. Still, it was diverting, and I'm glad I got a chance to read it.

TODAY - Again, nothing much to add on this.  Completed comics give me little room over this, unless I go full bore with a retrospective.

169. Shadowgirls - The first thing I see is a naked black man telling me to get out. Thankfully, this is not that kind of comic. It's a superhero comic basically, set in the Cthulu Mythos. I segwayed these last three reviews well, didn't I? Anyway, this is what the Front could have been, it's good, very good. The art is comic bookish, sure, but it's expressive and colorful. The story and characters are well done and well communicated. Heck, the backstory is presented in a believable, not lecturing kind of way that I love. It's good, damn good, even with all the filler/bonus comics strewn throughout the archives (and even those are actually pretty good). Worth my time.

TODAY - Speaking of retrospectives, I did a full blown one on this comic here, so go read that to get my most recent thoughts.

One active (though on unexpected hiatus) comic, and 4 dead/completed ones.  Ah well.  I will note that this review is the first time I really started thinking about doing this blog at all.  My issue with starting it:  not having enough stuff to fill it.  Yeah, I'm stretching this week, that's for sure.  Until next time kiddies.

All in the Interpretation

Man, that was a MISERABLE week.  I survived, kind of and am back.

To promptly poke at another webcomic reviewer.  I've been following Tangents for a long time now, typically in search of new and interesting comics.  Typically, if he (he?) enjoys the comic, I probably do as well, with some notable exceptions (he really doesn't like Sluggy Freelance much).  One of my issues though, is when it comes to interpreting comics or short story arcs within them.

Specifically, a short comment (a Secant, love the math reference there) he did a couple weeks ago on one of the best comics out there, Gunnerkrigg Court.  Specifically the chapter called Divine, which is a chapter that is a bit strange, and one that deserves some sort of comment (and I skipped it because I had other things to do, sorry kiddies).

Anyway, it's a Zimmy story, who is a secondary character that is very odd in the long run, so the story is a bit odd.  Antimony has fallen ill, unconscious even, and Zimmy has come to help.  She rumages around Annie's dreams for a bit, punches the problem and calls Annie's dad a jerk.  The day is saved and hooray.

Okay, it's pretty simple, but there's a lot of themes going on here.  Specifically masks, a LOT of masks.  Antimony is constantly projected wearing or holding masks.  She's always hidden her true feelings, from the very first time she appeared, to when she received a mysterious call from her father.  In fact, the point is made she makes a concerted effort to hide her emotions and feelings whenever possible.  Breaking that mask woke her up so I suspect we'll see a much more different character from now on, especially given the comment the author leaves early in the next chapter.

The mask hides what she truly thinks about her dad, her desire to go back to the forest to meet the guy she likes, and the fact that she's been copying her best friend's homework for a couple years now.  Breaking the mask came by Zimmy saying something to get her riled up, specifically that her dad was a jerk.  At the end, Kat gives her some makeup and Annie says she'll put it on later, another mask that she really doesn't need anymore.

This is actually a pretty interesting character study on Antimony, something that if you had been reading the comic regularly would have been apparent at this point, and if you still didn't catch it, this would make it quite clear.  Ah, but it gets better, because it introduces a new element into the mix, specifically Kat, who has also been wearing a couple masks.  The first is pretty obvious, as Zimmy points it out that she's been trying to remind people that she's a girl, probably because she's beginning to question her own sexuality in some way.  The removal of that mask (in this case, a hairband) may not stick as strongly as removing Annie's, but it's just as important.

The real mask though?  Well, this is apparently how Zimmy sees her.  That's an image that would make H.R. Geiger proud.  What does it mean though?  Lots there to dig through, of course, but I think it connects back to Robot and the other machines of the Court referring to Kat as an angel, and while creepy, I can see a kind of angelic vibe behind the design.  It also brings up the question of how human Kat actually is.  Readers know Antimony is part fire spirit, could it be Kat is part machine?  Or perhaps, in a strange way, ALL machine?  Her father is a brilliant engineer, her mother deeply connected to the spirit world, perhaps they worked together to create a daughter they couldn't have otherwise.  It would explain a great deal about Kat, though not everything, and would make her and Annie's relationship much more meaningful in the overall story of the Court and how it was separated from the Forest.  Perhaps these two, each with affinities with one side or the other, are meant to bring them both back together.

But then, I'm often terrible at predicting where a comic will go.  Godawful in fact.  The thing is, Tangent doesn't focus on any of this.  Sure, he comments on the makeup/mask thing, briefly, but doesn't get to the point that the entire chapter is about the mask.  No, he focuses on the illness that started this whole thing.  I admit, it is very strange, and we're told little as to what caused it, only that it is, perhaps, connected to her father.  Personally, I think it has less to do with what her father did, than what Antimony feels her father did (aka:  she did it to herself), but there is no clear answer.  Tangent focuses on the fact that it's not answered, or even hinted at the source.  That's not the point of the chapter though, the point is the masks, the characters, and how they present themselves.  What caused the illness may never be properly revealed, though I suspect it will be, the point was simply to get readers to learn more about what was going on inside the main character in a way that was interesting and revealing, and to add another layer of mystery to the table.

Why do we see it so differently?  Not sure on that, I suspect Tangent reads a great many more comics than I do, and tries to keep up a writing pace I can't match at this time.  It's also possible that my amateur writing sense started tingling as I read the chapter, and I went back and read it again so I could better rattle off my thoughts on it.  I don't know Tangent's background, so perhaps he doesn't have the same affinity for this kind of thing, or perhaps he's being too literal in wanting answers now rather than waiting and seeing how the questions change the direction of the comic.  Patience is the hardest thing to learn when reading a webcomic, so that might be part of the issue as well.  I don't know, what I do know is, I do agree it's a middle chapter, resolving a few old problems, and creating new questions to be answered without being answers itself.  The entire book has, so far, been about transition, and this is another piece of that transition.  An important one, I suspect, and one that will be felt for the rest of the comic.

Well, enough of that rambling.  Until next time kiddies.

Like I said, nothing

I'm beat, and the week isn't over yet.  In fact, it's just getting started (I wrote this Wednesday).

See you next week kiddies.

Retrospective: Starslip

The end of Starslip, or Starslip Crisis as I always called it, came as a bit of a shock to me.  I wasn't exactly expecting it until it was, well, there.  I will say at least it was an ending, unlike Road Waffles, but still was kind of surprising.

I'm going to say this right now, Starslip was not a great comic.  Not a bad comic by any stretch, mind you, just not great.  A decently good comic that was entertaining, fun, funny, and had some neat story bits.  The idea behind it was turning a ship refitted to be a flying museum, with artwork therein, into a warship commanded by a curator.  Wild antics ensue.

Funny came from the fact that Memnon was not cut out to be any kind of military commander, and yet, somehow, managed it with the help of his fellow crewmembers and friends.  Initially he held them all at arms length, figuring they were beneath him in some way (he was a curator of a museum after all), but as time and adventures wore on, eventually he changed and grew.  A bit.

In fact, the three major cast members really didn't change that much through the course of the comic, which is not a bad thing, mind you.  Jinx remained subservient to a fault, though was far more competent than even he suspected many times, and Cutter was always a retired pirate.  He even got a peg leg near the end.

The art of the comic changed dramatically between the "Starslip Crisis" and "Starslip" phase of the comic, and for the better.  Characters became more than heads put on copy and paste shoulders.  They felt far more real than in the early strips.  Oh, they were still cartoon characters, but more real ones.  As the art style got better, it got more grand and some of the best moments in the later comic were helped by the amazing art.

The storylines were loose and, possibly a bit confusing.  Typically it involved time and universe travel, which creates lots of weird paradoxes and other things.  The finale actually featured an old version of Memnon, his future son, the villain and HIS clone/son fighting agents from the future who could predict actions because they could see time.  Yeah, that finale was wild.

And again, kind of surprising.  It wasn't that the ending wasn't well done, it was, it tied up the major loose ends very nicely.  No, the issue was that there were a lot of smaller plot lines that were left behind.  Nothing major, of course, but enough to leave a nagging taste in my mouth.  The entire Jovia letter arc was incomplete and could have gone on much longer.  In the move to end, I guess, it was necessary, but I still would have liked to see it.

Why did it end though?  Kris Straub has a recording of a live stream regarding it, but never actually answers the question.  I get the impression that he wanted to simply work on something else, and wanted to wrap it up.  That's a fair answer, and one that some artists need to admit too.  At least he gave us an ending, unlike a lot of other artists.

Again, it wasn't a great comic, but I did like it and read it all the way until the end.  The last three comics of my daily read is Station V3, Starslip and Sluggy Freelance in that order, and now there is a bit of a hole in that lineup.  I'll miss the comic, but it sounds as if Straub is planning another story comic, and I intend to follow it.

I'll probably won't have anything next week as I've got a 10 day work week ahead of me.  I'll try to post something saying I'm posting nothing at least.  Until then kiddies.

Nothing, again

Not enough hours in the day to work on this and everything else this week.  I'll have something next week, since another comic ended.  Yeah, didn't expect this one either.

Retrospective: Road Waffles

Writing this is going to be a rough go for a couple of reasons.  The first is that I don't trust that in 2 years, Eight won't start updating it again.  Calling this the "end of Road Waffles" is like saying "the end is nigh."  It might be true, but it might not be.  Another reason is that, because of the four year gap in the comic's updates, I don't remember a lot of it (and have been rereading it for this post).  The final reason is that, well, Road Waffles is not one comic, it's more like four of them.

That said, the themes of the comic are pretty consistent, as is the art, so I can talk about all four at once when it comes to those.  As to the specific stories of each comic, well, that's another story, so to speak.  We'll get to that.

Artwise, the comic has, for the most part, been a black and white shaded strips.  All the characters are distinct, which is good since there are a lot of them and they come in and out of the strip fast and furious, but they all follow a simple model:  Thin, big headed, and kind of crazy.  There's a sketchy feel to the entire strip, yet it's all very deliberate, even the earliest strips have this feeling, when the comic is more cartoony.  I really like the art, and find it fits the spastic nature of the comic better than could generally be hoped for.

The major theme of the comic is travel, typically through the desert regions of the American southwest.  Mostly it seems around Reno and Las Vegas, which means the deserts of Nevada.  This makes the landscapes quite empty and stark.  And usually involve cars of some sort.  They serve the story well, creating a sense of isolation through the strip as there are rarely many people around, and when they are, they usually end up dead.

That is the biggest theme throughout the comic, death, pointless, senseless death.  The very name of the comic, Road Waffles, refers to the pattern tires make on road kill.  One of the early jokes of the comic was that the main characters were "unkillable."  This ended up not being true (for the most part) and killing characters, new, old, whatever, became common place.  Typically through getting shot in some odd way.  Or being time traveled to death.  Or being randomly hit by a car.  Or decapitated by a knife wielding lunatic that likes to eat freshly killed pigs.  Or simply drowning.

Which is to say, it's random as hell.  Saying there is an "overall plot," even divided up into the four books, as it were, is stretching a a series of thin premises a bit too far.  The first book is very much this, bouncing from one oddball encounter to another.  First it starts with a hold up of a convenience store (another common theme, convenience stores), then goes into a bit with zombies, random killings, battling zombie hoards, time travel, randomly kidnapping Green Day members, more zombies, and then a multi-universe war, which ends about as fast as it began.  And that's not even counting the chipmunk encounters that are sprinkled along the way.  It's a random, chaotic mess, but a fun ride as a whole.  If the first book was all there was of Road Waffles, it would certainly be memorable, but not necessarily great.

Then the second book starts with a homage to Hunter S. Thompson.  It then gets very philosophical, but it's not anything really all that advanced, not that I've ever taken more than a rudimentary philosophy course.  The entire cast is replaced for the bulk of the story, and versions of the book one characters appear late in the story.  It even comes back to cover the events of the great multi-universe war, which is a solid connecting piece between the two, and I think a bridge throughout the entire series.  The art drastically improves, but the story telling itself remains kind of random.  Some plot lines are started, then stopped, then get going again in time for this section to end.  Seemingly minor characters suddenly become important, then focused, then the entire cast is dumped in favor of the book one ones, and then back again for the finale.

The third book is the most different of all, probably has the least amount of violence, and perhaps had the strongest initial direction.  It still hits on the theme of travel, but skips the desert and car for trains and wings.  I find the third book, up until a certain point, to be the best of the four, and the one I enjoyed most.  Which is why I'm kind of annoyed that, unlike the first two, there was no proper resolution.  There was a lot going for it, and I think it could have supported a proper ending.  Honestly, I forgot the comic continued for some time after the main characters of the book are removed, as that, despite being depressing, felt at least like an ending.  Sadly, at least 3 separate plot threads are started at this point, and never even saw a proper conclusion.  Most potential, but never finished.

The last book is similar to the first, with a lot of the real strangeness squeezed down and condensed, making a much more followable story.  It's still random, it's in a desert, it starts with a hold up of a convenience store, and follows people in cars until something happens with the multi-verse.  It does feel like an abbreviated version of the first book, in some ways, but in others it stands alone.  It is, however really good, less random than the early stuff, and with a stronger direction than even the third book.  I like the third one better, but only because of the characters and how it can stand on it's own more.  Book four needs the rest of the comic to make sense, and in a way, it wraps up the entire comic rather nicely.

I think the real problem with this comic is that, well, Eight always had an idea for a comic, and hints of a story, but never a serious script.  He WANTS to tell a story, that might or might not be important to him, but he can't get it out there.  That's not a bad thing, after all, since the bulk of the comic is built on these half thought out ideas and I enjoy them immensely.  The problem comes when it is time for him to tell a story, at which point, the comic falls completely apart.  At the very end, he sets up an interesting tale about how a musician lost two of her fingers, and the comic looks set to tell this tale, and then, one strip into this story, the comic is ended.  Why?  I think he didn't feel he could do it justice.

And yet, and YET, he did manage a story.  A confused tale, sure, with bumps and curves that, somehow, manages to still link together.  I wouldn't call it well thought out, not in the least, but it all does seem to come together in the "end" of the comic.  Even book three, the most independent of the four, has connections to the others.

This is why I'm not so sure it's over for good.  The randomness, the sudden return of book four, the wild ride, it can't really be over this time, can it?  Maybe it is, and if so, I hope Eight is proud of what he's done, because I do love this comic.  There are comics with better, more coherent stories, with better art, funnier jokes, and all that, but it has a charm that I can't shake.  Road Waffles, whatever the future may hold, whether it be a return someday or never again, is and will remain one of my all time favorites.

Next week looks to be pretty packed for me, so I'll try to get something up, something shorter than this.  Until then kiddies.