A Roll of the Dice
Over at Commissioned, they announced the advent of a new comics collective, Gamers Pair of Dice. As someone who recognizes that webcomic collectives are generally a good thing, and being a gamer myself, I dutifully went browsing through several of the strips.
I was… well, I did find myself grinning at some of them. But I’m sad to say that the majority of them left me underwhelmed.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call them Penny Arcade rip-offs. They are simply exploring the same field and making jokes on much the same subject matter, and that is perfectly fine.
But even if I don’t make the accusation, the comparison is inevitable. Penny Arcade mastered that genre of strips before most of them began, and as such, it is hard for them to stand out. The mere presence of the webcomics juggernaut, in some ways, stifles those trying to follow in its footsteps.
On another note entirely, one of the strips – a guest strip, even – left its mark on me. More specifically, it set Gato’s little song running through my head over and over again! I spoke yesterday about my poor memory, and I haven’t played the game for years, but I’ll be damned if simply seeing a virtual screenshot didn’t send the song rampaging through my mind on repeat!
Choose Your Own Crap
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is one of those horrifyingly funny gag comics that you can easily snicker about with your friends. It is great for providing one-liner inside jokes that will puzzle those who haven’t read the comic, but cause your friends to keel over with laughter. (I can make puppies appear anywhere!)
So I was beating myself up when I noticed that the author did several other web-comics as well.
Then I made the mistake of reading them. Oh, I can tolerate Chason, and I have a tendency to avoid journal comics as a whole, so that wasn’t really his fault.
The real problem was with the third strip, Zach Your Own Adventure. Wherein I realized that there seemed to be a trend for ‘choose your own adventure’ style comics to often be absymally bad.
I recall a similar sequence at Punks and Nerds, that seemed to go much the same way.
There, like here, the entire sequence was a bunch of stupid random crap. There wasn’t any real jokes other than, well, the shocking chaos of what was happening. The highlight was the choice itself – the fact that the strip was chosen by the audience.
Which, well, its a cool idea. But if it doesn’t produce material actually worth looking at, what’s the point?
The problem is, the audience is composed of a bunch of random blokes who don’t know – or don’t agree on – how to tell a good joke, or a good story. You can’t just throw a bunch of topics at them and expect for it to result in anything interesting. They may be engaged in the process of making the choose, and enthused if their choice wins out – but the content itself becomes meaningless.
The other issue with these strips? Because the main point of it is to let the reader choose, the author doesn’t have to put any thought into the options at hand. It doesn’t matter if they are funny or not, it doesn’t matter if they would use them on their own if they were writing the strip. All the user cares about is the choice, so as long as they present choices, the quality of those options is irrelevant.
Now, it can be done well.
[Insert Title Here], which sadly appears to be on hiatus, is a fully fan-written strip that actually has promise.
The key is that they don’t let the entire audience choose a random topic for the author to interpret. Nah. They actually have people submit scripts for each page, and choose the best one to go with.
Clever, still interactive, and producing actually decent material. I like it.
Another comic that has pulled it off well is Goblins. It has a rather extensive feature about a goblin named Tempts Fate, and the bad situations he seems to wind up in. The reader’s donations (and occasional poll) determines whether he lives or dies, how well he does, and occasional other information.
But that doesn’t mean the man behind the comic slacks about it. He puts together pretty damn sizable pages with genuinely interesting results having been influenced by the readers. The final product is actually readable.
Again, I like that.
The lesson here is that if you are going to have these sort of drives or randomly reader-driven strips… don’t settle for that being the whole of them. Sure, even if you don’t put any effort into it, it will still stir up some excitement while its running. But once the moment of the gimmick is over, it’s useless – it is some random crap sitting on the site for people to read. That doesn’t impress anyone.
I like the idea of reader input. I think the way the web works allows for interesting events like this, for an interactivity between the creator and the audience.
Which makes it all the more depressing to see the potential in those sort of interactions thoroughly wasted.
A mysterious case of the Mondays?
Man, it appears to be one of those days where I’ve got way too much to talk about, and not nearly enough time to do so.
I laughed at Megatokyo today. Man, I miss that.
Sinfest is back, and has a new website! Once upon a time, I thought Sinfest was one of the most solidly updating comics out there. These days, it has its share of occasional absences, but always returns in the end. It has had some very good storylines over the last year, without losing its normal brand of humor. And now seeing the newest comic doesn’t requiring scrolling down the page ten times!
DnDorks has been getting back to its original cast of characters. This is cool and all, but I still find myself inexplicably confused by the previous arc, despite still thinking the story was awesome. However, things seem to indicate we’ll get some explanation for stuff. Maybe. I dunno. Eh, whatever. It’s a cool comic and captures the gaming experience well. That’s pretty much all I care about.
Man, my posts today seem faintly bitter, and I’m not sure why – I was actually really happy about all these comics today.
Let’s try some focusing here. On a completely upbeat note, Girly has been rocking out of late, and the upcoming storyline looks to have something to do with Policeguy, one of my favorite characters. So that’s awesome.
Anyway, time to get back to work! Tune in tomorrow, when I don’t talk about webcomics at all. Oooo, mysterious.
Ok, maybe not so much.
Whatever happened to Sam?
I’ve been surprised that I haven’t seen more discussion on the recent events in Sam and Fuzzy.
So. Half a year ago, Sam and Fuzzy wrapped up one hell of a storyline. And then the dynamic duo took the last bus out of town, and drove off into parts unknown.
Since then, well… stuff has happened. What I’ve really been grooving on are the little vignettes with the blank mask ninja – a rather likeable character – tracing the path they took, prepared to hunt them down for… well, vengeance, death, etc, presumably.
The rest of our time has been occupied by the band Noosehead, which has added a whole pile of new characters to the show. They’ve engaged in hijinks and drama – often instigated by our good friend Fuzzy, who seems to have joined their crew.
And it’s good stuff. I mean, I don’t think Sam Logan could make a bad comic if he tried. The strip still brings the funny, the strip still brings the story.
But still…. somewhere, in the back of our minds, we’re wondering – Where’s Sam?
Well, guess he’s been right under our noses all this time.
The last few strips have hinted at, and then outright revealed, the truth: Aaron, one of the random roadies we’ve been introduced to, turns out to be Sam in disguise.
And it works. I mean, once you know what to look for, you can see Sam underneath. Looking back through the archives, you can see some of the signs. Heck, maybe everyone else figured this out months ago, and it was only a surprise to me.
Anyway. Sam’s back. Sam is back!
Where does that leave us?
Sam has the right of it – all the mafia ninjas may have wandered on their merry way, but one still remains, tracking him down. We don’t know much about him, but it seems clear that we’re building up to a showdown.
From there? I suspect we’ll be bidding Noosehead goodbye for a while. While there is still conflict within the band itself, I don’t think it will stay that way forever.
Of course, things are nice and peaceful back in the world Sam left behind, too.
(Also, anyone notice that the person ‘Aaron’ really looks like is Lance?)
Anyway, I can’t really tell where Sam and Fuzzy will be heading in the long run. But I sure as hell am glad that Sam is back in one form or another, and suspect the upcoming showdown will live up to the caliber of story that Logan has been recently cranking out.
So welcome back, Sam. Ninjas and all.
Ow.
Right. Don’t fuck with Fineas.
Duly noted.
Man, this sequence might well be a fine demonstration of the little orange fish kicking ass, but the eye-popping thing?
Really wigs me out.
It seems to be a theme of late – Ornery Boy has featured a bit of the same, and the threat of dangling orbs has made me hesitant to keep an eye on it (so to speak) to check for updates.
I know at least one other comic recently had something similar, though I can’t receall exactly which one – my own faulty memory keeping me safe, perhaps.
Oy. I don’t know why it gets to me, given how little I am usually phased by graphic violence. Tear out someones heart? Whatever. Stab them in the neck? Meh.
But popping out eyes? That’s just creepy, man.
The more things change…
Hahaha, vomit is funny!
Ok, in all seriousness, I’ve really been enjoying the Shecky storyline. I like the little guy, and I like seeing his interaction with the rest of the cast and crew – especially Skull.
Sure, the entire thing has been rather predictable – but that doesn’t really detract from how enjoyable it is.
What I didn’t expect was that the storyline would make me realize exactly how much I was a fan of Skull himself. It is something that has been developing more of late (especially since reading the Origin of Skull in the PvP comic book.)
In any case, these story arc seems to be coming to a close, and Kurtz continues to deliver. I, for one, am glad he was willing to stick it out.
A slip in … space… makes pace? Hmm, somewhat lost myself with that little line…
At heart, I read comics because I like stories.
This isn’t to say I don’t read my fair share of gag-a-day strips, or strips that emphasize art over writing.
But the comics I really find at the top of my list, the ones I find myself the most invested in… are the ones with a powerful story.
I’ll confess something – I never read Checkerboard Nightmare.
I tried. I really did, several times. I tried reading from the beginning. I tried starting in at some later storylines. But… it just wasn’t for me.
And that’s fair, I can respect that.
Then he started Starslip Crisis. And I was able to get in on that right from the start, and hey – that worked out well. I found myself reading it consistently, and enjoying it – a random humor strip about an art museum in the far future. A chance for him to poke fun at certain elements without having be blatant about it. I tossed it on my list as some light reading material, and it was fun.
And because I started out with that mindset, I didn’t really notice exactly what was going on in the strip. See, Starslip Crisis has a very good sense of pacing. It was developing a story right under our nose – but it was subtle enough I almost didn’t notice it.
Gilead Pellaeon, however, saw the mechanics for a deeper plot being set into place. He was right – there were a lot of characters being developed in the background. Tensions were rising. We suddenly had rogue time travelers, killer robots and evil overlords in the picture.
And recently Kris Straub has been, how you say, taking things to the next level.
Yesterday we discovered the Starslip Crisis itself. And today… well, today things get a bit more personal.
So. It’s possible that Straub will return to his normal style – tone things back down after the excitement, and them start bringing them up again.
But with every rising storyarc, things only get more intense. And with the way momentum is currently building, I’m having a hard time judging how far this current arc will go.
There is no denying Straub has something awesome going on here – and even more, there is the sense of more awesomeness to come. The fact that the story in the strip took me completely by surprise only impresses me more – and leaves me eager for more.
I can’t wait to see what Straub has planned for the strip next.
Friday Surprise
I didn’t even realize, but yesterday’s post was number 100. Color me startled and amazed! Hopefully this blog has provided some merriment to the readers out there, and I plan to keep my (often overly verbose) chatter coming.
Only one thing is really on my mind today – Ctrl-Alt-Del.
I’ve spoken about the strip before – specifically how I like the comic, but Ethan rubs me the wrong way.
He’s always doing wild, zany stuff, see. Usually for the sole reason that the unexpected is, ya know, suppose to be funny and crazy and stuff.
And of course, whenever he does something stupid just for laughs, there isn’t any fall-out. Ethan might have his schemes foiled or not turn out perfect – but he never gets in any real trouble for acting like a total dick to friends, family, strangers… anyone.
So, the latest story arc seemed true to form. Ethan gets to meet Lilah’s parents – and unsurprisingly Ethan humiliates himself, he can’t go five minutes without a gaming reference, and he manages to inflict bodily harm on her father.
And, as expected, her parents just smile and accept his tomfoolery.
I shrugged. I’m used to these arcs and the way they go. So be it.
And then Tim Buckley decides to throw me off my game, as Ethan recognizes he was acting like an idiot and seems determined to make it right.
Now, I’m sure that will consist of even more elaborate hijinks… but still.
That’s more character than I’ve come to expect from Ethan, and stumbling across it was a very pleasant surprise.
Trolls as a unifying topic.
Blogger has been troublesome today, so you guys get to miss out on my thoughts on Digger, Fables, and other assorted myths… at least for a few days.
Instead, I’m simply going to say this:
Scott Kurtz, keep doing what you’re doing. Your Shecky storyline is a blast. Even if it wasn’t, follow the story where it leads you, regardless of what naysayers may pop out of the woodwork.
Damn Good Comics 