I’ve been a subscriber of Modern Tales (and Graphic Smash, and Girlamatic) for about a year and a half now.

As such, it is with quite a bit of eagerness that I look forward to the upcoming changes in the pipeline. I am not entirely sure when those changes are coming, but they’ve been in the works for a few months now.

Part of the change is that the comics will no longer be subscription based. Or at least, mostly so – the announcement indicates that some subscription aspects will remain. Hmm. We’ll see how it goes.

So, obviously, as a paying subscriber, that’s good news to me – but that’s not really the part of the changes I anticipate.

Eric Burns is the new editor of Modern Tales. That’s obviously a big thing. He has done a lot for the field, has a lot of good outlooks on the way things should work, and will no doubt do a lot of good things in the position.

But again… not directly what I care about.

All I truly have, deep inside, is a small, tiny little hope that maybe Modern Tales will finally have an infrastructure that doesn’t totally suck balls.

Ok, that was a bit harsh, towards a system that features a lot of comics I know and love. But I stand by the statement anyway.

A year and a half of subscription to Modern Tales is not a vast amount of time. The total cost for that much subscription time is, say, around $150 bucks. Not a ridiculous sum of money.

Nonetheless, looking back upon my experience with them, I’d say that I’ve spent much of that time disappointed with the service.

I joined Modern Tales for one reason – Narbonic.
I joined Graphic Smash for one reason – Fans.
I joined Girlamatic for one reason – Li’l Mell.

Since joining, sure, I found other comics in the system to enjoy. But in each case, it was one single strip that pulled me in – two of them being strips I had read for years previously, while the last one was obviously something of an offshoot from one of them.

Fans ended. Fortunately, Graphic Smash continued to offer me a variety of comics to read, which updated consistently and in quantity.

Girlamatic had a few comics I read. It went through a low stretch where many of my favorites – Astronaut Elementary, Kismet: Hunter’s Moon, Smile – left it behind, but it brought in a variety of very good new strips.

Modern Tales itself, however… simply withered.

It still had Narbonic, of course. And Narbonic is good enough to carry the collective on its back singlehandedly. Access to the Narbonic archives is worth the subscription price alone.

Still. That is a distressing state of things.

These days, a bare handful of strips update on Modern Tales on any given day. Less than half of those are ones that I specifically am interested in – which in and of itself, I expect. But when that ratio translates to one or two comics, and nothing more… it is shameful.

Now, when Eric Burns joined the staff, he began accepting submissions for new comics to join the fold. So no doubt the quantity will improve.

Part of the problem, I suppose, is that webcomics are constantly in motion. New ones are started, old ones end, or fade away, or move elsewhere. With the strips that are part of the collective, many will move on towards striking out on their own, or leave the medium entirely. It is not something that I could see any easy solution to, of course. Despite this – when someone pays a fee to get access to a strip, and then suddenly that strip is elsewhere – either freely available or gone for good – it is disappointing. Finding a better solution should be the exact sort of goal one would think would be set by Modern Tales.

These days, it is a wasteland. There is Narbonic. There are a few others – some of which I enjoy, some of which don’t interest me, some of which are simply republished work from earlier. But… a bare handful at best. It is barren, empty and lifeless.

As I said… a distressing state of things.

Strike one.

My other concerns regard the navigation of the site. Namely, the organization of the comics.

Lets look at Graphic Smash, as it actually has enough comics of interest to me to be relevant. Assuming all goes well, I am able to easily browse the comics.

I log in every morning, take a look at what comics have been updated, and read the latest updates. That experience – which is, in fact, the one faced by one who browses the site for free – is perfectly fine.

But we don’t always get to read every comic every day. Let’s say something goes wrong. I miss a week of updates. Fortunately, thats why I subscribe – access to the archives!

I log on, and see which comics were updated that day. Now… how do I tell which ones were updated yesterday?

Ah.

I don’t.

I have to manually go into every comic and see whether or not it has updated. And scroll back through the archives to see whether I missed multiple updates.

So, no automatic function listing what pages updated when. Well, maybe that is a bit too much to ask – after all, I suppose it could be a bit tricky coordinating a backlog of listings like that. I’d think that to be exactly the sort of service a site like Modern Tales would want to provide… but no matter.

But I can’t even just take a quick glance at a strip’s archives to jump back through the dates.

Because the dates aren’t. even. freaking. listed.

I mean, c’mon! Dudes! What the fuck, man, just… what the fuck.

Strike two.

So, Modern Tales is a subscription based site. As such, at the core of the system, it requires a log-in service to browse the subscription content areas of the site.

Which is why I find it sad, and a bit distressing, that it cannot easily store your log-in info between sessions.

I mean, that would be handy, right? Quite a convenience.

But, ok, fine, not a necessity.

So, I find myself wanting to look up a specific strip in the archives. I go to Modern Tales. Select the comic I want. Go to the archives. Select the story-arc. Select the specific strip – at which point it requests a log-in.

Sure, no problem. I log in.

And… bam, back at the front page. Oh, gee, thanks. Time to dig through four layers of infrastructure once again.

Or say I click on a link from another site to a specific strip. Again, it requests a log-in – and once I’ve logged in, I’m at the front page.

Does it ruin my comic reading experience? No, of course not. It is an inconvenience, and nothing more.

But I really don’t like to pay for inconveniences.

Strike three.

Joey Manley created this new collective, the Modern Tales family. It has been around for… what, four years now?

And at its core, it is built on a navigational system that seems cobbled together. That has countless little quirks that make manuevering the site frustrating – and that haven’t been fixed in the years it has been around.

The majority of the free webcomics I read have far better, far easier, far more convenient browsing systems. I can find my way through archives without difficulty. It isn’t an ordeal.

Modern Tales doesn’t offer that, despite being, supposedly, professional.

They’ve realized, apparently, that the subscription model is not the key to success. Other means of financial gain are being utilized.

But at least for me personally, I wonder whether it would have met with, at least, more success had the system actually been designed properly. Made user-friendly and kept up to date. Perhaps including a link on the site for feedback would have helped – sure, the forums are there, but it requires quite a bit of effort to hunt down how to directly contact the editor of each site if you don’t already know who they are.

That doesn’t scream professionalism to me.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there is some magic button you can click to fix the problems I run into. But I haven’t found it yet, and I’ve taken a look around. All to no avail.

In any case, changes are coming.

I don’t know, yet, what those changes will mean. I don’t know how much they plan to alter the site, and what will be left once the new work is revealed.

But I hope the changes involve revamping the site entirely. I really hope that things get fixed, and are user-friendly. I hope the experience of using the site becomes an enjoyable one, not an exercise in frustration. Modern Tales has a ton of potential, several truly great comics, and some very dedicated editors. I’d really, really like to not feel bitterness when using their service.

We’ll see what happens.

For now, all I can do is hope for the best.

I like characters that I can understand in the webcomics I read. I don’t have to know every secret and hidden twist to a character, but I like a character that makes sense to me. That, at least in some regard, I can understand and accept as something more than random gibberish.

That concern of mine is what drives my biggest beef with Ctrl-Alt-Delete. This gamer comic is the subject of much controversy, from its quality to the artist’s behavior to its current foray into animation.

For myself? It’s a fine comic. I’ve enjoyed some of the stories, I like the art and the jokes are sometimes clever. I haven’t exactly been impressed with some of Tim Buckley’s behavior in the past, but I don’t always have to agree with an artist in order to enjoy their work. And I think if his animation is fun for those who watch it, awesome! More entertainment is a good thing.

But the main character of his comic, Ethan? Pisses me the hell off.

The character is a crazy video game addict. Period. The joke is that he has no connection to reality, and hence, acts crazy. Doesn’t think things through, doesn’t seem to understand how the real world works, and thus, gets into crazy hijinks and so forth. And the entire world seems built to accommodate him. It is infuriating.

It is not that a character who acts off the wall is inherently bad. The most recent Loserz does a good job of showing a character doing something random and batshit crazy, but it makes perfect sense. We can see Ben’s thought process, twisted as may be, that leads to the batshit craziness. It is good characterization.

Ethan’s craziness exists for one reason – to let more random zany adventures occur. Period. And because he’s the main character, and perfect, the world accepts him having no depth whatsoever. His boss is fine that he doesn’t actually come in and work, his girlfriend doesn’t care about his behavior, his best friend always forgives him after he burns their house down.

It isn’t that I dislike Ctrl-Alt-Delete. I like the comic. I like most of the other characters on their own, and I especially like the stand–alone strips.

Call me crazy, but I just really hate Ethan.

8-Bit Theatre, by Brian Clevinger, is regarded as one of the most successful sprite based webcomics on the net.

Like many sprite comics, the characters are ‘borrowed’ from a video game – the original Final Fantasy game for the nintendo, to be specific. The story from the game is retold with much more laughs, chaos, hijinks, and so forth. Various characters are given distinct personalities – red mage is the rules lawyer; thief is, well, a thief; fighter is really dumb; black mage is pure evil.

By and large it is pretty good, even if sometimes the humor is often the same joke about those personality traits.

The main problem, though, is the art.

Now, being a sprite comic – being, in fact, an ‘8-Bit’ comic, means the art has obvious limitations. And sometimes Clevinger transcends those limitations and does impressive stuff with the art.

Unfortunately, sometimes he… doesn’t. And the art makes it really hard to tell whats going on.

Recently the characters ‘powered up’ and got all new outfits, most of which look bad-ass.

Unfortunately, Black Mage got an outfit that makes him look like a clown. Or something. I can’t really tell what the outfit is supposed to be, other than making it look like he is running around without any pants. No pants! That is simply disturbing.

Making use of a limited medium doesn’t mean the art has to be weak or confusing. Order of the Stick, as I mentioned before, does amazing things despite being a ‘stick figure’ comic. A Modest Destiny (sadly no longer viewable directly on the site), was a very good sprite comic when one looked past all the drama that surrounded it. Good clean art. Distinct characters, backgrounds, layout.

8-Bit Theatre is a good webcomic. It will continue to remain popular. Story can surpass art.

But please, in the name of all that is good in this world, give black mage his pants back!

Goats was a comic that I had heard about on numerous occasions before finally getting around to seeing what all the fuss was about, and finding myself surprised that I enjoyed it. Zany antics, some decent character interaction, and a nice evolving art style that was enjoyably active, made for a combination that really grabbed hold of me.

It’s come a long way from where it started, and has recently been undergoing some intense changes, both in the characters and the nature of the strip itself. Much of the past year has been taken up by one storyline – Infinite Typewriters. This is a deep and complex story arc that seems to have intense, lasting implications for the characters. Drama rears its ugly head. Characters are placed at bitter odds with each other, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. Goats will never be the same again.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I loved Infinite Typewriters. There has been a slew of interesting concepts throughout this plot that have really engaged me, while the strip still continues to consistently deliver its somewhat absurdist humor. It features my favorite character in the strip, Fineas. It does some remarkable things with other characters, including the change of Diablo the Chicken from the crazy psycho who stirs up trouble in the strip, to the sole remaining voice of reason.

There are great scenes throughout the entire arc – The Lords of Death, the confrontation between Fish and Fineas, the pub stub. All great moments, all the sort of things that were leading me to really crazing on Infinite Typewriters, and eagerly checking each new strip. And it got to the conclusion of the story arc and… and…

And, by and large, I was letdown. Some adversaries were disposed of in an almost offhand fashion, as Toothgnip the Goat and his alien minions are simply portaled away to parts unknown. Oliver and his minions are similarly removed from the picture.

The moment of climax that the story seemed to be building up to was almost casually defused. And suddenly an even more looming threat appears – the universe is unstable. It is threatened by Total Permanent Fatal Shutdown. ‘The Programmer’ must be found to save things, and suddenly all manner of other random characters are popping into the picture in pursuit of unknown ends, and more questions arise than answers. And less than a month after Oliver was banished away – one of the few real resolutions thus far – he is being retrieved.

And, well… I can’t say I’m unhappy with the strip. Even throughout all the crisis going on, the jokes are still funny, the characters are still lively. The most recent strip is a great example of this – “There is no amount of sarcasm that will allow me to adequately express just how terrible this plan is.” I mean, that’s a great line. It’s simply perfect punctuation for the strip, the sort of thing I can really groove on. So the strip is still good, sure.

And yet, you see my hesitance. Long, involved stories are a good thing, but a climax has to come eventually. Perhaps the fault is mine, for expecting the build-up at the end of Infinite Typewriters to result in such a climax. But on some level, only so much build-up and anticipation can be endured before things need to reach some level of closure. And with so many open-ended questions being added into the picture, I am unsure how long this plot will continue, and whether it will continue to be able to sustain itself as it goes.

I’m not going away, of course. The strip still has a lot to keep me there, and keep me enjoying parts of it. But the anticipation I was feeling over the storyline is starting to fester, and turn more into tedious expectation. And I don’t want that to be the way I’m looking at this story I’ve been enjoying.

So I’m going to stick with it, and see what happens – and it might be that things become clearer and quicker, and I get pulled back in kicking and screaming.

Nothing to do at this point, but wait and see what Rosenberg is going to come up with next.