Be Excellent To Each Other

Zero Punctuation does webcomics and, to my mind, is pretty much bob on the money.

WARNING: CONTAINS SWEARING AND STUFF LIKE THAT AND I FIND IT AMUSING.

Anyone else think they were going to see a webcomic drawn by Yahtzee at the other end of that link?

He did a great one called yahtzee vs. the world (or similar) which was great. Great.

This particular video was almost certainly created because of a recent argument had on SomethingAwful's forums, where one army of users thought that Ctrl+Alt+Delete was a really good webcomic, and another (bigger) army of users, including Yahtzee, thought that it was the biggest pile of festering shite seen since the famed "Now that is one big pile of shit" scene from Jurassic Park.

The miscarriage storyline featured heavily in this argument, and also brought forward this parody, which is delightful in it's own unique way and shows just how bloody stupid it is to use such a storyline in a comic that, up until that point, had been centred around humour. And I use the word "humour" in the loosest possible sense:

Most of that was great - except the hugely expected dig at CAD, which has pretty much all been done by now. Laughing at the expense of the same thing everyone's already been laughing at the expense of for a month is hardly clever.

Yahtzee's whinged about shit webcomics on his site for years, on and off. His site is hit and miss, but has some great moments. It's interesting that they let him do the piece - perhaps he'll try to edge towards general-purpose ranting from now on. I'm in two minds about that - some wider range would be great, but video games really need more people who will call a spade a spade and a pile of mediocre toss Halo 3.

Tim Buckley wrote a lengthy piece discussing and defending his decision to have a miscarriage storyline in his funny games comic.

I mean, on the one hand we can't ignore real issues and CAD has sort of become half soap opera/sitcom and half games funneys!!!11

But surely there's a place for each, not a place for both?

You can do humour and tragedy at once (in fact, tragedies without humour are pretty thin on the ground, not least as humour is a common response to misfortune). But not in a webcomic, and particularly not in one that relies on such weak, low-brow humour (don't get me wrong, low-brow done right can be excellent), and has done so for years.

Webcomics should be above all funny. The clue's in the name.

That's what I'm saying - while I enjoy watching Ethan and Lilah's relationship antics (especially as Chugworth has more or less died after the stupid 'Almadirro/Sally dumps Kiyoshi and he goes all emo' storyline) CAD seems more and more bipolar.

He was definitely onto something with the recent 'Idiots in Space' vote-on-what-happens-next story, which reminded me of the good old days of Miss Dynamite.

There is a place for each both and any permutation.

But if you've shown yourself to be incapable of achieving the basics of comedy, continuity, characterisation and dialogue then attempted such a complex storyline is getting ahead of yourself. And by 'getting ahead of yourself' I'm talking about getting the Doctor to come and help you travel to the other end of time and space.

CAD's success is such an embarrassment to the world of video games that the fact it a) can exist and b) can be popular is all the evidence you need about why videos games are still put next to trekkies in terms of credibility.

ZP is always good value, even if that one was eerily reminiscent of Your Webcomic Is Bad And You Should Feel Bad in places.

Ctrl-Alt-Del is truly awful. I tried reading it once, but decided that my life was too short and the author's life had already been too long. I hadn't picked up on this miscarriage hoo-hah until now, but rest assured it hasn't changed my opinion.

I do read Penny Arcade, though - it's hit and miss, but it's hardly a high committment relationship to read a webcomic (particularly with RSS), and there's no denying that Gabe is good at art and Tycho is good at words, even if they frequently use these talents for self-indulgent wankery.

Other than that, my webcomics are all non-gaming; Dinosaur Comics (pretty damned wonderful), Dilbert (60% bollocks, 40% horribly, hilariously true about life working for a big company, which I do), Boy on a Stick and Slither (tiny and often excellent) and the wonderfully surreal/depressing Garfield Minus Garfield. I used to like The Perry Bible Fellowship, before the author packed up and took his ball home.

Incidentally, anyone who reads webcomics but doesn't use RSS is exposing themselves to a great deal more pain and advertising than they need to.

I like CAD.

Not as good as the funky horror of "College Roommates from Hell", but still.

Oh, and Sinfest is clearly the best webcomic ever for all of time.

*narrows eyes*

Mr Chris...

*imperceptibly shakes head*

Cat and Girl, boy on a stick and slither, and Horribleville are all I need. For now.

Check out Truck Bearing Kibble.

I've just started reading these and they're pretty funny. Ctrl-Alt-Delete appears to be the work of satan.

The point is that "Ragging on CAD" has become practically the biggest joke on the internet, and it's been done to death. People saying how crap CAD is has actually become less funny than CAD. If you take a long time to prepare material, you can't be ultra-topical, not on the internet, because it moves too fast.

No, Satan would be far more charming and sophisticated.

Good point. Sorry, Satan.

Fact: Ages ago I bought some t-shirts. They were CAD ones.

LOOK, I WAS YOUNG AND STUPID AND DIDN'T KNOW ANY BETTER. DON'T HATE ME, BRO.

Additionally, it's 'well-known' that Yhatzee hates CAD. Infact he used to have a comic-o-list on his website and every 3rd day would post saying "**** off asking me to put CAD on the list".

I used to help with a webcomic, I used to BE in a webcomic. Then the guy who did the actual comics gave root access to a fool I deliberately didn't give access to (in my neat PHP comic management menu thingy) and the first thing they did was erase the entire thing.

I can recommend this one as a good, if obscure web comic.

Arachne is more or less how I imagined my dunmer Oblivion character as being.

CAD and CRFH were, obviously, jokes, but if you're actually dissing the 'Fest, well now. There will be words.

Anyone else like Crazy Kimchi? Not sure he updates as often as he used to, but it was excellently bonkers stuff, with added butt plugs.

Not seen his MGS4 review, then?

Just watched it again. I find them all amusing, mostly because I feel no need to aggressively defend the games I play.

Interestingly, that particular video has nearly 600 comments on it now, which is at least twice as many as the average video gets.

He was very mild about it, but he did say basically the same things as I did (except for saying the characters were 'well-rounded'. What the fuck?), though he went on about the controls, which I didn't have much problem with. You don't need to hold down three buttons to aim - only to aim down the sight, which is pretty much useless anyway. Not that it makes it a good thing, but it made it pretty irrelevant to me, especially given the other, more significant things wrong with the game.

'sides, you can't agree with them on everything.

Just came in to say
http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/

Anyone got a link to the proper miscarriage one?

All webcomics fall before the might of Dr McNinja.

I quite like CAD, too. I didn't know it was universally reviled.

Phew! CAD and CRFH are atrocious but I've never read Sinfest. Link please!

What no UserFriendly?

Didn't think so. It used to be most excellent. Now if you go to the website ARGH MY EYES!

I've not been on there in ages. I found the day's discussions being more interesting than the comic itself. Not sure what it is about webcomic authors' inability to draw women either.

All I want is it sent by email, but no.

Even frickin' Dilbert can manage that.

I liked Sluggy for a while. Find it hard to keep up with convoluted plot based ones though. Sexy Losers tickles my Bad-taste-o-matic.

CRFH was amusing for the first couple of months or so. I was amazed to discover yesterday that it's still going! Brrr.

Feast your eyes on the splendour of the 'Fest



That was brilliant to start with, but went shite many, many moons ago.

I used to read My New Filing Technique Is Unstoppable.

Another 'used to read' - Red Meat

There's also a build your own meat if you want to waste a few hours creating your own comic strips.

100% agree. Dinosaur comics must be read every day.


That used to be in the Guardian, it was quite good. What happened?

It begins here:

http://ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20080530

Am I really stupid, or is there a joke to these comics that I don't get? They seem more like a boring morbid story, and even then sucks.

Tragically, the correct response to this isn't "you're really stupid."

The 'wearing the same clothes forever' was quite good.

Spot on. CAD isn't particularly brilliant, but it's hardly something to inspire such universal hatred.

Ah yeah, I like that guy's stuff. My New Fighting Technique has its moments, too - "Jesus, what a complainin' ass motherfucker" always makes me giggle. Get Your War On, too.

That's quite brilliant.