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Ashcans posted:Sluggy Freelance was never cool enough to be a dinosaur, it's more like a webcomic coelacanth, in that it's a weirdly put together curiosity from prehistory that is surprisingly still alive and plugging away in it's own little niche. Sluggy Freelance serves one very important purpose as a litmus test: if you ever meet anyone who, for any reason, thinks Bun-Bun is really cool, you know to immediately sever all ties and delete all contact information. I'm looking at you, Larry Correia.
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Aug 7, 2019 21:49
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mycot posted:Can someone explain the difference between Sluggy Freelance and Shlock Mercenary? Even the names are almost synonyms (Freelancer = Mercenary). Schlock Mercenary is a webcomic trying to be one of those terrible sci-fi paperback novels there's like 50,000 of in every used book store, and Sluggy Freelance is how our frail mortal minds perceive the physical embodiment of the year 2000
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Aug 7, 2019 22:00
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I read Sluggy Freelance because it was the first webcomic I had ever heard of. I can't think of any other reasons that I actually continued reading it, other than novelty of the concept. Although that was true of the first dozen or so webcomics I discovered, until it got to the point where there were enough in existence that I could actually choose quality ones over the CADs of the world. I think I stopped when it started getting super serious and anime as poo poo.
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Aug 7, 2019 22:03
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:Sluggy Freelance serves one very important purpose as a litmus test: if you ever meet anyone who, for any reason, thinks Bun-Bun is really cool, you know to immediately sever all ties and delete all contact information. Not an empty quote. Every now and then at the game store I'll see somebody with a Bun-Bun shirt and that person will invariably be obnoxiously loud and, most likely, somewhat un-hygienic.
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Aug 7, 2019 22:41
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Rand Brittain posted:Meanwhile in the land of Questionable Content, I am starting to realize that Winslow and Hannelore's relationship is super-unhealthy.
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Aug 7, 2019 22:49
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When did QC go to the space station? I'm pretty sure that's when I decided that reading new updates wasn't worth the small amount of time it took to do so.
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Aug 7, 2019 23:15
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 lmao
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Aug 8, 2019 02:54
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I honestly think Schlock Mercenary was at its best when it was a much smaller-scale story of a relatively small group of mercenaries trying to do a job that's just a bit bigger than them, but the comic decided it wanted to deal with absolutely massive universe-spanning heavy sci-fi questions with up to four separate plotlines running concurrently and god-tier AIs with more power and resources than we could ever possibly imagine, which all tends to make the story hard to follow.Rand Brittain posted:Meanwhile in the land of Questionable Content, I am starting to realize that Winslow and Hannelore's relationship is super-unhealthy. I'm pretty sure Winslow said himself that he wanted to do something more with his robot-life a little bit before Hannelore took her soul-searching journey, and she just reminded him of his own ambitions. It's not good that he picked up all the mental illness that Hannelore lost though, however that works. It's a lot like the little cute AI-companions are just the juvenile stage of AIs that they go through before they can become full people, but that's too complex of an idea for the comic and Jeff Jacks just wanted more 20-somethings to work with. VA-11 Hall-A is way better at displaying that sort of post-singularity society while still being casual about it.
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Aug 8, 2019 04:10
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 man this comic really gets me
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Aug 8, 2019 06:06
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SlothfulCobra posted:I honestly think Schlock Mercenary was at its best when it was a much smaller-scale story of a relatively small group of mercenaries trying to do a job that's just a bit bigger than them, but the comic decided it wanted to deal with absolutely massive universe-spanning heavy sci-fi questions with up to four separate plotlines running concurrently and god-tier AIs with more power and resources than we could ever possibly imagine, which all tends to make the story hard to follow. It was never good, and after 20 loving years or whatever I can respect realizing that you've taken "what if I did a Garfield knockoff about Hammer's Slammers" in all possible directions you could take that idea, but that doesn't mean that a Garfield knockoff about transhumanist intergalactic politics is the solution
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Aug 8, 2019 17:00
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SlothfulCobra posted:I honestly think Schlock Mercenary was at its best when it was a much smaller-scale story of a relatively small group of mercenaries trying to do a job that's just a bit bigger than them, but the comic decided it wanted to deal with absolutely massive universe-spanning heavy sci-fi questions with up to four separate plotlines running concurrently and god-tier AIs with more power and resources than we could ever possibly imagine, which all tends to make the story hard to follow. Interesting, I felt exactly the opposite way back when I was reading it--the massive universe-spanning sci-fi stuff was neat, I just eventually stopped having the patience to drag myself through endless dad jokes in order to get the scraps of worldbuilding.
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Aug 8, 2019 23:36
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Thing is, there's very little original big ideas there. You could probably make a graph charting the author read David Drake (beginning), then John Ringo, Scalzi, a bit of Baxter, Hamilton and now Banks I guess if he's doing ai stories.
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Aug 9, 2019 01:39
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Dude’s never gone full Ringo, I feel it’s mean to compare the two. In fact, I’m not really sure Howard Taylor has it in him to be that gross.
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Aug 9, 2019 01:44
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Anyone remember a one off comic of a little girl having a tea party with her toys and when she drinks the "tea" she disappears à la Smash Brothers death. The final panel shows the "tea" she was serving was a juice called Falcon Punch. Can't find it for the life of me.
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Aug 9, 2019 02:17
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Agreeable Employer posted:Anyone remember a one off comic of a little girl having a tea party with her toys and when she drinks the "tea" she disappears à la Smash Brothers death. The final panel shows the "tea" she was serving was a juice called Falcon Punch. Sounds like Brawl in the Family?
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Aug 9, 2019 02:32
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Mors Rattus posted:Dude’s never gone full Ringo, I feel it’s mean to compare the two. In fact, I’m not really sure Howard Taylor has it in him to be that gross. That reminds me, Ringo once wrote Bun-bun into a book (as nose art on a tank, IIRC) I read that book cause I read Sluggy at the time, I remember it being pretty bog standard mil SF. It would be several years until I heard about Oh John Ringo No.
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Aug 9, 2019 03:28
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Is Shlock Mercenary actually printed in some newspaper somewhere or is there some other reason it strictly aheres to the newspaper comic size? He even has a large one on Sundays.
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Aug 9, 2019 03:35
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Rotten Red Rod posted:Is Shlock Mercenary actually printed in some newspaper somewhere or is there some other reason it strictly aheres to the newspaper comic size? He even has a large one on Sundays. Nope, just inertia from an old fart who grew up on newspaper strips and wanted to emulate them. It's one of the comic's worse features, since it means climactic scenes will often have 6 days' worth of filler so that the action can happen on Sunday size splash pages.
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Aug 9, 2019 03:42
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Begemot posted:Sounds like Brawl in the Family? No. Art was different.
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Aug 9, 2019 04:25
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Could a likpa fan give me a run down as to what the boobettes are up to in 2019? Thanks
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Aug 9, 2019 06:45
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Schlock Mercenary was one of the first webcomics I came across and still follow it daily. If I discovered it today I think I wouldn't bother.
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Aug 9, 2019 10:11
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nimby posted:Schlock Mercenary was one of the first webcomics I came across and still follow it daily.
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Aug 9, 2019 16:51
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Rotten Red Rod posted:Is Shlock Mercenary actually printed in some newspaper somewhere or is there some other reason it strictly aheres to the newspaper comic size? He even has a large one on Sundays. a lot of early webcomics people really really really wanted to be newspaper comics A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Aug 9, 2019 |
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Aug 9, 2019 16:59
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  tension
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Aug 9, 2019 17:58
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SardonicTyrant posted:We laugh at the badness of Sluggy and Schlock, but what else was there to read? Kevin and Kell? The never ending glurge of sprite comics even our younger selves thought was terrible? Dominic Deegan? I remember enjoying RPG World.
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Aug 9, 2019 18:29
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hell astro course posted:Could a likpa fan give me a run down as to what the boobettes are up to in 2019? Thanks They're now doing Cold War references.
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Aug 9, 2019 18:35
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Tollymain posted:
I meant to comment, I love the colour palette work here. You can tell this is an Ana scene before even looking at the characters.
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Aug 9, 2019 20:17
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:a lot of early webcomics people really really really wanted to be newspaper comics T obe fair to them, a lot of them were basically stuck wit hthat level of quality to begin with, just due to technological limitations of the time. This stops being an excuse as of the mid to late 2000s
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Aug 9, 2019 20:37
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i hope merrylegs and eightfold return
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Aug 9, 2019 21:06
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Tollymain posted:i hope merrylegs and eightfold return
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Aug 9, 2019 22:43
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Tollymain posted:
Ah I see Cat and Girl has drawn inspiration from C-SPAM
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Aug 10, 2019 17:57
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Phy posted:That reminds me, Ringo once wrote Bun-bun into a book (as nose art on a tank, IIRC)
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Aug 11, 2019 21:09
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Sluggy Freelance is one of those lumbering zombie comics from The Before Times that persists out of sheer inertia, and if it tried launching today it never would've gotten off the ground. But the comic itself is not the thing I want to bring up, but the reference links. I think the reference links are a really good idea, because especially when you have a really long running comic, sometimes things can be forgotten, or someone who didn't go back and read over twenty years of comics may not get a reference. It's kind of like the old reminders/recaps of what happened in old comics, only instead of having a tiny textbox from Smilin' Stan, why not just link directly to the comic in question? It's something I'd like to see more online comics do. Everything is right there! Use that! But any credit it gets for reference links is more than lost because the actual comic, which is the loving point of the site, is something you have to scroll down a screen to see.
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Aug 13, 2019 08:25
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MechaCrash posted:But any credit it gets for reference links is more than lost because the actual comic, which is the loving point of the site, is something you have to scroll down a screen to see. Also the archive links, instead of being to individual pages, are to the entire book collections, so when you click a reference link you have to wait for a hundred of so comics to load.
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Aug 13, 2019 11:13
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Does it not load the pages as you see them in archive mode in your browser? It does on mine.
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Aug 13, 2019 12:46
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It's possible there's some JavaScript trickery to make it less dumb; but I generally keep NoScript blocking stuff.
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Aug 13, 2019 17:05
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I find the reference links funny because Pete probably wishes someone would care enough about his comic to maintain a wiki, but since no one does, he has to. He is his comic's only fan. Regardless, his prime webpage sin is still not having back/forward buttons and forcing you to engage with his awful, awful archive.
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Aug 13, 2019 17:17
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I would have zero problem believing that Sluggy Freelance still enjoys a large and devoted following of subterranean morlock-creatures who diverged from baseline humanity back around the dot-com boom
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Aug 13, 2019 18:14
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in their sibiliant language "sluggy freelance" means "joy and good fortune"
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Aug 13, 2019 18:17
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Rotten Red Rod posted:Regardless, his prime webpage sin is still not having back/forward buttons and forcing you to engage with his awful, awful archive. Like, the infinite scrolling thing is an interesting idea in theory for archive reading. Have the page load up comics 122, 123, and 124 while you're reading 121 so that you never have to wait for a page to load. But combining that with links to other places in the comic means that you're either juggling tabs or losing all that pre-loading whenever you check a link.
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Aug 13, 2019 19:43
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