Another batch of old reviews for you guys to read. Honestly, I'm nearly out of new articles (have a couple more Newspaper ones, but you know, time). I'm thinking of revamping the blog here to cover a much wider net than just webcomics. But that won't be for a bit. In the meantime, more reviews!
101. Out There - It reminds me of Road Waffles (which hasn't updated in forever), but with far less violence and insanity. In fact, there's nothing too, well, out there about the whole thing, it's a very grounded comic. It's also a kind of character play. Different personalities interacting, talking, and not much else. I find it most interesting that way. I think you will too.
TODAY - The number of characters grew, but at the same time, it still boils down to long stretches of two characters talking about the life, universe and everything. It's one of the better comics I read and continue to read to this day. Go, read it, it's worth it.
102. Kitty Litter - This is about the most standard silly comic you can find. It's got everything you'd expect, talking animals, silly vampires, game playing geeks, zombies, death, etc, etc, etc. There's really nothing that special about it, except that the star is an evil genius cat, which reminds me of mine. Light humor, nothing special.
TODAY - I'm kind of embarrassed by this. You see, one day the comic didn't update as usual, and that went on for a long time. I figured it was dead. Never did bother to read the message at the bottom of the strip that said they had moved (no redirect) so I just stopped reading it. Whoops. I haven't taken it back up because, um, no real reason actually. Nothing wrong with it at all.
103. The God Machine - It's not a comic, but a rough draft for a comic. Heck, it's posted in devian art, so that should give you some clue. It is very artistic in style, even if it is just a rough layout for a comic book. It's kind of neat to see the process, if not the finished project. Kind of a neat story too, so worth the time.
TODAY - I wasn't kidding about it being a rough draft, because I do believe it got published. I can only say that because it ground to a halt while she was working on the final versions and I just sort of drifted away from it. No big, it's likely still worth a read.
104. Least I Could Do - It's a comic about sex. Actually, mostly sex jokes, with lots of references to the act (the main character is wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am kind of guy). The jokes can be very funny (certian storylines remind me of a certian someone and his niece actually), but the comic really only has the one joke to play on, so it gets old pretty quick. You might enjoy it more than I.
TODAY - I haven't kept up with it, but it still looks about the same (though it did settle on an artist from the looks). Pretty popular strip I hear.
105. Death Piglet - A picture is worth a thousand words, and it had better be since this comic hardly uses any words at all. Which makes it very funny. Cute little characters doing horrible things is always funny. Watch as the cute little pig summons Cuthulu. Isn't it horribly cute? Yes, yes it is.
TODAY - Fun while it lasted, then it ground to a damn near halt. Even the site says "Updates without warning." Which means I don't bother checking it daily.
Not bad actually. Oh sure, I only regularly read one of these comics, but only one is basically dead, so things are looking up from last time. More new stuff next week, I hope. Next time kiddies.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
No post this week
My grandmother died this week. Thus my attention has been diverted and there will be no new post this week.
Should be one next week though. See you then.
Should be one next week though. See you then.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Wild Webcomic Reviews 96 - 100
Time for some more old reviews, and it's the last of the first hundred. HOORAY! That might mean I'll get fewer dead strips, right?
Right?
October 29, 2006
96. Metrophor - It's a fantasy comic I saw linked via Errant Story. It's not a snarky fantasy story, however, nor is it one of those pretentious ones. It's good, interesting, fun and well paced, which is better than I can say for most comics of the genre. The art is great, the writing is good and it just seems to be an all around good comic. I recommend it to just about everyone except the little kiddies.
TODAY - Dead. Artist had some wrist problems and, well, that was it. End of strip. Just as the action was starting to crank up to.
97. Mad about U. - Don't let the title fool you, this isn't about that stupid sitcom. It's about science, mad science. Where they read from physics books at comedy clubs. Yeah, that. It's funny, it is. It's also the only comic that actually decorates the area around the comic to be, well, interesting. It looks like a drive-in, and that just adds a certain touch of class to the whole strip. It also has nice explosions.
TODAY - Also dead. Dead as a damn doornail. At least Metrophor had an explanation, nothing for this comic.
98. Edge the Devilhunter - It's Underpower only with fewer characters and more updates. It also doesn't ramble nearly as much. It's got a hip hop theme in it, it's about life on the streets, you know? But it's also about the future, heaven and hell, and superpowers. It all comes together to be this neat comic that I think I'll be reading for a long time to come.
TODAY - Not quite dead, but damn does it update once a blue moon or something. I'm starting to rethink my deceleration of reading it for a long time.
99. Candi - Yet another college comic. It's less weird than most (there's a ferret who flys, but that's about it for the supernatrual stuff), and features an art student. Beyond that, it's all relationships and whatnot. It's chick comic, if such a thing exists. Hope that helps you figure out how to react to it.
TODAY - I stopped reading it after a few months, didn't really appeal to me any more. It's still updating, so that makes it a world better than the rest of these strips.
100. Dungeon Crawl Inc. - I haven't read a comic this bad since Earthbeta. It's not as bad as Earthbeta (nothing is as bad as Earthbeta) but it sure as hell tries. The characters are terrible, the dialog is awful, the art, when they use art, is horrendous, and don't let me get into the first quarter of the strip when they use video game screenshots to move the story along, I'll probably commit suicide. If I never have to read this comic again, it'll be too soon. Avoid.
TODAY - Discovered a worse comic than Earthbeta, but that's another story. Anyway, I THINK it still updates, but it's hard to tell, and I really don't care either. It just wasn't that interesting then and I still don't care about it.
And so the first 100 are done. Go me! See you next time kiddies.
Right?
October 29, 2006
96. Metrophor - It's a fantasy comic I saw linked via Errant Story. It's not a snarky fantasy story, however, nor is it one of those pretentious ones. It's good, interesting, fun and well paced, which is better than I can say for most comics of the genre. The art is great, the writing is good and it just seems to be an all around good comic. I recommend it to just about everyone except the little kiddies.
TODAY - Dead. Artist had some wrist problems and, well, that was it. End of strip. Just as the action was starting to crank up to.
97. Mad about U. - Don't let the title fool you, this isn't about that stupid sitcom. It's about science, mad science. Where they read from physics books at comedy clubs. Yeah, that. It's funny, it is. It's also the only comic that actually decorates the area around the comic to be, well, interesting. It looks like a drive-in, and that just adds a certain touch of class to the whole strip. It also has nice explosions.
TODAY - Also dead. Dead as a damn doornail. At least Metrophor had an explanation, nothing for this comic.
98. Edge the Devilhunter - It's Underpower only with fewer characters and more updates. It also doesn't ramble nearly as much. It's got a hip hop theme in it, it's about life on the streets, you know? But it's also about the future, heaven and hell, and superpowers. It all comes together to be this neat comic that I think I'll be reading for a long time to come.
TODAY - Not quite dead, but damn does it update once a blue moon or something. I'm starting to rethink my deceleration of reading it for a long time.
99. Candi - Yet another college comic. It's less weird than most (there's a ferret who flys, but that's about it for the supernatrual stuff), and features an art student. Beyond that, it's all relationships and whatnot. It's chick comic, if such a thing exists. Hope that helps you figure out how to react to it.
TODAY - I stopped reading it after a few months, didn't really appeal to me any more. It's still updating, so that makes it a world better than the rest of these strips.
100. Dungeon Crawl Inc. - I haven't read a comic this bad since Earthbeta. It's not as bad as Earthbeta (nothing is as bad as Earthbeta) but it sure as hell tries. The characters are terrible, the dialog is awful, the art, when they use art, is horrendous, and don't let me get into the first quarter of the strip when they use video game screenshots to move the story along, I'll probably commit suicide. If I never have to read this comic again, it'll be too soon. Avoid.
TODAY - Discovered a worse comic than Earthbeta, but that's another story. Anyway, I THINK it still updates, but it's hard to tell, and I really don't care either. It just wasn't that interesting then and I still don't care about it.
And so the first 100 are done. Go me! See you next time kiddies.
Friday, June 4, 2010
8-Bit Theater Ends
Officially, 8-Bit Theater ended this week. The epilogue, which took a couple months to produce, was not done in the comic's traditional sprite graphics, instead running a hand drawn version. I guess it's just a sign of the times.
Honestly, 8-Bit was the best of the sprite comics, definitely of the few I've read and possibly of all time. Why? Well, probably because it was both limited and free in it's creative direction.
The sprite format meant the number of positions available to create the strip was VERY limited indeed, especially early on. Each character had a limited set of positions they could have their body parts and thus a limited number of expressions they could give that weren't text. Eventually, more complex sprites were created, ones that could do any number of things, but even then, the rule set for the main characters remained limited. They were also completely distinctive, you ALWAYS knew which characters were which, there was no confusion, you could even tie the dialog to them without the bubbles actually being attached.
And yet, the game these sprites originally came from, the original Final Fantasy, had so little character, story or much of anything else you would expect to see in a Final Fantasy game, that Brian Clevinger could, and did, do anything he wanted with the comic. The characters never really went beyond their 2 (or sometimes even 1) dimensional basics, but the rest of the world could do anything. Great dragons would appear, Hell was conquered, dinosaurs were driven extinction and cities were laid to waste. The backgrounds went from simple to ultra complex, up until the point that the characters no longer looked natural to the setting, and yet remained so because of the insanity.
The rest of the sprite comic kingdom never got that break. Either the sprites themselves were too complex, or they already had deep stories tied to them and the authors never got a chance to break free. Or they made Diesel Sweeties, which I think is worse. The limitations of the format broke them, but Clevinger managed to find a sweet spot that allowed him to use the limitations to his advantage and create one of the classic webcomics, one that won't be forgotten for a long time.
In the end, though, I think that closing it with a hand drawn strip shows that sprite comics aren't really going to be a major force on the webcomic world again. These comics were done by people who didn't have art skills, but want to make a comic, and with so few comics out there, they had their moment in the sun. Now, the door is closing, rapidly. More comics are coming online everyday, and while many will fail, few will be sprite comics again. 8-Bit Theater was the zenith of the genre, and unless someone manages to hit that sweet spot again, it will likely never be exceeded.
I will miss 8-Bit. I have read the comic for years (short of it's full life span, I'm afraid) and it has been one of the few strips I rely on to be there. Now that it is done, there will be a hole that I will need to fill. I wonder if I'll ever find a strip to do it.
Well, at the very least, I can now sit down and read the OTHER strips on Nuklear Power. Been kind of staying away from them because I wanted to see 8-Bit to the end. The end is here, and it's time to go on.
Until next time kiddies.
Honestly, 8-Bit was the best of the sprite comics, definitely of the few I've read and possibly of all time. Why? Well, probably because it was both limited and free in it's creative direction.
The sprite format meant the number of positions available to create the strip was VERY limited indeed, especially early on. Each character had a limited set of positions they could have their body parts and thus a limited number of expressions they could give that weren't text. Eventually, more complex sprites were created, ones that could do any number of things, but even then, the rule set for the main characters remained limited. They were also completely distinctive, you ALWAYS knew which characters were which, there was no confusion, you could even tie the dialog to them without the bubbles actually being attached.
And yet, the game these sprites originally came from, the original Final Fantasy, had so little character, story or much of anything else you would expect to see in a Final Fantasy game, that Brian Clevinger could, and did, do anything he wanted with the comic. The characters never really went beyond their 2 (or sometimes even 1) dimensional basics, but the rest of the world could do anything. Great dragons would appear, Hell was conquered, dinosaurs were driven extinction and cities were laid to waste. The backgrounds went from simple to ultra complex, up until the point that the characters no longer looked natural to the setting, and yet remained so because of the insanity.
The rest of the sprite comic kingdom never got that break. Either the sprites themselves were too complex, or they already had deep stories tied to them and the authors never got a chance to break free. Or they made Diesel Sweeties, which I think is worse. The limitations of the format broke them, but Clevinger managed to find a sweet spot that allowed him to use the limitations to his advantage and create one of the classic webcomics, one that won't be forgotten for a long time.
In the end, though, I think that closing it with a hand drawn strip shows that sprite comics aren't really going to be a major force on the webcomic world again. These comics were done by people who didn't have art skills, but want to make a comic, and with so few comics out there, they had their moment in the sun. Now, the door is closing, rapidly. More comics are coming online everyday, and while many will fail, few will be sprite comics again. 8-Bit Theater was the zenith of the genre, and unless someone manages to hit that sweet spot again, it will likely never be exceeded.
I will miss 8-Bit. I have read the comic for years (short of it's full life span, I'm afraid) and it has been one of the few strips I rely on to be there. Now that it is done, there will be a hole that I will need to fill. I wonder if I'll ever find a strip to do it.
Well, at the very least, I can now sit down and read the OTHER strips on Nuklear Power. Been kind of staying away from them because I wanted to see 8-Bit to the end. The end is here, and it's time to go on.
Until next time kiddies.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Newspaper Comics #5
There are two terms you hear when people talk about newspaper comics: Legacy comics and zombie comics. Don't let anyone fool you, these terms mean almost exactly the same thing. They refer to comics that have gone on long past their prime and whose original creators are dead, yet new strips continue to be made.
The difference is how people perceive them. Legacy comics are viewed with respect for their years of entertaining people while zombie comics are declared "not funny" or worse "never funny." And what is funny for one person is not for someone else. I, for example, think of Blondie as a legacy comic, while BC is a zombie.
And then there's Family Circus.
It's not a legacy comic, I don't enjoy it. It's not a zombie comic, it's not not funny. No, it's worse. Let me get back to that.
Family Circus started in 1960, on a leap day. Does that hold any significance? No, it just means the comic just SEEMS to have lasted forever. Really, the comic is about one joke: Kids say the darnedest things. Well, that was the joke, now it's "kids say the cutest things." There is a difference.
It's possibly the largest circulating comic on Earth. Why? Well, I think it's because it aims at a very specific and vocal audience: Grandmothers. They read the paper (because they can't get the computer to work) and they write letters to newspapers. And finally, they get this tickle from reading kids saying the cutest things.
They'd never accept the darnedest things, though, because those imply real human things, like the fact that raising kids is really hard, that parents struggle to make ends meet, and that they have ways to "get away" from it all via *gasp* drugs and sex! How horrible. Grandmothers can't stand that stuff because, well, they never had sex until they were married, and only to have children, and they certainly never used drugs.
Grandmothers are also horrible liars. Meaning they don't lie very well at all.
Family Circus was once a better comic, but as the years went by it was molded to the grandmother demographic, which stripped it of what little edge it had and whitewashed the rest. The result is a comic so soft and unoffensive that it actually turned the corner and became a horrible comic. It's not not funny, that would imply that the jokes merely missed their marks. No, the comic is what is referred to as "unfunny." A funny black hole in newspapers that sucks humor out of nearby comics.
The comic is the COMPLETE opposite of every webcomic I've read, even the bad ones! It's static in a way that can not be easily set into words. When the biggest change to your comic in 40 years is one of the characters getting a slightly different haircut, you're in trouble. It plays to a demographic that is CONSTANTLY dying (but never quite gets there) and has all but rejected anything that could be called modern.
No comic should EVER be like Family Circus. If it is, then it and the artist should be put out of our misery. While dozens of really GOOD comics come and go, Family Circus not only stays, but is everywhere. An ever present icon of blandness and terribleness that the world can not get rid of because grandmothers can't get enough of it for some bloody reason.
The only good thing to ever come out of Family Circus is a web parody that you'll have to search for on your own. Find the "Dysfunctional Family Circus." The archives I'm sure are still floating around the web somewhere, and read them. It's very satisfying and pallet cleaning, but you'll never, EVER be able to read Family Circus again, mostly because you'll know how horrible it truly is.
Next time, I think I'll do a comic I love, if only to wash this taste from my mouth. Later kiddies.
The difference is how people perceive them. Legacy comics are viewed with respect for their years of entertaining people while zombie comics are declared "not funny" or worse "never funny." And what is funny for one person is not for someone else. I, for example, think of Blondie as a legacy comic, while BC is a zombie.
And then there's Family Circus.
It's not a legacy comic, I don't enjoy it. It's not a zombie comic, it's not not funny. No, it's worse. Let me get back to that.
Family Circus started in 1960, on a leap day. Does that hold any significance? No, it just means the comic just SEEMS to have lasted forever. Really, the comic is about one joke: Kids say the darnedest things. Well, that was the joke, now it's "kids say the cutest things." There is a difference.
It's possibly the largest circulating comic on Earth. Why? Well, I think it's because it aims at a very specific and vocal audience: Grandmothers. They read the paper (because they can't get the computer to work) and they write letters to newspapers. And finally, they get this tickle from reading kids saying the cutest things.
They'd never accept the darnedest things, though, because those imply real human things, like the fact that raising kids is really hard, that parents struggle to make ends meet, and that they have ways to "get away" from it all via *gasp* drugs and sex! How horrible. Grandmothers can't stand that stuff because, well, they never had sex until they were married, and only to have children, and they certainly never used drugs.
Grandmothers are also horrible liars. Meaning they don't lie very well at all.
Family Circus was once a better comic, but as the years went by it was molded to the grandmother demographic, which stripped it of what little edge it had and whitewashed the rest. The result is a comic so soft and unoffensive that it actually turned the corner and became a horrible comic. It's not not funny, that would imply that the jokes merely missed their marks. No, the comic is what is referred to as "unfunny." A funny black hole in newspapers that sucks humor out of nearby comics.
The comic is the COMPLETE opposite of every webcomic I've read, even the bad ones! It's static in a way that can not be easily set into words. When the biggest change to your comic in 40 years is one of the characters getting a slightly different haircut, you're in trouble. It plays to a demographic that is CONSTANTLY dying (but never quite gets there) and has all but rejected anything that could be called modern.
No comic should EVER be like Family Circus. If it is, then it and the artist should be put out of our misery. While dozens of really GOOD comics come and go, Family Circus not only stays, but is everywhere. An ever present icon of blandness and terribleness that the world can not get rid of because grandmothers can't get enough of it for some bloody reason.
The only good thing to ever come out of Family Circus is a web parody that you'll have to search for on your own. Find the "Dysfunctional Family Circus." The archives I'm sure are still floating around the web somewhere, and read them. It's very satisfying and pallet cleaning, but you'll never, EVER be able to read Family Circus again, mostly because you'll know how horrible it truly is.
Next time, I think I'll do a comic I love, if only to wash this taste from my mouth. Later kiddies.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Wither the Superhero?
I never got into comic books. I've got this stack of random Marvel comics for one Christmas when I was like 12, and that was about as deep as I got. The only comic I really ever got into was Groo the Wanderer, but even then it was rather sporadic. Strangely, I do watch Atop the Fourth Wall regularly, but reading comics is something I'm not into.
Then I got to thinking about it, and I couldn't think of many "superhero" type comics I have EVER actually read, either in book or, especially, webcomic form. Now by "superhero" I mean the cliched version: Capes, masks, super powers, super villains and all that stuff. So I went looking and guess how many of the my 200 plus reads have been "superhero" comics?
Five.
Out of 200+ comics, I've read five that could be considered superhero comics. Weird, isn't it? I mean, shouldn't there be more? Even the ones I have read, three of them are only JUST superhero comics.
The Front (currently MIA) is the earliest, and while it isn't strictly "cape and mask" it has a lot of the elements you would expect to see. Shadowgirls IS a superhero comic, in all but reality. The Lovecraftian setting keeps it from being an outright superhero comic. And Wonderella is, well, a complete parody strip and while it has all the tropes, it plays them for laughs more than anything else.
The remaining two are much, much closer to my idea of what a superhero comic is. While I haven't officially reviewed Spinnerette (it's part of the Krakow family, so that should tell you something right off the bat), it does play much closer to the theme than any of the others, while still countering a dash of "reality," as it were. And Aptitude Test does much the same, though it does stray much further into the superhero territory of old than even Spinnerette does.
So why the lack of superhero comics? Well I have two ideas:
The first, and probably most obvious, is that webcomic artists think of the genre saturated. I can get behind that idea pretty well, as most artists are looking for "new ground" to explore. The problem is that most of the new ground they explore is the same old stuff that has filled webcomics for years. Geek comics, wacky adventure comics, comic epics, etc. Superhero comics have been fully explored in comic book form, but for webcomics, there is still a lot of wild land out there.
There is another idea I had: That artists think it's too hard to do. Yeah, that sounds strange, but it makes a certain amount of sense. Most superhero comics have MOUNTAINS of backstory to support them, continuities that dwarf even the longest lived webcomic. Then theres the fact that the majority of superhero comics die within the first year because they can't generate an audience quickly. And then, there's Watchmen.
Now I've never read the book, or seen the movie, but the general reaction to Watchmen that I've found is that it "changed comics forever" and it also changed how superheroes were viewed. This view meant superheroes had to now have "depth" which ended up getting translated into "dark and brooding" by a lot of hack writers. My point is that suddenly superheroes now had to have not just big backstories, but inner stories that trended toward dark and unfun.
No one wants to work on a comic that isn't fun, so most artists skip it. The dark elements scare off the bright and colorful artists taking their cue from Japanese manga, and the complex character elements that seem to be required by superheroes now scare off everyone else. It's too hard to make it work.
Which is wrong, of course, but that doesn't mean the perception isn't there. And that's why I think superhero comics are a rare commodity in the webcomic community.
Or it could just be I just don't look for or read them. But after 200 strips, you would have thought I'd have run into more than five the buggers.
Well, that's enough for this week. See you next time kiddies.
Then I got to thinking about it, and I couldn't think of many "superhero" type comics I have EVER actually read, either in book or, especially, webcomic form. Now by "superhero" I mean the cliched version: Capes, masks, super powers, super villains and all that stuff. So I went looking and guess how many of the my 200 plus reads have been "superhero" comics?
Five.
Out of 200+ comics, I've read five that could be considered superhero comics. Weird, isn't it? I mean, shouldn't there be more? Even the ones I have read, three of them are only JUST superhero comics.
The Front (currently MIA) is the earliest, and while it isn't strictly "cape and mask" it has a lot of the elements you would expect to see. Shadowgirls IS a superhero comic, in all but reality. The Lovecraftian setting keeps it from being an outright superhero comic. And Wonderella is, well, a complete parody strip and while it has all the tropes, it plays them for laughs more than anything else.
The remaining two are much, much closer to my idea of what a superhero comic is. While I haven't officially reviewed Spinnerette (it's part of the Krakow family, so that should tell you something right off the bat), it does play much closer to the theme than any of the others, while still countering a dash of "reality," as it were. And Aptitude Test does much the same, though it does stray much further into the superhero territory of old than even Spinnerette does.
So why the lack of superhero comics? Well I have two ideas:
The first, and probably most obvious, is that webcomic artists think of the genre saturated. I can get behind that idea pretty well, as most artists are looking for "new ground" to explore. The problem is that most of the new ground they explore is the same old stuff that has filled webcomics for years. Geek comics, wacky adventure comics, comic epics, etc. Superhero comics have been fully explored in comic book form, but for webcomics, there is still a lot of wild land out there.
There is another idea I had: That artists think it's too hard to do. Yeah, that sounds strange, but it makes a certain amount of sense. Most superhero comics have MOUNTAINS of backstory to support them, continuities that dwarf even the longest lived webcomic. Then theres the fact that the majority of superhero comics die within the first year because they can't generate an audience quickly. And then, there's Watchmen.
Now I've never read the book, or seen the movie, but the general reaction to Watchmen that I've found is that it "changed comics forever" and it also changed how superheroes were viewed. This view meant superheroes had to now have "depth" which ended up getting translated into "dark and brooding" by a lot of hack writers. My point is that suddenly superheroes now had to have not just big backstories, but inner stories that trended toward dark and unfun.
No one wants to work on a comic that isn't fun, so most artists skip it. The dark elements scare off the bright and colorful artists taking their cue from Japanese manga, and the complex character elements that seem to be required by superheroes now scare off everyone else. It's too hard to make it work.
Which is wrong, of course, but that doesn't mean the perception isn't there. And that's why I think superhero comics are a rare commodity in the webcomic community.
Or it could just be I just don't look for or read them. But after 200 strips, you would have thought I'd have run into more than five the buggers.
Well, that's enough for this week. See you next time kiddies.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Newspaper Comics #4
Finally. Why did this one take so long? Well, mostly it was time, because I don't hate this comic or anything, I just needed time to sit down and work on this.
So what comic is it? For Better or For Worse.
It's so different from, oh, 99% of comics in papers, at least the first run (we'll get to the second one in a bit) that it's hard to believe that it is in newspapers. You see, it aged, in real time, through the course of some 28 years. That's something few comics EVER do, and if they do it, they eventually stop. Nothing lasts like that for 30 years.
Yet FBoFW did. It's like a family soap opera, but without melodrama (mostly) and puns and jokes every strip. This makes it stand out verses the static comics like Blondie or Family Circus, who had similar set ups, but not be as bizarre as the true soap opera comics that I mostly skip because, well, I just don't care.
And it also managed to be memorable. Whether you liked or disliked the choices made by Lynn Johnston over the years, readers could remember them, and the characters grew up before your eyes. She even killed a few of them off, something none of those other comics would even consider doing in most situations. The death that stands out for me is the passing of Farley, the family dog. It was ballsy, but understandable (the dog was 14 years old at that point) and it stands out as one of those comic moments that few strips ever get and it worked.
Of course, Farley was replaced by his own son, so really, the dog didn't "leave" as much as get a make over. But I'm fine with that. Other situations and dramas occurred, and while none had the impact of Farley, they still made the comic stand out in a sea of blandness and sameness.
Then the end came. In August of 2008, For Better or For Worse came to an end. Kind of. The main, original storyline that had graced newspapers for 28 years came to a close. And was immediately followed by a strip reboot that started from the beginning.
I understand why she did it, after all, you can't make money on a strip that isn't published any more, and she had a staff of people who helped with the comic at the end. Still, why couldn't it have just ended and be gone? I suppose I can't say much, I don't mind Peanuts still being in papers, but that strip is timeless and classic, while FBoFW had a single story, and that story was over. Should it really be told again, from the beginning?
I do still read it though, but it's more like a habit than anything else. Still, I remember the comic for doing what so few (meaning none) newspaper comics do, tell a long term story.
Webcomics can learn a lot from For Better or For Worse, especially in long term story telling. No comic is as long lived as Johnston's strip, but a few are getting on in years now. Characters in webcomics can grow and change because they aren't limited by the comic syndicates or the demands of daily publishing, and the fact that a strip like theirs can succeed should stand out. It also should show that sometimes being bold with character development can pay off.
And it should serve as a warning that sometimes it's best to just let it go and not create yet another zombie comic to dominate the papers.
Next time, a comic that is nearly as universal as For Better or For Worse, but is the complete opposite of it in every significant way. And I wish it would die. Until then kiddies.
So what comic is it? For Better or For Worse.
It's so different from, oh, 99% of comics in papers, at least the first run (we'll get to the second one in a bit) that it's hard to believe that it is in newspapers. You see, it aged, in real time, through the course of some 28 years. That's something few comics EVER do, and if they do it, they eventually stop. Nothing lasts like that for 30 years.
Yet FBoFW did. It's like a family soap opera, but without melodrama (mostly) and puns and jokes every strip. This makes it stand out verses the static comics like Blondie or Family Circus, who had similar set ups, but not be as bizarre as the true soap opera comics that I mostly skip because, well, I just don't care.
And it also managed to be memorable. Whether you liked or disliked the choices made by Lynn Johnston over the years, readers could remember them, and the characters grew up before your eyes. She even killed a few of them off, something none of those other comics would even consider doing in most situations. The death that stands out for me is the passing of Farley, the family dog. It was ballsy, but understandable (the dog was 14 years old at that point) and it stands out as one of those comic moments that few strips ever get and it worked.
Of course, Farley was replaced by his own son, so really, the dog didn't "leave" as much as get a make over. But I'm fine with that. Other situations and dramas occurred, and while none had the impact of Farley, they still made the comic stand out in a sea of blandness and sameness.
Then the end came. In August of 2008, For Better or For Worse came to an end. Kind of. The main, original storyline that had graced newspapers for 28 years came to a close. And was immediately followed by a strip reboot that started from the beginning.
I understand why she did it, after all, you can't make money on a strip that isn't published any more, and she had a staff of people who helped with the comic at the end. Still, why couldn't it have just ended and be gone? I suppose I can't say much, I don't mind Peanuts still being in papers, but that strip is timeless and classic, while FBoFW had a single story, and that story was over. Should it really be told again, from the beginning?
I do still read it though, but it's more like a habit than anything else. Still, I remember the comic for doing what so few (meaning none) newspaper comics do, tell a long term story.
Webcomics can learn a lot from For Better or For Worse, especially in long term story telling. No comic is as long lived as Johnston's strip, but a few are getting on in years now. Characters in webcomics can grow and change because they aren't limited by the comic syndicates or the demands of daily publishing, and the fact that a strip like theirs can succeed should stand out. It also should show that sometimes being bold with character development can pay off.
And it should serve as a warning that sometimes it's best to just let it go and not create yet another zombie comic to dominate the papers.
Next time, a comic that is nearly as universal as For Better or For Worse, but is the complete opposite of it in every significant way. And I wish it would die. Until then kiddies.
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