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There are a lot of webcomics that start out as gag-a-day, but graft onto that some pseudo-serious soap opera plots, and that's where you get all these wildly inconsistent tones. Sluggy Freelance, College Roomies from Hell, and everything that Willis ever wrote. It's sorta that whole every comedian wanting to do Shakespeare thing combined with a total lack of any editors to reign these comic makers in. I might've benefited from a bit of a content warning for that one time in Blaster Nation where a man got caught in a meat grinder. I stopped following it for a while after that.
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May 28, 2016 02:31
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paradoxGentleman posted:I once read this grimdark Nuzlocke comic where the main character's hometown was destroyed by Spearows going savage. I remember it having really neat art and interesting designs. It was from the Gold/Silver era but I don't remember its name. It was so deliciously over the top. Sounds like Apocalypse Johto. Edit: "Over the top" barely even begins to describe it.
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May 28, 2016 02:37
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After 748 pages, Vattu has finally finished its prologue and transitions into the buddy stoner comedy it was meant to be.
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May 28, 2016 03:57
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Oy, jesus.  Anyway, for "content"... of sorts... I keep seeing Randowis get thrown around places every once in a while, and the pokemon comic stuff reminded me of it. It seems to be a pretty decent gag-a-day, at least. Anyone else wanna throw in an opinion? Here's a decent smattering of the guy's work, if you haven't seen it yet.
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May 28, 2016 04:08
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SlothfulCobra posted:There are a lot of webcomics that start out as gag-a-day, but graft onto that some pseudo-serious soap opera plots, and that's where you get all these wildly inconsistent tones. Sluggy Freelance, College Roomies from Hell, and everything that Willis ever wrote. It's sorta that whole every comedian wanting to do Shakespeare thing combined with a total lack of any editors to reign these comic makers in. the consistent thread with all these comics you mention is that nobody should read them, trigger warnings or no
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May 28, 2016 04:44
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Gabriel Pope posted:After 748 pages, Vattu has finally finished its prologue and transitions into the buddy stoner comedy it was meant to be. I can't wait to read this scene in 2 years when book 3 comes out
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May 28, 2016 05:10
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Willis seems like a really nice guy who is making creative content people enjoy, conscientiously.
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May 28, 2016 05:13
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Willis hasn't done anything creative since the 90s. He's been writing the same characters that he admittedly made when he was a child doing different things and now he is literally writing his college webcomic again because, by his own admission, he wanted something that would be easier to write so he could coast on autopilot after he had kids. And that's fine! I certainly don't begrudge the guy for dialing back his workload to start a family. Maybe he's a swell fella and it's okay if you like him, I know all you webcomic guys are tight (you're one of the people here who actually writes a comic, right? I can never keep track). I'm not trying to be a smug prick here, but I just do not think he is a very good writer, and "making content people enjoy" is definitely not indicative of one's writing talent, or this thread wouldn't have a bimonthly 2 minutes hate for Aaron Diaz. But seriously, enough about Willis. Is there a webcomic that mocks (print) comics? I used to really enjoy Let's Be Friends Again, but it died, and it seems like the only other game in town is *shudder* Gutters. TwoPair fucked around with this message at 05:42 on May 28, 2016 |
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May 28, 2016 05:28
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I once told Willis about attending a gay Transformers slash fiction lecture at a yaoi con. That's the limit of our relationship, I.e. less than that of Megatron and Starscream (as I'm told).
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May 28, 2016 05:44
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TwoPair posted:Willis hasn't done anything creative since the 90s. He's been writing the same characters that he admittedly made when he was a child doing different things I mean, you're right about the same characters thing, but weren't the 90s version of those characters terrible. edit:  Yeah this doesn't strike me as the height of creativity.
Nerdietalk fucked around with this message at 05:47 on May 28, 2016 |
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May 28, 2016 05:44
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Pick posted:Willis seems like a really nice guy who is making creative content people enjoy, conscientiously. i agree w/ all of this, his work is all sorts of nice things that are not 'good'. i'm really glad the setting-shifting decades-long soap opera permanently recycling every single idea he's had since age 5 exists; in the way that I am glad Oren Otter exists, and unlike the oren otter guy he's a nice funny dude. A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 06:00 on May 28, 2016 |
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May 28, 2016 05:50
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Sounds like Apocalypse Johto.   A+
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May 28, 2016 08:00
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SlothfulCobra posted:I might've benefited from a bit of a content warning for that one time in Blaster Nation where a man got caught in a meat grinder. I stopped following it for a while after that. That was heavily forewarned, though, since after all this character had only one arm when he was introduced, so when we got in a sequence about his past, getting the backstory of how he lost his arm was pretty much inevitable. But yes, ouch. nerdman42 posted:I mean, you're right about the same characters thing, but weren't the 90s version of those characters terrible. It's an easy shot and I'm not doing this just to go "webcomics are bad  you shouldn't read them " but let's be honest here, the 2010s version of these characters is still terrible.
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May 28, 2016 09:51
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Pick posted:Willis seems like a really nice guy who is making creative content people enjoy, conscientiously. Willis has nothing but contempt for his readers. When he's not cowering in fear of them and writing 600 word essays to placate their wrath with excuses about how calling your friends Nazis is totally a thing people from Indiana do, he's book-ending his very serious suicide strips with pictures of kittens accompanied by the sort of empty, saccharine reassurance you would give a small child who was just told the family cat has to be put down. He has no respect for his audience. He says and does whatever he thinks will appease them and keep the Patreon dollars flowing. Typical Pubbie fucked around with this message at 13:34 on May 28, 2016 |
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May 28, 2016 13:06
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I would say that's the weirdest armchair psychoanalyzing about Willis I've read but someone earlier did talk about him being a repressed serial killer, so this is only #2 and I'm disappointed you didn't try harder
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May 28, 2016 14:31
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People get weird about webcomic authors. There was a guy in the Homestuck thread years back who insisted that Andrew Hussie was a sociopath.
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May 28, 2016 14:33
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Did you see that Saw comic/drawthread though e/ should probably clarify that personally I thought it was hilarious, but I can see where a person with weak irony game who doesn't know what the gently caress they're talking about could think it was indicative of brain problems Renaissance Robot fucked around with this message at 14:42 on May 28, 2016 |
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May 28, 2016 14:36
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Typical Pubbie posted:Willis has nothing but contempt for his readers. When he's not cowering in fear of them and writing 600 word essays to placate their wrath with excuses about how calling your friends Nazis is totally a thing people from Indiana do, he's book-ending his very serious suicide strips with pictures of kittens accompanied by the sort of empty, saccharine reassurance you would give a small child who was just told the family cat has to be put down. He has no respect for his audience. He says and does whatever he thinks will appease them and keep the Patreon dollars flowing. Yes, that's what's sort of frustrating about it, because at its core, Dumbing of Age has a kind of interesting story happening. I like Joyce, I like the idea of framing an ordinary college as an eye-opening experience for a sheltered girl with deeply entrenched assumptions and lessons about the world. The problem is is that he's identified his demographic and he panders to them nigh-exclusively, to the detriment of the quality of the comic overall.
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May 28, 2016 14:47
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Typical Pubbie posted:Willis has nothing but contempt for his readers. When he's not cowering in fear of them and writing 600 word essays to placate their wrath with excuses about how calling your friends Nazis is totally a thing people from Indiana do, he's book-ending his very serious suicide strips with pictures of kittens accompanied by the sort of empty, saccharine reassurance you would give a small child who was just told the family cat has to be put down. He has no respect for his audience. He says and does whatever he thinks will appease them and keep the Patreon dollars flowing. lmao how do you get this loving angry at the word 'trigger'
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May 28, 2016 14:51
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8-Bit Scholar posted:Yes, that's what's sort of frustrating about it, because at its core, Dumbing of Age has a kind of interesting story happening. I like Joyce, I like the idea of framing an ordinary college as an eye-opening experience for a sheltered girl with deeply entrenched assumptions and lessons about the world. The problem is is that he's identified his demographic and he panders to them nigh-exclusively, to the detriment of the quality of the comic overall. 8-Bit Scholar perhaps if you are not enjoying the way this comic is progressing and you feel this does not cater to your interests then maybe this comic is not for you. Perhaps you should return to what you love? I'm sure other gamergaters would appreciate your help tweeting death threats to Zoe Quinn, or you can obsessively post about trans people in GBS some more.
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May 28, 2016 15:09
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I guess this is the day I admit that I read It's Walky end to end and enjoyed it. Well, I enjoyed swathes of it- the tone and the plot is all over the place in that early webcomic way. Shortpacked was really dull though, and DoA is rapidly burning off any residual affection I had for these characters. what the gently caress is thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiissssssssssssssss
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May 28, 2016 16:03
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Autonomous Monster posted:I guess this is the day I admit that I read It's Walky end to end and enjoyed it. Well, I enjoyed swathes of it- the tone and the plot is all over the place in that early webcomic way. Pokemon nerds try really hard to make their games harder, and the nuzlocke comics were a bit hit. So everyone wants to top them with their own dark n' edgy nuzlocke runs where it's the apocalypse or a dark cyberpunk future.  A serious game for adults
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May 28, 2016 16:32
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TwoPair posted:"making content people enjoy" is definitely not indicative of one's writing talent, or this thread wouldn't have a bimonthly 2 minutes hate for Aaron Diaz. Diaz's main problem is that he keeps forgetting the "making content" part of that. What comics like Dumbing (and Sluggy, et al.) tend to offer is reliability. You know when you're going to get them, how much you're going to get, and about what the content will be. That's why Willis freaked out and went a little overboard with the content warning, because he knows this and realizes that by going outside of his ambit, even if only briefly, he's compromising on the thing that keeps people reading his comic. (Of course, he always does this, he can't help himself.) Lest I sound dismissive here, reliability is actually a good thing in entertainment and something that people genuinely crave. The best works combine that reliability with imagination to allow them to also surprise the reader (stuff like Gunnerkrigg, Poppy, and Unsounded, for instance), but there are only so many of those and if you want to read more than those comics you're ultimately going end up with some things that are either less imaginative or less reliable. (Or both, but I think you have enough that are only broken in one way that you don't need to go that far down the hole unless you do nothing but read comics all day or unless it's tickling some other personal quirk you have.) Some people have a preference for one over the other and because people are people, this results in a lot of stupid slapfights which we all participate in with great glee.
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May 28, 2016 16:44
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I like the idea that Willis does this for the sweet mad webcomics money.
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May 28, 2016 17:36
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The thing is, it seems like that classic kind of webcomic seems to be dying off slowly. One by one, the old guard retire, but there aren't really new webcomics like that cropping up so far as I know. Newer comics try keeping to consistent tones and are much better produced than their predecessors. The top webcomics of yore tended to be more jack-of-all trades things, presumably to cover for the fact that there were so few webcomics providing for such a wide-ranging audience, but now things find their niche and stick to it better. People stuck in their own endless dramedy purgatories like Willis are the exception rather than the rule. Hell, Willis has at least tried to stay current and half-heartedly reinvent himself, unlike some others.
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May 28, 2016 17:43
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I legitimately can't tell if Ricky boy in Poppy is angry because he suspects something is going on, and doesn't like it, or if he's just being his regular stern self. Panel 2 is giving me cause for doubt in particular. How much did he really hear though given that he, apparently, rushed in at 200% breakneck speed? In these troubling times, I turn to "Hello, apparently" to quell all doubts. 
Captain Oblivious fucked around with this message at 18:42 on May 28, 2016 |
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May 28, 2016 18:39
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He teleported to directly outside the curtain, that's what the vvvwwmm noise is in the last panel of the previous page. I don't think he's angry, just desperately concerned. SlothfulCobra posted:Hell, Willis has at least tried to stay current and half-heartedly reinvent himself, unlike some others. Everything about that website screams "we wish we were Dilbert"
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May 28, 2016 18:39
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There's really no call to go comparing anybody to Mary Worth.
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May 28, 2016 18:41
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SlothfulCobra posted:The thing is, it seems like that classic kind of webcomic seems to be dying off slowly. One by one, the old guard retire, but there aren't really new webcomics like that cropping up so far as I know. Newer comics try keeping to consistent tones and are much better produced than their predecessors. these days you have the option to read good or at least entertainingly bad comics all day if you really want to, why would you know about the Sluggy Freelance of 2016 Renaissance Robot posted:He teleported to directly outside the curtain, that's what the vvvwwmm noise is in the last panel of the previous page. yeah he's not angry he's insanely protective and GPF is another one of those comics that tries so hard to be dull sitcom humor but is instead quite thoroughly insane. like, yeah, this really is what that guy thinks Dilbert looks like  A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 18:54 on May 28, 2016 |
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May 28, 2016 18:47
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:and GPF is another one of those comics that tries so hard to be dull sitcom humor but is instead quite thoroughly insane. like, yeah, this really is what that guy thinks Dilbert looks like My impression is the opposite: it tries to be some insane epic sci-fi saga but it's just dull instead.
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May 28, 2016 18:57
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Cat Mattress posted:My impression is the opposite: it tries to be some insane epic sci-fi saga but it's just dull instead. sort of both I guess. i wouldn't read it regularly but every year or so I check back on the no-brand office humor comic and guy's added another layer to his half-joking entirely serious cosmology where the pointy haired boss is a clown who is God, or something. more entertainment than I get from actual Dilbert
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May 28, 2016 19:05
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SlothfulCobra posted:The thing is, it seems like that classic kind of webcomic seems to be dying off slowly. One by one, the old guard retire, but there aren't really new webcomics like that cropping up so far as I know. Newer comics try keeping to consistent tones and are much better produced than their predecessors. The next generation of webcomics is going to be entire SBaHJ-inspired, you mark my words.
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May 28, 2016 19:15
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Captain Oblivious posted:I legitimately can't tell if Ricky boy in Poppy is angry because he suspects something is going on, and doesn't like it, or if he's just being his regular stern self. Panel 2 is giving me cause for doubt in particular. How much did he really hear though given that he, apparently, rushed in at 200% breakneck speed? If you're the Queen's bodyguard and let her, extremely tired, wander off to go do a thing, and the next time you hear about her, she's being carried to an undermanned infirmary while she scream at own broken rear end, you're likely to be a mite frazzled when you teleport in. Also: Oh Mary :all ears:
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May 28, 2016 20:24
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I read that Possum comic and it reminded me that I might have thrown my genuine Chick Tract (tm) in the trash. 0/10 Definite case of Webcomics:  
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May 28, 2016 20:29
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Archenteron posted:If you're the Queen's bodyguard and let her, extremely tired, wander off to go do a thing, and the next time you hear about her, she's being carried to an undermanned infirmary while she scream at own broken rear end, you're likely to be a mite frazzled when you teleport in. I also like the detail that he's pulling the curtain open with his foot while carrying the doctor one handed and propelling himself forward with the other foot. I'm amazed he didn't go through the back wall of the infirmary 
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May 28, 2016 20:44
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:I read that Possum comic and it reminded me that I might have thrown my genuine Chick Tract (tm) in the trash. 0/10 the cerberus syndrome. i get it. i get, the reference
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May 28, 2016 20:47
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Carrasco posted:The next generation of webcomics is going to be entire SBaHJ-inspired, you mark my words. We can only hope
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May 28, 2016 21:16
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Captain Oblivious posted:I legitimately can't tell if Ricky boy in Poppy is angry because he suspects something is going on, and doesn't like it, or if he's just being his regular stern self. Panel 2 is giving me cause for doubt in particular. How much did he really hear though given that he, apparently, rushed in at 200% breakneck speed? The queen hurt her butt, this is a most serious emergency.
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May 28, 2016 22:17
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:lmao how do you get this loving angry at the word 'trigger' I don't care about trigger warnings. When did I say anything about triggers? I just really like David Willis. Typical Pubbie fucked around with this message at 22:26 on May 28, 2016 |
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May 28, 2016 22:23
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SlothfulCobra posted:The thing is, it seems like that classic kind of webcomic seems to be dying off slowly. One by one, the old guard retire, but there aren't really new webcomics like that cropping up so far as I know. Newer comics try keeping to consistent tones and are much better produced than their predecessors. Is this a change in what new artists are doing, or is it just that slightly-fantastical slice-of-life comics don't get popular at all now since a lot of the old classics still exist? (Or otherwise aren't interesting now that a lot of more focused stories are around)
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