Zero Punctuation: Webcomics

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cixelsyD

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Jul 2, 2008
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Melo The Yellow said:
thebobmaster said:
Tim Buckley? Immature.

Effect on his webcomic? Very little, unless he uses as a soapbox, which he does from time to time.
"Shortly after a story arc in which the female character had a miscarriage, CAD's number of site hits began to decline."
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/ctrlaltdel-online.com
Yeah when he made the CADbortion series, I was still reading the comic. However it was at that point that I think many people (including me) realized that there was no point to reading the comic since its story was drab and predictable and the comic as a whole was quite boring. The blogs that came with it were the most boring of all.

Sennz0r said:
Ok this is quite retarded, the majority of all these posts are for bashing CAD, which only seems to be done after Yahtzee makes a movie about it. I liked this movie as well, it's funny, but I enjoyed reading CAD too. Yes the miscarriage thing wasn't funny, but it adds a bit more depth to the whole thing for me. That is MY opinion, I'm not defending anything here. All I'm saying is that the bashing of this webcomic has only arrived after Yahtzee started it, which makes me wonder where everyone's loyalties lie here; all in favor of Yahtzee or do you have a personal opinion about this?

I don't doubt a lot of people here don't like CAD, it still looks like most of these are jumping on the Yahtzee bandwagon here. I enjoy his reviews as much as the next guy, and although all his points are valid, at the end of the day I still sometimes disagree with him. Not entirely, but some games I enjoyed playing alot until the edge wore off, like Oblivion.

If you don't like something on the internet, like CAD or ZP, the great thing is you can ignore it to death, it's not enforced upon you. If Buckley wants to draw a comic and let a woman have a miscarriage, let him, no one is forcing you to read the damned thing. Same thing goes for some ZP reviews. If you don't agree with Yahtzee when he says a game is shit, then say what you want to say and leave it at that. It's not like anyone of these guys is going to apologise for writing about something you don't like.

Now I hope it's pretty clear I'm not on a crusade for either Yahtzee or Buckley, but what I will say is that I checked the CAD forum and it seemed to be alot easier on the 'Yahtzee is a douchebag' commenting than most of the people in this thread. Could be coincidence, but it does stand out.
That being said I'll say I enjoyed this movie and found the CAD reference within the first few minutes so it was quite a funny experience.
As the link was showing, people are ignoring CAD now. It's just that we want him to improve and stop crying about criticism, so he can be more entertaining, get more viewers and earn more money. That's the point of feedback isn't it?
 

Melo The Yellow

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Jul 2, 2008
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What is a man? Not a miserable pile of secrets as Dracula would have us believe. No, it's not even the sum of his or her actions or their contributions given to society. The actions are not worthless int he summation of one's character though.

Our identity resides in our beliefs. If we looked to our actions to gather who we were, how would we face the uncertainty of the future? Why prescribe to being a relegious zealot? Are you not trading away your identity by doing so? What of Buckley? Who is the man who worships himself? Does he even know what he worships?

It is the morals, beliefs, ideals and reasons that determine our choices. This is who we are. This is where our worth as a person resides.

Buckley is a hedonist and a narcissist. From the poor quality of his comic, to the e-mails of his childish gloating and a multitude of other things we can see what exactly it is that Timothy Buckley believes.

What good is money when you're bankrupt? What use are you when you're as shallow as the constantly pasted doodle you consider quality? An empty person. Pitiful. Try as he might to celebrate himself and crowd his company with 'friends" but like every other man, he will die alone. We all die alone. If he does not know, like and understand himself...he has nothing.
 

Blayze

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Dec 19, 2007
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I propose the ultimate creation: An animated movie "written" by Paolini, "drawn" by Buckley, "directed" by Uwe Boll, created using software "coded" by Bill Gates and "reviewed" by Jack Thompson.
 

Magnetic2

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Mar 18, 2008
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Hm, he also takes a stab at Bob and George with the megaman sprite reference. I don't think pixel comics are bad, like "A Modest Destiny" (which was written by Squidi who is quite hansom as opposed to overweight curmudgeon) when it's original work. I remember trying to read Bob and George, but just thought the comic style was so un-inspired it was hard to look at.

On second thought though Squidi did "quit" the internet when him and Penny Arcade decided to have a mud throwing contest, so he is a bit of a curmudgeon.
 

Melo The Yellow

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Jul 2, 2008
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Blayze said:
I propose the ultimate creation: An animated movie "written" by Paolini, "drawn" by Buckley, "directed" by Uwe Boll, created using software "coded" by Bill Gates and "reviewed" by Jack Thompson.
Hold your horses, Buckley did it all by himself, with his own money funding someone else to do it and even they couldn't save it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0eYbXCF9mw&eurl=http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/CTRL_ALT_Delete
 

David_Cat

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Jul 2, 2008
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Melo The Yellow said:
Blayze said:
I propose the ultimate creation: An animated movie "written" by Paolini, "drawn" by Buckley, "directed" by Uwe Boll, created using software "coded" by Bill Gates and "reviewed" by Jack Thompson.
Hold your horses, Buckley did it all by himself, with his own money funding someone else to do it and even they couldn't save it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0eYbXCF9mw&eurl=http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/CTRL_ALT_Delete
Please god not the animated series
 

Blayze

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Dec 19, 2007
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Definitely not the animated series. No, I want to see the unholy collaboration and what it spawns. Buckley might be shit-hot at failing, but... by their powers of failure combined, anything is possible.
 

Canazza

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Jul 2, 2008
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Indigo_Dingo said:
Seems like this would have worked much better as a Fullyramblomatic essay. Don't see why he didn't put it like that, its not like we wouldn't have enjoyed some print as opposed to this.

In all gaming webcomics, there are always a few webcomics that do gaming right. And by a few I mean SMBC
daily,Crudely drawn, crudely funny, hits my funny bone 60% of the time (more than many comics), Win! :D
 

rebochan

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Apr 10, 2007
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Ironically, I'd all but given up on the repetitive nature of the comic until the miscarriage plotline peaked my interest. I was just so bloody tired of it all. Around the time of the Choose Your Own Adventure plot, I noticed that Buckley also seemed willing to actually make Ethan suffer for his actions. Then this plot showed that the world will not bend reality itself just so Ethan is always happy.

When it has zero continuity, it's just a weak Penny Arcade. When it has logical continuity, it's something I'd actually want to read.

Taste is subjective - except on the Internet, where not only is taste not subjective, you must be culled from the face of the earth should you not have the right taste. Witness the utter castigation and shitstorm in this thread when David_Cat had the *sheer audacity* to speak his personal opinion.
 

neems

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Jan 4, 2008
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Not being a reader of CAD, I was wondering why Tim Buckley was getting so much heat. There are two of them apparently...

On the plus side for CAD, apparently a bad review from ZP is worth a million times more publicity than any number of good reviews from anywhere else.
 

Canazza

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Jul 2, 2008
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neems said:
Not being a reader of CAD, I was wondering why Tim Buckley was getting so much heat. There are two of them apparently...

On the plus side for CAD, apparently a bad review from ZP is worth a million times more publicity than any number of good reviews from anywhere else.
true, but his forums will come to a standstill (And i think already have, since it's taken me 2 minutes to load the ZP forum post that's been put on) and then it'll all die down a bit after a few weeks when people realise why they don't go there regularly.
 

PENGUINKK

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Jun 11, 2008
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That was great. I love the mocking comic of himself at the end: "there are too many ads at the end of my videos." I also really enjoyed the animations in this a lot better than others.
 

Soviet Joe

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Jul 2, 2008
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When I first heard of Yahtzee's disdain of CAD, I was kind of surprised. I wasn't born yesterday, I know he's making a living from being a cynical, critical asshat, which I love him for. But this seemed a little more than a dig at a bad game, it was almost personal in a way. Regardless, I read his argument, looked at the examples, and agreed. Not because I'm a rampant fanboy, but because I just don't find CAD funny. It's like the kid at school who tries so hard to be the class clown so everyone loves him for being so witty and funny, but everyone sees straight through him.

I decided to read a few comics, regardless. All I got was "OOOOHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOO MISCARRIAGE" then "BANG, BACK TO UNFUNNY GAME JOEKS TEIM! :DDD". I thought I got it all wrong, so I read the news post. And my god, what a truck load of self-absorbed bull. He ran the miscarriage line so it didn't turn into a "parent-kiddy comic", or words to that effect. Then why brew a story line to just abort it? I mean, you know, you COULD just not have got the lead female character pregnant in the first time and let all the poor misguided readers, a lot of which I bet couldn't even begin to understand the tragedy of the event, have the 5 hours or so of their life. Then he thanks readers for their support?! What, for a poorly thought out story line? Sure, if this was relative to his life, but I'm sure he pointed out it didn't.

And then, of course, there's Buckley's dictatorly stance on censorship, of which I'm sure even ol' Bob Mugabe would be proud of. Even if he didn't do it, wiping all posts of any alleged flashing a minor incident is NOT the way to go about clearing your name. If anything, it makes it sound like he has something to hide. Criticism? Oh no. Yahtzee has his critics, however, he doesn't try and smite them with any banhammer. He just mercilessly takes the piss out of them. Criticism is to be expected in ANY art form, I should know being a musician. If he can't handle that, maybe he should consider a career change. Or even a frontal lobotomy. And all the closing of the topic slating the video sounds like to me is not Buckley "trying to be mature" or the bigger man, just that he can't think of a pseudo-humorous comment to make back. However, I have no doubt he'll pipe up somewhere in 7 to 8 months time.
 

RaiDK

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Apr 24, 2008
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I read CAD until I realized one day that it wasn't funny in the slightest.

Like seriously, wtf do you call this:
http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20080630
 

bulletproof12

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Feb 28, 2008
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Melo The Yellow said:
Blayze said:
I propose the ultimate creation: An animated movie "written" by Paolini, "drawn" by Buckley, "directed" by Uwe Boll, created using software "coded" by Bill Gates and "reviewed" by Jack Thompson.
Hold your horses, Buckley did it all by himself, with his own money funding someone else to do it and even they couldn't save it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0eYbXCF9mw&eurl=http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/CTRL_ALT_Delete
i hate you. i used to like cad, then it got less funny but there were still some good ones. the miscarriage thing was really hard to ignore buti had to see if it would get better. and now that i saw the youtube of the animated series....i dont think i will ever look at cad the same way again.
 

Sylocat

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Nov 13, 2007
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The problem with webcomics is that the barrier for entry is pretty much nonexistent, so talentless hacks can post whatever the hell they want, no matter how crappy. This leads to some bad ideas making it past all sorts of filtering, which only leads to trouble.

Newspaper comics have editors that review them... although to be fair, a lot of crappy stuff gets onto the newspaper's comic page too... in a local paper here, there's one comic that manages to be worse, in both story AND art, than a good three-quarters of the webcomics on the net. It's called "Real Life Adventures" (not to be confused with the "Real Life" webcomic) and its art level would be inexcusable even if it was made by ONE person, but it's actually made by TWO people, and the artwork is still so unbelievably terrible that it makes me want to retch. Oh, and the jokes are pathetic. So yes, there's a lot of stuff that DOES make it past editors too.

As for webcomics, there are a few good ones out there. And, quite frankly, I think criticizing the bad ones is like shooting fish in a barrel (which is why I don't think of John Solomon as quite the comedic genius or "lone hero" he claims... after all, anyone can do what he can do), I think there needs to be more attention paid to the good ones.

A few recommendations:
xkcd [http://xkcd.com], obviously, especially my favorite comic in any medium of all time [http://xkcd.com/386/].
Venus Envy [http://venusenvy.comicgenesis.com/], a really touching story, semi-autobiographical but dealing with some real social issues.
Misfile [http://www.misfile.com/], a superbly drawn and written comic, absolutely hilarious.
 

Soviet Joe

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Jul 2, 2008
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RaiDK said:
I read CAD until I realized one day that it wasn't funny in the slightest.

Like seriously, wtf do you call this:
http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20080630
That's not a joke. That's 3 panels of black, and a final panel trying to explain why the first three were funny. Oh, to be seven again...
 

Blayze

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Dec 19, 2007
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Like seriously, wtf do you call this:
I call that "half of one character (In front of what appears to be a background Buckley obviously had no hand in creating), three pure black panels and (Strangely for CAD) barely any dialogue".
 

Skrapt

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May 6, 2008
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Soviet Joe said:
When I first heard of Yahtzee's disdain of CAD, I was kind of surprised. I wasn't born yesterday, I know he's making a living from being a cynical, critical asshat, which I love him for. But this seemed a little more than a dig at a bad game, it was almost personal in a way. Regardless, I read his argument, looked at the examples, and agreed. Not because I'm a rampant fanboy, but because I just don't find CAD funny. It's like the kid at school who tries so hard to be the class clown so everyone loves him for being so witty and funny, but everyone sees straight through him.

I decided to read a few comics, regardless. All I got was "OOOOHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOO MISCARRIAGE" then "BANG, BACK TO UNFUNNY GAME JOEKS TEIM! :DDD". I thought I got it all wrong, so I read the news post. And my god, what a truck load of self-absorbed bull. He ran the miscarriage line so it didn't turn into a "parent-kiddy comic", or words to that effect. Then why brew a story line to just abort it? I mean, you know, you COULD just not have got the lead female character pregnant in the first time and let all the poor misguided readers, a lot of which I bet couldn't even begin to understand the tragedy of the event, have the 5 hours or so of their life. Then he thanks readers for their support?! What, for a poorly thought out story line? Sure, if this was relative to his life, but I'm sure he pointed out it didn't.

And then, of course, there's Buckley's dictatorly stance on censorship, of which I'm sure even ol' Bob Mugabe would be proud of. Even if he didn't do it, wiping all posts of any alleged flashing a minor incident is NOT the way to go about clearing your name. If anything, it makes it sound like he has something to hide. Criticism? Oh no. Yahtzee has his critics, however, he doesn't try and smite them with any banhammer. He just mercilessly takes the piss out of them. Criticism is to be expected in ANY art form, I should know being a musician. If he can't handle that, maybe he should consider a career change. Or even a frontal lobotomy. And all the closing of the topic slating the video sounds like to me is not Buckley "trying to be mature" or the bigger man, just that he can't think of a pseudo-humorous comment to make back. However, I have no doubt he'll pipe up somewhere in 7 to 8 months time.
So if someone shouted out to thousands of people in a public place that you were a pedophile and many others piped up also saying you were, you'd smile and walk away? I'm sure anyone in that situation would be issuing some swift kicks to the nuts.