Zero Punctuation: Webcomics

[Sylocat]

It also helps to be completely [http://refried.timtekindustries.com/index.php?comicID=58] and utterly misogynistic [http://www.shreddedmoose.com/comic/].

 

[Vanguard_Ex]

I am a fan of CAD and I thought the digs at it were funny.

Anyone else think that Buckley is going to retaliate in his comic? I sure hope so.

*grabs popcorn*

I doubt it. Tim is too mature

Wait; what?

Have you ever seen Tim attack Yahtzee?

I need to second this, as Yahtzee has indeed publicly announced his dislike of CAD in the past and I have yet to see Buckley retaliate.

This doesn't exactly make him mature. I think he wants to put on a facade of maturity in this way by not directly attacking his more popular detractors. But it's a well-known fact that anyone who criticizes his comic on his forums, even constructively, is lashed out at and often banned. He's not exactly mature.

Too right. Having a look at CAD over the years I kind of drew the conclusion that Buckley is anything but mature.

 

[David_Cat]

I am a fan of CAD and I thought the digs at it were funny.

Anyone else think that Buckley is going to retaliate in his comic? I sure hope so.

*grabs popcorn*

I doubt it. Tim is too mature

Wait; what?

Have you ever seen Tim attack Yahtzee?

I need to second this, as Yahtzee has indeed publicly announced his dislike of CAD in the past and I have yet to see Buckley retaliate.

This doesn't exactly make him mature. I think he wants to put on a facade of maturity in this way by not directly attacking his more popular detractors. But it's a well-known fact that anyone who criticizes his comic on his forums, even constructively, is lashed out at and often banned. He's not exactly mature.

Too right. Having a look at CAD over the years I kind of drew the conclusion that Buckley is anything but mature.

He just did a miscarriage storyline, and did it well. He is mature.

 

[LadyZephyr]

but none of the CAD defenders dare say anything on here for the sake of their own sanity

Except the handful who already have, right?

And seriously, Yahtzee's a bit of an elitist. We all know this. When he targeted JRPGs. I like 'em, sure, but I can certainly see his points against them. He may do it in a bitchy way, but he does try to explain why his reasons for disliking something are valid. And, as he said in the mailbag special, if you personally like something, a critic attacking it really shouldn't get to you.

My two cents.

And the point of that rant directed at me was...?

Ack, sorry, boyo, I was making two separate points. The second part wasn't for you.

 

[Spleener]

shortpacked.com - Shortpacked, the tales of a dysfunctional toy store. This one's interesting because it touches on another kind of geekery altogether and because it sort of deconstructs the whole "drama in a comedy strip" conflict.

Mostly because Willis' previous works have done the comedy->drama thing too, only they've actually done it right. It's basically the author making fun of himself and how angsty and complicated his last work (It's Walky!) had gotten by the end.

And while he was obviously mostly bashing CAD, there are a horde of gaming comics out there that follow the exact same formula he describes. Some do it well, most don't. CAD does it wrong but somehow managed to become popular anyway, so that makes it the most visible target; were there other terrible gaming comics that had become popular anyway he would have bashed them too here.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

I take it somebody doesn't like CAD, but then again, nobody should. There's clearly something wrong with me as I still read it out of morbid facination.

 

[Vanguard_Ex]

but none of the CAD defenders dare say anything on here for the sake of their own sanity

Except the handful who already have, right?

And seriously, Yahtzee's a bit of an elitist. We all know this. When he targeted JRPGs. I like 'em, sure, but I can certainly see his points against them. He may do it in a bitchy way, but he does try to explain why his reasons for disliking something are valid. And, as he said in the mailbag special, if you personally like something, a critic attacking it really shouldn't get to you.

My two cents.

And the point of that rant directed at me was...?

Ack, sorry, boyo, I was making two separate points. The second part wasn't for you.

Ah no worries. Regardless, I did see your point. Man, I've got to tone down my hostility in forums.

 

[Meneguzzi]

I don't know what to say about the fact that so many people here hate CAD: that all comes down to personal opinion, I suppose. But consider this: if you really want nothing more than shallow, random humor with no creativity or meaning to be found, just keep watching Napoleon Dynamite and catch all the Spongebob reruns you can, lest you get sick from overexposure to intelligence.

It is one thing to make a serious webcomic. There are several out there and some of them are actually quite brilliant. It is however a idiots stunt to suddenly switch your shallow, random humor comic into rape-mode. Especially in the style of "Oh my fiancee had a miscarriage, probably the worst thing that can happen to a woman. And instead of visiting her I pity myself cause I now have to play Halo with my robot again instead of my baby"

Did you read it, or are you just going off what Yahtzee said? The first thing he did was visit her, then he was at home while she wanted to be at her mother's house, away from it all. THAT'S when Ethan was playing video games, but with Lucas, his friend who was trying to cheer him up: he never just retreated to the robot, leaving his fiancee alone. Try reading it if you want to bash it.

All I'm saying is that this entire video was obviously made for the sole reason of bashing CAD, when all this proves is what I said earlier: some people would rather have random humor than intelligent literature (or whatever you call the art of comics... comiciture... I don't know).

Well, let me use the type of "deep" argumentation CAD would use: Taste is like a right arm, some people don't have it.

Some people may find my reference to disabled people a rather moving deep analogy, some people might say I'm just an arsehole going for a cheap laugh.

I personally think that I have no place in writing witty stuff. Hence I don't try to do this for a living. Some webcomic artists should do the same

 

[ayoama]

*parody comic thingie*

Bad taste alert!

 

[s00pcan]

This was an extremely well deserved ass raping on a shitty comic. Good job, good job.

 

[Vanguard_Ex]

I am a fan of CAD and I thought the digs at it were funny.

Anyone else think that Buckley is going to retaliate in his comic? I sure hope so.

*grabs popcorn*

I doubt it. Tim is too mature

Wait; what?

Have you ever seen Tim attack Yahtzee?

I need to second this, as Yahtzee has indeed publicly announced his dislike of CAD in the past and I have yet to see Buckley retaliate.

This doesn't exactly make him mature. I think he wants to put on a facade of maturity in this way by not directly attacking his more popular detractors. But it's a well-known fact that anyone who criticizes his comic on his forums, even constructively, is lashed out at and often banned. He's not exactly mature.

Too right. Having a look at CAD over the years I kind of drew the conclusion that Buckley is anything but mature.

He just did a miscarriage storyline, and did it well. He is mature.

A single miscarriage storyline compared to years of jokes including Solid Snake attempting to have sex with Link from the Zelda series. Ah yes, very mature.

 

[The Sound Defense]

Well I have to say 'meh'. This was, without exception, the most self-indulgently dull ZP yet. I normally love it when Yahtzee rips on a game - if only because the publisher deserves it for asking for money for the crap they have put out. This week though? Yes, we all know he doesn't like CAD. Big deal. Stop flogging this dead horse. If this episode were a game it would be Turning Point - Fall of Liberty, ill-conceived, poorly executed and liable to cause haemorrhaging from your brain trying to escape from the tortuousness of it all.

Please Yahtzee do us all a favour and take a holiday or something, come back with the bile refilled and point it at a worthy target because this was the ZP equivalent of a CAD strip. Nietzche was right, the abyss gazes into you and that's not a pretty sight.

My first reflex is to say "go back to bed B^Uckley", but it's midday.

Anyway let's talk about the rampant bigotry of this post. You love it when he rips on games he dislikes, but now when he attacks CAD you call it this? There was no tangible difference between this rip and what he usually does; sounds to me like you're a seriously butthurt CD fan. And yes, read your post again, the main point to be gathered was you didn't like his choice of target.

 

[I Mav I]

Jesus, as much as i found this video entertaining i didn't actually get it till i read the comments and therefore led me to CAD...i just read a few comics from the past few months and christ what the hell is that!? How can you go from humour to fucking Eastenders!?

 

[mwhite67]

I thought that miscarriage thing was just a joke and then I went and read the last few CAD comics. I am appalled how could you possibly think that was a good plot developement for a web comic it is not funny in any way

 

[McChiken]

This was an extremely well deserved ass raping on a shitty comic. Good job, good job.

Shocking!

 

[SaneIntolerant]

It also helps to be completely [http://refried.timtekindustries.com/index.php?comicID=58] and utterly misogynistic [http://www.shreddedmoose.com/comic/].

That first link holds no ground at all, you know that, right?

 

[Mythbhavd]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned LFG as a good webcomic. I've found that it's one of the better ones I've viewed, although I'd have to say that I've become a fan of Unforgotten Realms. The characters remind me of some friends of mine.

 

[David_Cat]

I am a fan of CAD and I thought the digs at it were funny.

Anyone else think that Buckley is going to retaliate in his comic? I sure hope so.

*grabs popcorn*

I doubt it. Tim is too mature

Wait; what?

Have you ever seen Tim attack Yahtzee?

I need to second this, as Yahtzee has indeed publicly announced his dislike of CAD in the past and I have yet to see Buckley retaliate.

This doesn't exactly make him mature. I think he wants to put on a facade of maturity in this way by not directly attacking his more popular detractors. But it's a well-known fact that anyone who criticizes his comic on his forums, even constructively, is lashed out at and often banned. He's not exactly mature.

Too right. Having a look at CAD over the years I kind of drew the conclusion that Buckley is anything but mature.

He just did a miscarriage storyline, and did it well. He is mature.

A single miscarriage storyline compared to years of jokes including Solid Snake attempting to have sex with Link from the Zelda series. Ah yes, very mature.

That doesn't make him immature.

 

[fco]

Wow, I too thought he was joking with the misscarrage thing. I'll have to watch it again now.

Anyway, his hate for cad is nothing new. Just check his post from 23/3/08 on fullyramblomatic.com

As a recent interview with me over at Gamespot and several references in previous reviews and writings may have informed you, I have a long-standing hatred of the webcomic Ctrl-Alt-Del. I thought I'd take a moment to explain it a bit better.

You see, I have this theory that the internet is causing a general mediocritisation of human culture, because you can put pretty much any piece of work on the internet and no matter how hugely it sucks dolphin jizz you'll find some dick who's prepared to tell you it's brilliant. This is the principle on which Deviantart appears to be founded.

But the cruellest thing you can do to an artist is tell them their work is flawless when it isn't. It gives them no incentive to improve or try new things, which a creative person must always strive to do. And it tends to foster the kind of monstrous egos the webcomic sphere grows like mushrooms in the shit-spattered dark. Tim Buckley of Ctrl-Alt-Del is notorious for having a zero tolerance for any criticism, constructive or otherwise, often deleting it unregarded from his forums, or declaring them invalid for half-baked reasons. It seems blanket praise has already done its damage to this fevered ego.

I don't hate Buckley. I look at CAD and I see a lot of misdirected potential. I know, that sounds hilarious even to me. But if you look at Buckley's art blog, you'll find that he's actually a pretty decent artist when he wants to be. But the promise of easy praise and popularity keeps him mired in his copy-pasted shoulder-hunched droopy-eyed slack-jawed magnum opus.

Not that copy-pasted art need necessarily ruin a comic - Dinosaur Comics is one of my favourite regular reads. It's the fact that for having run a gag-a-day strip for however many years, Buckley still has no idea how to structure a joke. I've never known an artist so determined to never learn anything about their craft. His usual response to this sort of thing is that he just has his own style and that there's no such thing as a 'right' or 'wrong' opinion, but the fact is, while humour is a flexible harlot, it still has rules. Rules which can be broken in the right contexts; contexts which don't include anything Tim Buckley has written.

I'm going to post a link now to a Ctrl-Alt-Del comic from July 2007. Don't let the fact that it's old excuse the mistakes; this is still very typical of Buckley's current work.

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20070718

Here's another comic, this one a Penny Arcade strip from early the same year. The subject matter and joke are the same (Puzzle Quest) but it's a fairly obvious joke to make and I can easily assume both writers came up with it independently.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/03/28

Both comics identify the humour in the situation - that the rules of a game world seem absurd when applied to the real world - but while Penny Arcade understands that the crux of a joke should be reserved for the final panel, Ctrl-Alt-Del is apparently so excited about the idea that it blurts it out right away, leaving three more panels to flounder in excessive dialogue and pointlessness.

A punchline should be equated to an actual punch in the face. That's why it's called a punch-line. You deliver it and run. You do not hang around explaining how you did the punch and that the recipient should probably be in a lot of pain now.

Identify the funny part of the idea and save it for last. Leave with the audience laughing. If you do nothing else, finish strong. That's a rule any humourist will agree with. But with the centrepoint of the gag already uselessly spent, Buckley's comic is forced to fall upon its old standby of violence as a sort of prosthetic punchline. Now, violence can certainly be funny, modern cinema was virtually built on the tradition of slapstick, but it doesn't work in static, non-animated media. There is humour to be found in shock value, but most people have been on the internet long enough to not be shocked by anything as mundane as a claymore through the sweetbreads.

But even if the joke were structured properly, there is still far too much dialogue. This is a problem common to a lot of webcomics, but since we're already in the CAD-bashing groove we'll stick with it. Shakespeare wrote that 'brevity is the soul of wit'. He did not then add 'unless you're writing a webcomic'. It applies to everything, and don't tell me you're arrogant enough to claim to know better than Shakespeare.

A gag strip has a very simple formula. Buildup. Buildup. Buildup. Punchline. Anything that does not in some way build towards the punchline can safely be removed. If any dialogue can conceivably be replaced with a gesture or facial expression (visit Perry Bible Fellowship for a crash course in this), do so; this is a comic, a predominantly visual medium, not a fucking essay. Additionally, any dialogue pertaining to either ninjas, pirates, monkeys or Jesus should be excised, sealed in resin and buried in an undersea volcano.

This is why Ctrl-Alt-Del is a blight, and the fact that it remains crushingly popular despite making mistakes that a child would be brutally caned for on their first day at comedy school is one of the main reasons I openly weep tears for the future of human culture.

I know that an opinion can't technically be wrong and that there could be people who still like CAD for the characters or the art, but if you genuinely think that it is well-written, then you are demonstrably wrong. That's all there is to it.

Yahtzee is well aware that his own previous webcomic efforts aren't necessarily any better but reminds you that they came out of a dark time in his life from which he has determinedly moved on without a backward glance

 

[Evilducks]

The Alone in the Dark comic was a shit cop-out, but the rest of CAD is funny.

Please provide evidence. I don't think you know what that word means exactly.

I'm sure this was hysterical: http://www.cad-comic.com/comic.php?d=20080602