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Space-Bird posted:Does anyone else here read Demon Kings? I really like the style, and found out about it recently. Haven't seen it mentioned here. Dang, that site is a mess. Got broken links, or links that led backwards, at least three times. And the archive isn't very long! Neat comic, though. Any idea if there's an RSS?
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May 19, 2014 04:18
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PleasingFungus posted:Dang, that site is a mess. Got broken links, or links that led backwards, at least three times. And the archive isn't very long! yeah the site is really bad to navigate. I think he is in the process of fixing it? Good art but website probs.
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May 19, 2014 04:44
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The way Sluggy Freelance is trying to bring everything back together for its finale is stupid, but it's almost charming the way Pete Abrams is trying to validate all the dumb stuff the comic's been through since the start.
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May 19, 2014 18:15
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SlothfulCobra posted:The way Sluggy Freelance is trying to bring everything back together for its finale is stupid, but it's almost charming the way Pete Abrams is trying to validate all the dumb stuff the comic's been through since the start. I stopped keeping track a couple years ago. I think there was some awful filler arc about a zombie hamster app? What's happened since thing, if you don't mind summarizing?
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May 19, 2014 18:20
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Bun-Bun is actually an ancient god of power named Sluggy. He's been going freelance since the pantheon dissolved and he lost his memory, though. Also some other stuff involving every single plotline ever in the series. It's all ridiculously loving convoluted and I've lost track of most of it.
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May 19, 2014 18:50
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MikeJF posted:Bun-Bun is actually an ancient god of power named Sluggy. He's been going freelance since the pantheon dissolved and he lost his memory, though. I really hope this is just a joke, but deep down I know it's probably not. 
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May 19, 2014 18:55
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MikeJF posted:Bun-Bun is actually an ancient god of power named Sluggy. He's been going freelance since the pantheon dissolved and he lost his memory, though.
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May 19, 2014 19:00
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MikeJF posted:Bun-Bun is actually an ancient god of power named Sluggy. He's been going freelance since the pantheon dissolved and he lost his memory, though. oh my god
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May 19, 2014 19:02
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I still to this day argue that Bun-Bun the invincible switchblade wielding meme-rabbit is one of the worst characters in the history of fiction.
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May 19, 2014 19:07
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MikeJF posted:Bun-Bun is actually an ancient god of power named Sluggy. He's been going freelance since the pantheon dissolved and he lost his memory, though. This is absolutely true. Pete is trying to tie this whole convoluted 14-year daily strip together (that has featured, among other things, wars between personifications of holidays, a pyrokinetic assassin, Evil Magic, time travel, dimension hopping, harry potter parodies, vampires, etc) into one cohesive plot by saying that most of the supernatural elements in the story all have a single origin point: a group of literal gods in ancient times who have a falling out and go their separate ways and end up all over the place. So, like, Santa Claus, Father Time, and the personification of Halloween are some of these gods. The demon-killing sword was crafted by one of these gods, as was the camel necklace. It's also the origin of K'Z'K, the reoccuring demon villain of the story, and so on. Oh, and every single thing that has happened to the protagonists has been a big hail-mary play by Fate to bring together a group of heroes at one specific point in time and space in order to combat a great evil. So there's that. Rei_ posted:I still to this day argue that Bun-Bun the invincible switchblade wielding meme-rabbit is one of the worst characters in the history of fiction. Yeah, pretty much.
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May 19, 2014 19:19
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Bobulus posted:This is absolutely true. Pete is trying to tie this whole convoluted 14-year daily strip together (that has featured, among other things, wars between personifications of holidays, a pyrokinetic assassin, Evil Magic, time travel, dimension hopping, harry potter parodies, vampires, etc) into one cohesive plot by saying that most of the supernatural elements in the story all have a single origin point: a group of literal gods in ancient times who have a falling out and go their separate ways and end up all over the place. As someone who hasn't read Sluggy Freelance in about 10 years, as bad as this may sound, it's probably the closest thing to a sensible wrap-up you're going to be able to do.
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May 19, 2014 19:48
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Drakyn posted:I stopped reading that thing a few thousand years ago, but doesn't that make the second plotline where the reveal is based around that insufferable little poo poo having secretly lost his memory? It's actually the same reveal. He lost his memory because he beat himself up in timeless space, and we just now found out how the version that got beaten ended up there to begin with. Rei_ posted:I still to this day argue that Bun-Bun the invincible switchblade wielding meme-rabbit is one of the worst characters in the history of fiction. Basically, yes. He was tolerable back when Sluggy was a gag-a-day strip, because he was supposed to parody the cute animal mascots that most comedy webcomics ended up with. (This was a more original thing to do over a decade ago.) Once Sluggy Freelance made the transition to a plot-driven comic, he basically became a horrifying tumor that was never excised. Bobulus posted:Oh, and every single thing that has happened to the protagonists has been a big hail-mary play by Fate to bring together a group of heroes at one specific point in time and space in order to combat a great evil. So there's that. With all the chickens coming home to roost, as it were, Sluggy Freelance is really entering its endgame, plotwise. That isn't to say he's not going to stretch it out for another three years (although I don't think he is), but you can actually see now where the thing stops. I'm curious to see if he'll stick to it. It'd be really interesting to see Pete Abrams start fresh with something at this point, rather than having this fourteen-year-old history hanging over his head.
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May 19, 2014 20:12
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If he made something new, I'd probably read it. The stuff he makes that is less connected to his massive canon (the first Oceans Unmoving, 4U City, etc) were pretty entertaining. It's when he tries to tie it into the 14-year gigaplot (Oceans Unmoving II  ) that things get really messy and frustrating.
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May 19, 2014 20:27
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It's weird though, I mean you sort of look at the big comics that started the webcomics boom and like... Today's PA is visually horrifying to look at on an artistic level, Sluggy is this bloated canonical mess, and Megatokyo...just...HAS NOT CHANGED. At ALL. It's the exact same loving comic as it was in 2000, in fact I think it's still set in loving 2000.
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May 19, 2014 20:27
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I dunno that I'd go so far as "horrifying", but the peak of PA's style was definitely a few years back. Kevin and Kell and User Friendly are in the same boat as Megatokyo; basically the same as they always were. General Protection Fault mostly is. PvP has actually had some changes but doesn't seem to capture as much attention as it once did. Cat and Girl and Diesel Sweeties are kind of locked into a particular formula that prevents any real change. A lot of the things that survive tend to stick to what they know. But this comparison with the beforetime is one of the reasons I'm so interested in what happens next for Abrams. Because unlike some of those other things, Sluggy really has changed and improved over its history, both artistically and in terms of the writing. The main problems it has always center around the fact that it's Sluggy Freelance and at least lip service always has to be paid to that fact. You can kind of see the gears grinding as it switches into "wacky mode" to deliver a couple of stupid jokes in the middle of an otherwise-interesting situation. So I'm curious if he'll be able to cast that off if he starts something new.
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May 19, 2014 20:41
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Rei_ posted:It's weird though, I mean you sort of look at the big comics that started the webcomics boom and like... Today's PA is visually horrifying to look at on an artistic level, Sluggy is this bloated canonical mess, and Megatokyo...just...HAS NOT CHANGED. At ALL. It's the exact same loving comic as it was in 2000, in fact I think it's still set in loving 2000. Same could be said of James Bond, Godzilla, or any other franchise. When you find a model that gets the money to come in you don't gently caress with it
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May 19, 2014 20:47
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James Bond and Godzilla have changed a LOT since their respective introductions. I mean Godzilla was a story about Japanese anxieties over modernity conflicting with tradition and the cost of WW2 on their culture and wound up selling Taco Bell with Jean Reno and now is about...I don't know I havent seen the new one yet. James Bond went from a Cold War-era suave playboy to a brutish, tortured government thug. You change with the political climate, public opinion, the current way of speaking, fashion styles, artistic trends, or you just sort of fizzle away. Unless you're a newspaper comic strip or a webcomic, anyway. Rei_ fucked around with this message at 20:53 on May 19, 2014 |
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May 19, 2014 20:50
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idonotlikepeas posted:I dunno that I'd go so far as "horrifying", but the peak of PA's style was definitely a few years back. Kevin and Kell and User Friendly are in the same boat as Megatokyo; basically the same as they always were. General Protection Fault mostly is. PvP has actually had some changes but doesn't seem to capture as much attention as it once did. Cat and Girl and Diesel Sweeties are kind of locked into a particular formula that prevents any real change. A lot of the things that survive tend to stick to what they know.
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May 19, 2014 20:54
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Some things are perfect just as they are.
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May 19, 2014 20:57
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Ryan North is a hell of a writer, nobody can deny. He's made like 2600 comics on those same six panels and they're still pretty good.
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May 19, 2014 21:00
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Rei_ posted:Godzilla was a story about Japanese anxieties over modernity conflicting with tradition and the cost of WW2 on their culture and wound up selling Taco Bell with Jean Reno and now is about...I don't know I havent seen the new one yet. It's about F-35s dropping from the sky.
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May 19, 2014 21:07
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I should go see that. edit: and Captain America, which I hear is also a pretty good spy flick
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May 19, 2014 21:35
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idonotlikepeas posted:PvP has actually had some changes but doesn't seem to capture as much attention as it once did. I genuinely think this is an actual problem for long-running comics like PvP or Sluggy Freelance. The growing of the audience means a diversifying of the audience, which means they want different things from you. You've got the people that just want a simple gag a day, the people that want cute talking animals, the people that want gaming jokes, the people that want serious storylines, etc. I remember when Scratch Fury showed up PvP and how split down the middle his audience was on those that loved the cat vs those that hated it. In Sluggy Freelance's case, the 'solution' seems to be inserting completely tone-mismatching gags into the middle of serious storylines. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. It's probably also the reason Bun-bun has hung around so long: there's probably a tiny hardcore fanbase of the little deus ex lagomorpha.
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May 19, 2014 23:02
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PleasingFungus posted:Dang, that site is a mess. Got broken links, or links that led backwards, at least three times. And the archive isn't very long! I'm ploughing through Wonderella and the archives are pretty janky; some of the pages just won't load, a few repeat the previous page's image but with the new page's title and alt text, and around the 180 mark it starts repeating the Gravy's Anatomy page over and over every few pages.
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May 19, 2014 23:09
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Bobulus posted:In Sluggy Freelance's case, the 'solution' seems to be inserting completely tone-mismatching gags into the middle of serious storylines. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. It's probably also the reason Bun-bun has hung around so long: there's probably a tiny hardcore fanbase of the little deus ex lagomorpha.
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May 19, 2014 23:33
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idonotlikepeas posted:But this comparison with the beforetime is one of the reasons I'm so interested in what happens next for Abrams. Because unlike some of those other things, Sluggy really has changed and improved over its history, both artistically and in terms of the writing. The main problems it has always center around the fact that it's Sluggy Freelance and at least lip service always has to be paid to that fact. You can kind of see the gears grinding as it switches into "wacky mode" to deliver a couple of stupid jokes in the middle of an otherwise-interesting situation. So I'm curious if he'll be able to cast that off if he starts something new. It's improved to a degree, but I'd say that its peak was at some point during the middle era. Which really was about ten years ago.
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May 20, 2014 01:01
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Fried Chicken posted:Same could be said of James Bond, Godzilla, or any other franchise. When you find a model that gets the money to come in you don't gently caress with it But PA hosed with their formula by becoming terrible and they still make the big bucks! (initiate derail about whether PA was ever good here)
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May 20, 2014 01:44
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I'll actually read whatever Abrams does after Sluggy, just out of curiosity.
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May 20, 2014 02:00
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Bobulus posted:It's probably also the reason Bun-bun has hung around so long: there's probably a tiny hardcore fanbase of the little deus ex lagomorpha. FactsAreUseless posted:It's mostly kids. And John Ringo.
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May 20, 2014 02:59
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TwoPair posted:But PA hosed with their formula by becoming terrible and they still make the big bucks! I wouldn't say it's terrible. I check it out every once in a while, and more often than not it's at least vaguely amusing, which is really all you can ask for with that sort of thing.
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May 20, 2014 03:58
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How about we pretend that we had the argument about Penny Arcade again, all said the same things we said last time, and impressed each other with our insights? In this imaginary universe, it's now five pages later, handshakes all around and time to talk about something else!
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May 20, 2014 04:09
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idonotlikepeas posted:How about we pretend that we had the argument about Penny Arcade again, all said the same things we said last time, and impressed each other with our insights? In this imaginary universe, it's now five pages later, handshakes all around and time to talk about something else! I like this plan. this is a good plan. Octopus Pie: Man Will, this is not gonna go well for you
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May 20, 2014 04:50
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Fried Chicken posted:
As much as I like Octopus Pie, sometimes it's hard for me to read because, Goddamn, I've known these people.
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May 20, 2014 08:11
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Monster Pulse just took a chilling turn 
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May 20, 2014 10:08
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It almost feels like every comic has to kill someone off this month. Come'on Jeph Jaques and Sam Logan. I know you Yes I already know that Satan Fridge was killed off several years ago by Sam's girlfriend Claire which eventually lead to Sam taking control of the Ninja Mafia.
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May 20, 2014 10:21
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SFP: Man, I got a sexual frustration vibe out of the last one, but figured I was reading too much into it. Nope
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May 20, 2014 12:11
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Fried Chicken posted:SFP: Man, I got a sexual frustration vibe out of the last one, but figured I was reading too much into it. Nope
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May 20, 2014 13:06
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RandomPauI posted:It almost feels like every comic has to kill someone off this month. Wait till you see what Cucumber Quest has in store for you!!!!111
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May 20, 2014 14:30
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SFP: Also calling it now, Allison is totes gonna hook up with new classmate Paladin
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May 20, 2014 14:47
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Fried Chicken posted:SFP: Also calling it now, Allison is totes gonna hook up with new classmate Paladin Pretty sure Allison doesn't swing that way (Paladin's a she).
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May 20, 2014 15:07
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