Category — Comic Review

So came <a this recent SMBC and I thought, “well, better start cooking up a farewell post for this comic because things are definitely not getting any better from here”.

I don’t even know where to start…

Because, really, there’s being clinically exact and smugly literal, and then there’s twisting things around so “no air resistance” equals to “no air at all” in a Physics problem. Sure, Mr. Weiner, but as long as you’re making assumptions, why not assume the people have astronaut suits with air tanks to survive? Why not assume it is in a closed space under an airtight dome?
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…And humorless irony is, as we all know, very unfunny
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It’s official now: I hate Weiner’s kids. Not his real kids, if he has any, but the ones he writes into his comics.
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Scott Kurt is, by all means, a professional webcomic maker. He talks seriously about webcomics and he’s like the Richard Dawkins of webcomics — i.e., a vocal figure that’s prone to some weird moments every once in a while.

And all that professionalism pulses in my head when I see something like, say, this last comic here. Because I look at it and can’t help thinking that this guy is doing this for a living.
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I’ve been a bit of a dumbass and totally forgot to comment about this. I’m still doing my little intro bit, though, because I’m not in a hurry. I’m never in a hurry. Which explains why I post comment posts about comics that are like a month old, but I’m digressing now.

Back when I featured “The Trenches” in my “Like Week”, it was a blank slate. It had barely started, and I was giving it time to develop and mature, and now it’s actually over one year old and I suppose I should have a well-formed opinion on it. I’d love to, but I can give you a half-formed nymph of an opinion: it’s okay. Frankly, I think the office comic tropes are not well developed, just thrown at you, and the characters are either archetypes or the polar opposite, i.e., they don’t fit at all. Also, I don’t like Isaac, for reasons I can’t really comprehend. Unlike Ryan Sohmer’s Rayne, he’s not obviously hateable he’s just… unpleasant. For some reason.

And the art is sort of weird, but not unpleasant. And that’s what we’re talking about today.

Cause there I was, reading through my updated webcomic list for the day in a break at work when then I realize The Trenches just went from this…

Completely apropos of nothing: I think that middle panel is really reminiscent of Penny Arcade for some reason…

…to this…

NOW WITH THE ILLUSION OF A THIRD DIMENSION!!!

…and if you didn’t click you might not have really noticed it, but it now has some shading going on. By the way, these are not the actual “before/after” comics, but were some of the best to illustrate my point. Because they have the same characters in it and all. But the thing is, yes, it’s not a big deal, but it’s, oddly enough, really more pleasant. At second glance, it doesn’t really show much for the comic as a whole, the characters are still either underdeveloped or randomdeveloped(seriously, what is Cora’s deal now?), most of them have the same character depth as a gaming bunny. On the other hand, it seems to have finally picked up a story to go on with and… it’s looking nicer. Maybe it’s not enough to save it, but it’s a wooden plank in the middle of the ocean: a clear improvement.

Look at this Nerf NOW strip and let’s play a game of “spot the mistake”.

Spoiler Alert: it’s not the supple blue butt

No, not the fanservice. That’s absolutely all right, buddy. *eyebrows rising*

The problem, in case you really couldn’t tell, is the last speech bubble. It makes no sense. The only way I can tell it’s supposed to be TentacleJo speaking is by context, and Engie has her mouth in a full closed smile that does not lend itself to speaking. So, yea, it’s a thing you have to infer, and to that you must totally ignore the fact that the tail on that speech bubble there is pointing at nowhere near him.

Here’s a hint Jo: try to not get distracted by your own fanservice. It doesn’t do well to your work.

Being incredibly short-sighted is a sin, who’d know!

Yea, you can’t die for one year, but you can feel excruciating pain and be unable to even move a single muscle because of sever third degree burns literally all over your body. Not to mention probably blind AND deaf due to fire damage, the pain being the only thing you’ll ever feel for the whole duration of that unbelievably long year.

But you know, not dead.

Seriously, did Zack Weiner never hear about Johnny Got His Gun? Or I Have Not Mouth And I Must Scream? Or that song by Metallica, One, which is not only based on, but also uses clips from “Johnny Got His Gun” in its music video?

I think the lesson here is that you shouldn’t really make comics about the inscrutable designs of God if you can’t be as creatively cruel as Him, you know.

“Also, we’ll get vegetables mixed with our fresh infant herbivore entrails! Ew!”

You know Kevin is going to do something with that rake, and it’s not raking leaves!

Almost every time I mention Kevin and Kell here I try to make it very clear that I respect Holbrook because of his legacy status and his relentless dedication to his work and all that. Even when he’s making jokes about the fertile cycle of female manimals or the completely insane ethics of what we may call “Predatory Economics”.

And then sometimes he’s just plain stupid and makes no sense. Case in point:

Sorry, couldn’t choose a single panel that encompassed the whole stupidity of it all.

See, the problem in this comic is not the formulaic animal humor or the fact that it ties in with the rather unpleasant “Dewclaw Corp” storyline. It’s that it makes no sense at all.

…what do you mean why? Isn’t it obvious why?! The punchline suggests that Kell is exchanging days for night but what the comic shows is that she arrives at morning and leaves at night tired as heck, if anything, she’s even more diurnal because she’s super active during the day couldn’t last through the night even if she wanted! How does that relate at all with the punchline?

I don’t even know how to finish this. I’d say something like “read your damn comic before posting”, but maybe it should be more like “know what words mean before writing them”.