The Week in Gaming Comics
by Professional Mole
Now that we’ve established that you like me as much as you like Carl(i.e., not at all), let’s start doing something. Namely, let me do what I said I’d do: reviewing gaming webcomics weekly!
This post will be longer than the next ones because I’ll say some forewords about the comics on this list instead of just posting the comic and commenting with snide/funny/sarcastic/whatever comments. These are comics I either read or have read in the past, so I’m more familiar with. Others, like Ctrl+Alt+Del, aren’t here because I’m not familiar with them. Shredded Moose, since Tim mentioned it, isn’t here because it’s been offline for a long time now(and that might be a proof that our Universe is governed by a benevolent entity, after all!)
This post will also not feature a witty and punny title, because I’m just starting and didn’t come up with anything witty that relates this being my first review post and the comics here featured. Deal with it.
Anyway… let’s do this!
Awkward Zombie
Aw, come on… okay, this is a bad place to start, but since alphabetic order says so…
I won’t lie to you guys, I like this comic. A lot. Katie has a distinctive style, funny jokes, a steady schedule that hopefully doesn’t force her to make shitty comics in a rush… but I guess she’s not immune to the common pitfalls(heck, the “this actually happens in the game, isn’t it CRAZY?” strips are plenty!) and I’m not planning to cut her a slack. No siree…
(click to see the full comic)
Oh, look at that! Didn’t I tell you? Here’s another installment of “These Crazy Things You Can Do In Game, Amirite?”
I like the execution of the joke, of how the punchline is delivered… but the joke itself is formulaic: ever noticed [unrealistic thing that happens in a game]? I wonder if that means [wacky consequence of said crazy thing when applied to reality]! LOL!
Also, for a moment I thought I had entered in Nerf NOW! by mistake…
Brawl In The Family
This is another one of the comics I read for actual fun and not just my rage and your amusement, so this is probably gonna be hard. Especially considering the amount of effort Matthew puts on some of his comics make me feel bad for featuring it here where I’m sure you expect me to rip him a new one.
Nonetheless: it’s a comic that started as a series of strips about Kirby eating stuff, and evolved to a series of mostly independent funny strips and pages about various characters of the Nintendo franchises. Yes, it falls victim to most of the usual schticks of the genre, and usually he’s lucky the humor saves it.
Here’s something: Matthew is a guy that has clever ideas. The problem, though is that clever ideas aren’t automatically funny. So this comic presents the theory that Cranky Kong must be the original DKC Donkey(just like the original DKC Cranky was the original DK Donkey), so there must be a cranky old man Diddy as well. That’s original, yes, but not funny. There’s no real joke here. I give it a blank stare and a slow nodding…
Dueling Analogs
Oh, boy, now this is getting good!
I don’t even read Dueling Analogs anymore, but I checked on what Napierski has been doing while I was writing the posts for Carl’s approval, and it’s clear he never disappoints me: always crude, distasteful, dirty, puerile and, on top of all, lacks class like the Antarctic lacks heat! It’s one of those comics that give webcomics a bad name. I’m definitely going to have fun with this…
Okay, it seems Napierski DID let me down, because this week in Dueling Analogs features no lewd comics. In fact, our last two comics seem to use the still popular “give a cheery game a creepy twist” route–
Oh, wait, these are guest comics! Aw, bummer, it seems we’ll have to leave the real DA-bashing for later guys! Well, let’s see what’s next…
F@NB0Y$
Yes, I write it like that!
Anyway, I liked Fanboys a lot… before Scott Dewitt’s updating schedule became a huge question mark! It seems he’s uploading more frequently later, but I still have the impression he’s in a “who updates last” contest with Ramsoonair. It isn’t quite making it. The updates are weak and still infrequent and, on top of all, why all the Javascript flashiness on the site? That’s like writing your page in an image and display the image, it serves no better purpose and wastes more resources!
…okay, enough of that, to the comics!
(click to see the full comic)
I cheated because the last comic has nothing to do with games which, for our first review of these comics, just won’t do. This here isn’t totally about games either, I think… I mean, it’s loosely related, with the “getting in line at late night to get the coolest thing of all times until next week” phenomenon, but… it’s all just trying to make the actions look more cool than they are and… that’s all. No real attempt at a joke. He migh as well put the opening theme of CSI:Miami there to add “coolness”. Bleh.
Nerf Now
Nerf Now is… weird. Most of the time I’m more weirded out than laughing or grumping at the comics. And his odd habit of drawing every and any videogame character as a cute girl in costume doesn’t help, that’s for sure…
But is it any good? Well, it’s… something. I think he does draw nicely(constant bouncy boobs nonwithstanding) and makes funny comics… but he’s definitely better with standalone comics. Seriously, his last Team Fortress arcs were… eerily like soap operas. And if there’s something I’m not in the internet to see, that’s soap operas!
(click to see the full comic)
You know that guy (there’s always that guy) who insists on telling everyone about something that happened to him, that he thinks is very special(like a dream, or how he found a $10 bill in the ground on the same day he lost a $10 bill in other place), but everyone else obviously thinks it’s not a big deal?
Well, that’s this comic! TF2 has crates, but you gotta pay to open them, so he doesn’t pay and they accumulate. Ha ha, isn’t that funny? NO! Try to make a joke, dammit!
VG Cats
Another of the fun ones… if Ramsoonair wasn’t a lazy hack that updates once every winter solstice! And that’s not even his biggest problem: the exaggerated and distracting expressions done for no good reason, long comic rants that don’t manage to be neither funny nor interesting, gratuitous vulgarity… he’s got it all! It has its good moments, but, seriously, it’s hard to forgive him with that non-existent updating schedule!
http://webcomics.me/2010/10/tim-reads-webcomics-october-23-1010/w4-vgcats-2/(click to see the full comic)
Oh, there we are! It’s the same damn comic that was reviewed the last time it was featured on this site! And it’s been… what, two weeks? Three? Dammit!
Well, okay, Tim made a crappy review of it, so let me address this: this is one of those “I have no ability to separate gameplay from storyline” comics. You have to save your daughter, but then you spend most of the game using ridiculous accessories and weapons and riding around in a trycicle… LOL, CRAZY!
Which is not to say it isn’t a funny idea at all… sure, I chuckled(after my cousin explained this better, because I didn’t really know this game very well), but let’s count the days between this and the last comic… 11! Eleven days for that? Surely you could come up with something better, couldn’t you, Scott? Huh?
I won’t waste more post space with this, but it’s simple: if your comic takes forever to update, the readers expect better content. If you’re going to make mediocre content, at least update regularly!
Super Effective
And, and addendum: this is VG Cats’ spin-off Pokemon comic. I enjoy it as far as pokemon based comics go(seriously, this must be the best) but there are at least two things very wrong with this: lots of updates that neither advance the plot nor are funny in the least; and it’s made by Scott Ramsoonair, which means it has those same problems pointed above.
(click to see the full comic)
Oh, look, it’s another of those comics that don’t really add to the plot besides stretching it horribly! I mean… okay, Red caught a Zubat! Woo… at least the last comics had something like a joke(the feeling of utter rage caused by the most annoying abnormal status ever invented in any RPG, confusion, is definitely shared by me), but this one is completely devoid of action.
And the best part? It’ll only take a hundred days for the next update! Seriously, sometimes I wonder if I was a genocidal dictator in another life and following this comic is a form penance…
And that’s the week(maybe a little more) in gaming webcomics! As a closing statement, I’ll just say: don’t worry, I’ll get better with time.
Also, before I forget again: if you’re wondering why a comic isn’t featured in this list, just leave a comment and I’ll tell the reason for that.
15 comments
The best pokemon webcomic is easily nuzlocke comics.
“Now that we’ve established that you like me as much as you like Carl(i.e., not at all)”
Hey, I love ya, baby.
Having some experience creating things for the approval of nerds on the net, I’d say listen to the crits, but remember that not all crits were created equal. Especially not from the drive-by trolls with an exaggerated sense of entitlement about free content, hiding their yellow streak behind a computer screen. As a connoisseur of gaming webcomics, I’m sure you know John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Theory.
Anyways, enough sermonising. Nice work. As someone who reads PA, Nedroid and not much else, this is all pretty new to me (except VG Cats), and new stuff with an informed opinion is why I bookmarked this site. So ta for that. Only, I wouldn’t have minded a bit more info about each comic before I go look for myself. I take it Awkward Zombie and Nerf Now aren’t all about TF2? What’s the setup for Fanboys? Any reason there isn’t a link to Duelling Analogues? Is it _that_ bad?
Dueling Analogs, even. Frickin’ lazy spellin’ leavin’ out perfectly good letters…
professional mole, you are trivializing genocidal dictators and dishonoring their victims. goddammit.
I’m going to go for the obvious, why didn’t you review penny arcade?
Definitely NOT because they’re exempt from criticism. They’re not. No one is.
But they’re very good and they know what they’re doing. So I don’t think I’ll have much to add in quick individual reviews like these.
I’ll get to review PA as a whole one day, though.
@Vermis
Well, I guess someone’s gotta like me! =P Anyway, I am one of these critics, so I guess I know my own kind. But thanks for the kind advice. =)
Anyway… I’ll review each of these comics(and more) individually. There I’ll flesh out the concept behind them and that all. These weekly reviews here are focused on individual instances. I did my best not to put too much information on the forewords so the article would get too long(and it did get pretty long, now that I’m looking at it)
And the reason there’s no link to Dueling Analogs is because, as I said, Napierski isn’t doing any comics of his own lately. And since there’s no reason(for now) to link to him(seriously, it’s not worth the read), it’ll remain linkless until an authentic Steve Napiersky comic appears! Or until I write the stand-alone review of DA, whichever comes first.
Are you doing this just for the sake of writing on a website? I don’t feel any passion. No offense, but I for one like Carl’s writing a lot more.
I don’t even read Brawl in the Family but the joke is that back in the day you couldn’t act simultaneously, hence why the old monkey was tagged. The joke isn’t supposed to be “there must be a cranky old man Diddy as well.”
Um, no, those were both the intended jokes of the comic.
The best pokemon webcomic is easily nuzlocke comics.
I was gonna say this. Admittedly, it’s pretty much the only one I know, but it’s pretty cool. The art still has a pretty long way to go before it’s really worth much, and a lot of the humor is pretty broad and lazy, but then there’s a lot of stuff that charms the crap out of me.
Dueling Analogs is the fucking worst. I hate it with passion. I’m kinda surprised he even found “guests” to post on his shitty comic.
VGcats deserves some kind of award.
You know how many comics has he uploaded this year? Ten. Yes, that less than a month per comic.
@Scott Hall
Since my schtick here is to talk about gaming webcomics, and little as possible about myself, I’ll answer this in a comment: I’m not used to be this kind of reviewer. I’m usually a guy open to appreciation rather than critical analysis. Other than comments in xkcdsucks and the like that nobody cared about, I wrote one review for the Bad Webcomics Wiki. So, refer to the second-to-last paragraph: I’m gonna get better. And I definitely don’t need a website to write to.
On BitF: read the author’s comment, that IS the joke. That, and an old monkey acting like a nostalgic old man. The tag along part only servesm to deliver the “they are the original Donkey and Diddy, dudes!” punchline.
@Timofei
He’s got the traffic. That’s usually enough for guest artists.
RE: Nuzlocke
I think I like Nuzlocke more for the concept of the challenge itself than the comic. The absurd humor sometimes throws me off a hard way. But I think it’s up there with SE, alright.
I LOVE VG Cats and Super Effective. SE is better than Nuzlocke. But yeah, VG Cats hardly ever updates…at this point, the fact that it never updates is almost like an in-joke. There are definitely some VG Cats comics that aren’t good, and maybe we should expect every one to be excellent considering how long it takes to make each one, but I find most of them to be genuinely funny. Though I don’t know if he’ll ever top his “hat goes on foot” comic.
Super Effective is just great. I disagree with what you said- I think most of the updates are funny, and the ones that aren’t do advance the story line.
I actually thought that Brawl in the Family was funny, though mainly it was the ranting that was funny.
@Chaos Rocket
I’m going to talk about VG Cats the next, and I think, yes, we should expect every one to be excellent. If he’s taking away any sort of time constraints, he should work better. Also, in my opinion his best recent comic is “In the Zone”. It’s quick, funny and doesn’t feature those dreaded overused expressions.
The ones that aren’t funny do advance the storylie? Sure, if you can show me how this is either funny or advances the storyline(more than a little box saying “Mt. Moon” at the next strip, for example). And the latest strip is a drag. A full comic to capture a Zubat? This feels like DBZ, where it takes 30 episodes for 5 minutes to pass!
BitF was more clever than funny for me. That rant is just the good ol’ nostalgic “in my time games were actually challenging, you whippersnappers” rant. Not really a diamond in the rough.
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