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Here's an interesting article. It's not mine, and I like some of the webcomics he bashes (SinFest, specifically) but the idea is sound and he says many important things. (Especially about that "We suck and we know it, ain't it funny?" phenomenon. God that's annoying.)
Article from here.
Article from here.
A COMMENTARY ON WHY WEBCOMICS SUCK, BY ALIAS HATRED
Sometimes something talented, something amazing and wonderful comes out of a webcomic. I know that Dave Kelly's work on his three webcomics has been a big influence on me, and has kept me drawing and creating through a tough time in my life. He also made me realize that anyone can put out a decent, truly funny/poignant/etc. comic, even though they may not draw like Watterson, George Herriman et al. He is one of the highlights of a scene that, by and large, sucks more than the Robbing Leach on the back of Mojo Jojo. Too often, webcomics are derivative, poorly drawn, and/or very poorly written. Some webcomics, like Sluggy Freelance and User Friendly, sacrifice funniness in lieu of some poor in-jokes and/or try to appeal to either a broad-based or extremely narrow-based audience. Finally, too many webcomics are self-absorbed and self-referential in the guise of "satire." How do so many webcomics suck? Well, let me count the ways...
NO TALENT: Anybody can open an account with Keenspace and put out a webcomic. Before my hard drive crashed in April, I was ready to put out a comic called "Liney & Squiggly," a comic featuring simple lines and shapes. It was well-received by everyone I showed it to, because the writing was good (anybody who's read or listened to Gonter Who will agree with me on that point). Of course, for every Supermegatopia or Shmorky.org, there are 1300 Weisshaupt Scholars and 1/0s that, by and large, make up the bunghole that is Keenspace. Usually, it's because the people who draw these comics don't know how to (and don't really want to know how to) draw, and cannot construct a stupid joke or plot to save their lives. Some of these no-talent comics are done by 13-year-olds, featuring MS Paint circles saying "naughty" things to MS Paint squares (these comics are almost always referred to as "the worst comic ever made", unknowing of the eighty webcomics worse than theirs). There are the comics written/drawn by the creator of the webcomic that try to rip off formulas other, more successful webcomics have already used. For instance, half the comics have to have a furry character, seeing how it worked for Sluggy Freelance, Freefall, Bruno the Bandit et al.. (I'm not going to mention the comics that rip off Sinfest.) Countless furry comics (e.g. West Corner of the Park, A Doemain Of Their Own, Gene Catlow, and goddamn Kevin & Kell) are either mediocre or throw in so many references to furry IRC chat rooms that they're almost unreadable. Finally, there are the "dramatic" webcomics written by high schoolers which have all the drama of root canal (Weisshaupt Scholars again). Unfortunately, 95% of all webcomics fit into this category, which is a damn shame.
Incidentally, 95% of all webcomics that suck are on Keenspace in one form or another.
DERIVATIVENESS (a/k/a THE MR. T ATE MY BALLS SYNDROME): The trend with the Mr. T Vs... comics is a good starting point. The Mr. T Vs... trend produced a few comics that were funny and in the vein of the original Mr. T Vs... comics, but most people came up with idiotic ideas like Mr. T Vs. The Spice Girls, Mr. T Vs. Sailor Moon etc. Oh, look, Mr. T says "sucka," throws someone helluva far, and so on. It was the same joke, with the same cut-out Mr. T pictures, repeated over and over again. Nowadays, some of the popular comics freely rip off Sinfest in its self-absorbed glory, or they come up with a carbon copy of PvP, User Friendly, Red Meat, or any other presently trendy webcomic (witness the Mega Man mini-trend of webcomics stripping whatever funny was in the original Mega Man webcomics, which was zilch). Again, most of these comics are on Keenspace, which I think will accept any idiot who applies to it.
AIMING AT A TOO-BROAD/TOO-SPECIFIC AUDIENCE (a/k/a THE USER FREELANCE SYNDROME): "JeffK's" webcomic parodies really do hit home, seeing as how they're poorly drawn, atrociously spelled and are composed of jokes and non sequiturs about HWO LUNIX SI SUPEORIOR SOFTWEAR & HWO MUCH DAIKATANA SI SUKCS!!!!!!!1!!1 In "JeffK's" webcomic, he talks about how much better his webcomic is than User Friendly. UF is one of the unfunniest comic strips, printed or web, in human history, due to the fact that it's a comic made for the quote-unquote "computer-geek." Mind you, there are competitors to the title of "unfunniest comic strip in history" (The Dinette Set, PvP, The Family Circus, Cathy and Helen Sweetheart of the Internet all have dibs on that title), but the creators of UF are in the running for the title due to the fact that there are no jokes in the webcomic, just jabs at people not using Linux. It's like Dilbert with all of the jokes removed (yes, Dilbert is also one of the worst comic strips of all time, though it can't beat On The Fastrack for unfunniness). I also mention Sluggy Freelance (and no, it's not because The Explosive Diarrhea Avenger hates it so much) as the comic had a lot of potential, but presently is a conduit for lame television show parodies (Muffin the Vampire Baker, indeed) and a hell of a lot of science-fiction references (the initials of the comic are S.F., after all). In the hands of a more capable webcomic writer, plot points like Aylee's physical changes and Zoe's turning into a camel could yield truly funny moments (or else strange moments like when Ramona Fradon and Linda Sutter took over Brenda Starr), but in the hands of Peter Abrams, the comic is a poorly-drawn, poorly-written piece of **** meant for "sci-fi nerds" who apparently haven't seen an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 yet. A truly funny comic strip, in my opinion, should not appeal to any specific audience, and it shouldn't refer to itself by saying "LOOK I MADE A REFERENCE TO ERASERHEAD BECAUSE BUNBUN'S REAL NAME IS DAVID LYNCH HURR HURR BUY A WINUX 2005 T-SHIRT". There should be some kind of reaction on a purely personal level, and the writing should try to appeal to, if not all people, at least those who appreciate good webcomics, demographics be damned. Webcomics like Ozy & Millie, Living in Greytown, and Supermegatopia understand this. While the target audience for the webcomics (furry, furry/dramatic and superhero parody/furry) is specific, at least there's some semblance of quality to be found underneath the obvious references to Colin Mochrie and Captain America. As such, comics like User Friendly and Sluggy Freelance don't reach that level of quality, because it's not there to start out with. Of course, with UF, it was never there, either.
SELF-ABSORPTION AND SELF-REFERENCE IN THE GUISE OF "SATIRE" (a/k/a THE SINFEST SYNDROME): 1/0 is a perfect example of self-absorbed writing disguising itself as "satire." 1/0 started off with some guy talking about starting a webcomic, but he didn't have any characters. His first character, as I remember, was a scribble, followed by some more poor drawings and a human character with a pegleg (though I'm not exactly sure, since I haven't bothered to read 1/0 at any point in my life). All through the comic, the main character kept referring to the fact that 1/0 was really really bad. 1/0 was, and is, so saturated with this sort of self-importance that the nonexistent joke was made even more so by the fact that the guy couldn't draw, in which he's pointed that fact out throughout the webcomic's history to this day. Take also the case of the-then Otaku Feh Vs. Sinfest. The mere fact that Otaku Feh could parodize the "hip, edgy" Sinfest sent the creator of the comic (the name escapes me at this point) into a defensive mode, suggesting that Dave Kelly was slandering the name of Sinfest. Of course, in one Big Ones Princess Toadstool was sucking Yoshi's ****. It was obvious that Sinfest was taking itself too seriously, whereas it was obvious that Otaku Feh was done for ****s and giggles. I've read a few Sinfest comic strips, and I don't find the webcomic all that funny. In my opinion, the main character with the sunglasses and the fruity getup is an obvious Calvin ripoff, and the characters' frequent talks to God are tedious. The comic gives off this air of overratedness around it. These are just two examples of what seems to be a sad trend in webcomics: the "irony" of referring to the process of making and/or being in a webcomic. This idea is not really new in popular culture (Saturday Night Live popularized the idea in 1975, for example), but whereas with the print comics there's very little in the way of self-references and personal opinions in the guise of satire (Non Sequitur, The Boondocks and The Dinette Set notwithstanding), in webcomics it's more obvious. In fifty years comics have gone from Peanuts, Pogo and Calvin and Hobbes, comics with some semblance of actual satire and truthfulness, to stuff like Red Meat (I never understood why cutouts from 50's magazines with "inappropriate" dialogue are supposed to be funny...besides, This Modern World did it first and worse) and the glut of webcomics that scream "I HAVE NO TALENT!!! I CAN'T DRAW!!! THIS COMIC SUCKS AND I'M GOING TO POINT OUT THAT IT SUCKS!!!!!" The fact that the webcomic creator can't draw may be obvious, but mentioning that fact and repeating it every day for the webcomic's existence gets old mighty quick. For some reason, though, these webcomics end up becoming the most popular, which is something even Dexter might not be able to explain.
Okay, I've explained what I don't like in a webcomic. What do I like in a webcomic? First off, it has to actually emotionally respond to me. If it's a funny comic, it has to be truly funny and not just ironically sarcastic for the sake of being sarcastically ironic. If it's a furry comic, it has to avoid the spectre of "furry writing" and lame injokes to a "horse-fur" freebasing Altoids. If it's a dramatic comic, it has to be more than a cynical soap opera, and so on. Second, there has to be at least some talent in the writing department (this is where writing is more important than art). Third, I expect at least some originality in the creative process--this would mean actually coming up with a multifaceted character instead of making the character an archetype (i.e. characters should not be "The Evil One," "The Cool One," "The Nerdy One," "He Who Must Not Be Named [The Mysterious One]," and so forth). If the webcomic is furry (hell, half of them are), archetypes should be done away with altogether, as almost every furry character in almost every furry webcomic is an archetype (e.g. The Shy Mouse, The Cunning Fox, The Incredibly Pissed-Off Shrew, Mrs. Brisby Ripoff, and hundreds of other variations on a theme). Fourth, trend-jumping is anathema to the death of the webcomic. Just because Widget the World Watcher in-jokes are popular right now does not mean that I should be spoon-fed references to episodes where Widget turns into a flamingo. Finally, and this is most important, NO ONE SHOULD PASS OFF HAVING NO TALENT AND POINTING OUT THAT OBVIOUS FACT AS "SATIRE." THE READERS CAN SEE THAT THE COMIC SUCKS, BUT MAKING FUN OF IT DOESN'T MAKE IT NOT SUCK.
Anyway, that's a load off my chest. Okay, it's just a load, but at least I'm not full of ****.
Sometimes something talented, something amazing and wonderful comes out of a webcomic. I know that Dave Kelly's work on his three webcomics has been a big influence on me, and has kept me drawing and creating through a tough time in my life. He also made me realize that anyone can put out a decent, truly funny/poignant/etc. comic, even though they may not draw like Watterson, George Herriman et al. He is one of the highlights of a scene that, by and large, sucks more than the Robbing Leach on the back of Mojo Jojo. Too often, webcomics are derivative, poorly drawn, and/or very poorly written. Some webcomics, like Sluggy Freelance and User Friendly, sacrifice funniness in lieu of some poor in-jokes and/or try to appeal to either a broad-based or extremely narrow-based audience. Finally, too many webcomics are self-absorbed and self-referential in the guise of "satire." How do so many webcomics suck? Well, let me count the ways...
NO TALENT: Anybody can open an account with Keenspace and put out a webcomic. Before my hard drive crashed in April, I was ready to put out a comic called "Liney & Squiggly," a comic featuring simple lines and shapes. It was well-received by everyone I showed it to, because the writing was good (anybody who's read or listened to Gonter Who will agree with me on that point). Of course, for every Supermegatopia or Shmorky.org, there are 1300 Weisshaupt Scholars and 1/0s that, by and large, make up the bunghole that is Keenspace. Usually, it's because the people who draw these comics don't know how to (and don't really want to know how to) draw, and cannot construct a stupid joke or plot to save their lives. Some of these no-talent comics are done by 13-year-olds, featuring MS Paint circles saying "naughty" things to MS Paint squares (these comics are almost always referred to as "the worst comic ever made", unknowing of the eighty webcomics worse than theirs). There are the comics written/drawn by the creator of the webcomic that try to rip off formulas other, more successful webcomics have already used. For instance, half the comics have to have a furry character, seeing how it worked for Sluggy Freelance, Freefall, Bruno the Bandit et al.. (I'm not going to mention the comics that rip off Sinfest.) Countless furry comics (e.g. West Corner of the Park, A Doemain Of Their Own, Gene Catlow, and goddamn Kevin & Kell) are either mediocre or throw in so many references to furry IRC chat rooms that they're almost unreadable. Finally, there are the "dramatic" webcomics written by high schoolers which have all the drama of root canal (Weisshaupt Scholars again). Unfortunately, 95% of all webcomics fit into this category, which is a damn shame.
Incidentally, 95% of all webcomics that suck are on Keenspace in one form or another.
DERIVATIVENESS (a/k/a THE MR. T ATE MY BALLS SYNDROME): The trend with the Mr. T Vs... comics is a good starting point. The Mr. T Vs... trend produced a few comics that were funny and in the vein of the original Mr. T Vs... comics, but most people came up with idiotic ideas like Mr. T Vs. The Spice Girls, Mr. T Vs. Sailor Moon etc. Oh, look, Mr. T says "sucka," throws someone helluva far, and so on. It was the same joke, with the same cut-out Mr. T pictures, repeated over and over again. Nowadays, some of the popular comics freely rip off Sinfest in its self-absorbed glory, or they come up with a carbon copy of PvP, User Friendly, Red Meat, or any other presently trendy webcomic (witness the Mega Man mini-trend of webcomics stripping whatever funny was in the original Mega Man webcomics, which was zilch). Again, most of these comics are on Keenspace, which I think will accept any idiot who applies to it.
AIMING AT A TOO-BROAD/TOO-SPECIFIC AUDIENCE (a/k/a THE USER FREELANCE SYNDROME): "JeffK's" webcomic parodies really do hit home, seeing as how they're poorly drawn, atrociously spelled and are composed of jokes and non sequiturs about HWO LUNIX SI SUPEORIOR SOFTWEAR & HWO MUCH DAIKATANA SI SUKCS!!!!!!!1!!1 In "JeffK's" webcomic, he talks about how much better his webcomic is than User Friendly. UF is one of the unfunniest comic strips, printed or web, in human history, due to the fact that it's a comic made for the quote-unquote "computer-geek." Mind you, there are competitors to the title of "unfunniest comic strip in history" (The Dinette Set, PvP, The Family Circus, Cathy and Helen Sweetheart of the Internet all have dibs on that title), but the creators of UF are in the running for the title due to the fact that there are no jokes in the webcomic, just jabs at people not using Linux. It's like Dilbert with all of the jokes removed (yes, Dilbert is also one of the worst comic strips of all time, though it can't beat On The Fastrack for unfunniness). I also mention Sluggy Freelance (and no, it's not because The Explosive Diarrhea Avenger hates it so much) as the comic had a lot of potential, but presently is a conduit for lame television show parodies (Muffin the Vampire Baker, indeed) and a hell of a lot of science-fiction references (the initials of the comic are S.F., after all). In the hands of a more capable webcomic writer, plot points like Aylee's physical changes and Zoe's turning into a camel could yield truly funny moments (or else strange moments like when Ramona Fradon and Linda Sutter took over Brenda Starr), but in the hands of Peter Abrams, the comic is a poorly-drawn, poorly-written piece of **** meant for "sci-fi nerds" who apparently haven't seen an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 yet. A truly funny comic strip, in my opinion, should not appeal to any specific audience, and it shouldn't refer to itself by saying "LOOK I MADE A REFERENCE TO ERASERHEAD BECAUSE BUNBUN'S REAL NAME IS DAVID LYNCH HURR HURR BUY A WINUX 2005 T-SHIRT". There should be some kind of reaction on a purely personal level, and the writing should try to appeal to, if not all people, at least those who appreciate good webcomics, demographics be damned. Webcomics like Ozy & Millie, Living in Greytown, and Supermegatopia understand this. While the target audience for the webcomics (furry, furry/dramatic and superhero parody/furry) is specific, at least there's some semblance of quality to be found underneath the obvious references to Colin Mochrie and Captain America. As such, comics like User Friendly and Sluggy Freelance don't reach that level of quality, because it's not there to start out with. Of course, with UF, it was never there, either.
SELF-ABSORPTION AND SELF-REFERENCE IN THE GUISE OF "SATIRE" (a/k/a THE SINFEST SYNDROME): 1/0 is a perfect example of self-absorbed writing disguising itself as "satire." 1/0 started off with some guy talking about starting a webcomic, but he didn't have any characters. His first character, as I remember, was a scribble, followed by some more poor drawings and a human character with a pegleg (though I'm not exactly sure, since I haven't bothered to read 1/0 at any point in my life). All through the comic, the main character kept referring to the fact that 1/0 was really really bad. 1/0 was, and is, so saturated with this sort of self-importance that the nonexistent joke was made even more so by the fact that the guy couldn't draw, in which he's pointed that fact out throughout the webcomic's history to this day. Take also the case of the-then Otaku Feh Vs. Sinfest. The mere fact that Otaku Feh could parodize the "hip, edgy" Sinfest sent the creator of the comic (the name escapes me at this point) into a defensive mode, suggesting that Dave Kelly was slandering the name of Sinfest. Of course, in one Big Ones Princess Toadstool was sucking Yoshi's ****. It was obvious that Sinfest was taking itself too seriously, whereas it was obvious that Otaku Feh was done for ****s and giggles. I've read a few Sinfest comic strips, and I don't find the webcomic all that funny. In my opinion, the main character with the sunglasses and the fruity getup is an obvious Calvin ripoff, and the characters' frequent talks to God are tedious. The comic gives off this air of overratedness around it. These are just two examples of what seems to be a sad trend in webcomics: the "irony" of referring to the process of making and/or being in a webcomic. This idea is not really new in popular culture (Saturday Night Live popularized the idea in 1975, for example), but whereas with the print comics there's very little in the way of self-references and personal opinions in the guise of satire (Non Sequitur, The Boondocks and The Dinette Set notwithstanding), in webcomics it's more obvious. In fifty years comics have gone from Peanuts, Pogo and Calvin and Hobbes, comics with some semblance of actual satire and truthfulness, to stuff like Red Meat (I never understood why cutouts from 50's magazines with "inappropriate" dialogue are supposed to be funny...besides, This Modern World did it first and worse) and the glut of webcomics that scream "I HAVE NO TALENT!!! I CAN'T DRAW!!! THIS COMIC SUCKS AND I'M GOING TO POINT OUT THAT IT SUCKS!!!!!" The fact that the webcomic creator can't draw may be obvious, but mentioning that fact and repeating it every day for the webcomic's existence gets old mighty quick. For some reason, though, these webcomics end up becoming the most popular, which is something even Dexter might not be able to explain.
Okay, I've explained what I don't like in a webcomic. What do I like in a webcomic? First off, it has to actually emotionally respond to me. If it's a funny comic, it has to be truly funny and not just ironically sarcastic for the sake of being sarcastically ironic. If it's a furry comic, it has to avoid the spectre of "furry writing" and lame injokes to a "horse-fur" freebasing Altoids. If it's a dramatic comic, it has to be more than a cynical soap opera, and so on. Second, there has to be at least some talent in the writing department (this is where writing is more important than art). Third, I expect at least some originality in the creative process--this would mean actually coming up with a multifaceted character instead of making the character an archetype (i.e. characters should not be "The Evil One," "The Cool One," "The Nerdy One," "He Who Must Not Be Named [The Mysterious One]," and so forth). If the webcomic is furry (hell, half of them are), archetypes should be done away with altogether, as almost every furry character in almost every furry webcomic is an archetype (e.g. The Shy Mouse, The Cunning Fox, The Incredibly Pissed-Off Shrew, Mrs. Brisby Ripoff, and hundreds of other variations on a theme). Fourth, trend-jumping is anathema to the death of the webcomic. Just because Widget the World Watcher in-jokes are popular right now does not mean that I should be spoon-fed references to episodes where Widget turns into a flamingo. Finally, and this is most important, NO ONE SHOULD PASS OFF HAVING NO TALENT AND POINTING OUT THAT OBVIOUS FACT AS "SATIRE." THE READERS CAN SEE THAT THE COMIC SUCKS, BUT MAKING FUN OF IT DOESN'T MAKE IT NOT SUCK.
Anyway, that's a load off my chest. Okay, it's just a load, but at least I'm not full of ****.
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