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-->October 2, 2004
Eric Burns-White: The idea is to tease people, not piss them off.
So, I read a recommendation for Lottie vs. the Dead, over in a forum post on Comixpedia. And the description sounded appealing -- it's Superhero Satire, which is a form I know well. (I've, frighteningly enough, written just shy of a million words of Superhero Satire in my time.) It features a cynical heroine. And the guy recommending it says he likes it. It's on Wirepop, which is Yet Another Subscription Webcomics Site, but they boast having a robust free preview. So I go.
Well.
I can see today's entry free, a la Modern Tales, though it doesn't exactly pull me in. And checking out the "free preview," I discover it's the first episode of the first chapter.
The first episode of the first chapter is nothing but a relatively boring, utterly cliche Zombie Attack.
I look to the gallery, to see if I'll at least think the art fits the whole "superhero parody" genre well. Only the Gallery is subscriber only.
The gallery is subscriber only!!!!!
Okay guys. Marketing 101 for you. If you're going to give away a freebie, make sure it includes enough hooks into your series to make people want to read more. Absolutely make sure it actually involves your main series. And gallery artwork? Gallery artwork isn't a premium bonus. It's an advertisement. There's a good number of people out there who won't plunk down even three bucks a month on a superhero story without knowing if there are hot babes. There are others who won't commit without some sense of artistic style. And as for me? I'm not going to commit without having some concept of what kind of story you're telling.
(Yes, this means I think Modern Tales needs to remarket too -- but at least with Modern Tales, things like Gallery pages aren't locked away.)
As for me? I have no idea if Lottie vs. the Dead is worth my time right now, and I'm not that interested in finding out. And that is not good for Wirepop.
Want to get me interested? Give me a six page Lottie story. Just enough to let me know a bit about her and a bit about what I can expect. And for Christ's sake, if you're going to rip off George Romaro, figure out what made George Romaro work, first.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 6:02 PM | Comments (10)
-->Eric Burns-White: You realize, if Frank Cho had drawn this, Erwin would be reacting to a statuesque brunette with large breasts, right?
(From User Friendly. Click on the thumbnail for full sized premature fragging.)
I give User Friendly a certain amount of crap. I think Illiad does a little too much coasting and a little too little resolution for my tastes. However, I keep reading it, and days like today are why. This is downright hysterical. The reason is what I call execution, but might also be called timing.
We have setup in panel one. We have a Chekhov's Law of Flamethrowers in panel two (Chekhov's Law of Flamethrowers states that if an flamethrower with an automatic firing mechanism is put on the fireplace's mantle in panel two, that flamethrower's automatic firing mechanism must go off by panel three. Chekhov was very specific in his laws.) We have the two coming together in panel three. There is also implied violence. There is geek humor, yet the strip doesn't rely on the geek humor to bring the Funny.
Good, good strip, and part of a good arc. Life is good, damn it.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:50 PM | Comments (0)
-->Eric Burns-White: Entitlement and the Modern Fandom
I've said before I'm not much of a webcomics forum-participator. I've joined a number of them, and occasionally I read through them, but often the participants on a given strip's forum (or LJ-Community, or what have you) represent the Fandom more than the fans of that strip, and that's generally not how I want to spend my time1.
The implication in the last paragraph is correct, by the way. There is a difference between the fans of a strip and the Fandom, The fans of the strip are the people who read the strip and like it. Period. It doesn't take much to be a fan.
A strip's Fandom are those people who community-build around their shared appreciation of the strip. In the old days, they made fan clubs. These days, they join forums (Forums? Fora? It feels like there should be some kind of funky plural on that word) and LJs, spread the word, and organize events around the strip.
Let's use as an example the venerable Marmaduke. You remember Marmaduke, don't you? Yes, the one with the dog. A Marmaduke fan (there must be some) likes to read Marmaduke. They find the dog amusing. They might even clip their favorite Marmadukes out of the paper (or print them off the webfeed -- which I just discovered is here. I am now as scared as I have ever been) and tape them up over the ancient and brittle Dilbert cartoons in their cubicle, back from the days when Dilbert was funny.
The Marmaduke fandom, on the other hand, spends a significant amount of time on the Marmaduke forum (the Marmaduchy, let's call it). They have many different discussions on Marmaduke, and on things that have nothing to do with Marmaduke -- to the point that the Marmaduke forum moderators had to create a specific topic for off-topic posts, and have to kick folks there whenever they stray. They trade LJ icons and forum avatars based on Marmaduke art. They collect pithy Marmaduke sayings. They affirm each other and their common love of Marmaduke, and they find close friends through Marmaduke -- friends that mean a lot to them far beyond Marmaduke. This is what the Marmaduke Fandom has given them, and it means everything to them.
The idea, for many of the Marmaducets and duchesses (so clever, those Marmaduke fans -- the guys naming themselves after currency and the girls making a delightful play on Marmaduke's name), is not so much the individual Marmaduke strips themselves, but the zeitgeist of all that is Marmaduke. It's the attitude. It's how Marmaduke makes them feel, and how much they can amplify that feeling in the company of others. It can be terrifically empowering and it can be terrifically satisfying. Right here, in this little community on the internet, Marmaduke is the coolest thing around, and by showing your love for Marmaduke, you're cool too. And as for Marmaduke-creator Brad Anderson? The Marmaduchy provides feedback and, more importantly, validation. It's damn hard to be a cartoonist -- or a creator of any stripe. It takes effort and ego and skill and talent, and you spend a huge amount of time wondering if anyone gives a fuck. The Marmaduchy tells Anderson "yes. Yes, we give a fuck. We give many fucks. In fact, if you want us to, several of us will in fact have sex with you if you want, because you have brought so much pleasure to our lives that we would dearly love to repay you."
There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Communities like this are good things, for most of the people in them. They're generally good for the creators as well. They mean something. They mean a lot, really.
I'm in a few Fandoms -- not generally webcomics Fandoms (I spend my time on so many different webcomics it's hard to develop the monofocus necessary to be a good Fandom-member) but other Fandoms. I'm definitely in the In Nomine Fandom, I used to be in the Legion of Super Heroes Fandom (and even quit in verbose disgust when they changed the Legion -- so I'm not claiming any moral superiority here) and I spent time in the Babylon 5 Fandom. I enjoy the SF Fannish subculture, which puts me in kind of that overall metafandom. And I'm occasionally in a fandom for individual creators of webcomics -- I do like reading creator-journals, for example, and I comment a lot more in those than I do in the strip-forums. I'm not wholly immune to fora, either, though I'm a totally arrogant jerk so I spend more of my time in strip-forums seeing if anyone's mentioned Websnark than actually participating in discussions.
But I see Fandoms, all the time. And as I spend more and more time observing them, I also recognize the dark side of Fandom.
Its name is "Entitlement."
The most common lament of Webcartoonists who achieve any kind of following is the overwhelming number of comments they get -- whether in e-mail or on their forums -- demanding things of them. Demanding that picayune mistakes not happen next time. Demanding that characters act the way the fan thinks they should, not the way the cartoonist actually portrays them. Long screeds get published on the forums of how a given plot arc is driving the readers insane and they hate it. And don't get me started on what happens when a webcartoonist actually misses an update. Holy Jesus Christ Without a Spine Curled Up I A Basket, this is a mountain of suck for the cartoonist.
Almost all fandom members feel a certain sense of entitlement. This is normal. This is healthy. This is even slightly legitimate. The overall feeling is "I have invested something of myself into Marmaduke. I evangalize Marmaduke. I spend a portion of my day on Marmadukish things. I affirm Brad Anderson. I deserve some recognition for this." And yeah, they do deserve some recognition. They certainly deserve Brad Anderson saying "guys, thank you so much for supporting Marmaduke. It means a lot to me that you like the strip."
And... well, that's about it. They're already getting Marmaduke for free (or for the cost of their newspaper). They don't get part-ownership of Marmaduke by virtue of liking to read it. And if they offer Brad Anderson sex and he takes it, that just means that Brad Anderson got some. It doesn't mean they get to dictate what Marmaduke would or wouldn't do. The majority of Fandom members get that.
There is a minority, however, that dives into Entitlement, butt naked and way over their heads. They do own Marmaduke, damn it! They've been loyal and they've been true, and Brad Anderson is a total asshole who doesn't really give a fuck about Marmaduke or great danes in general! If he did, he'd do the strip the way we want him to! Dammit! Someone should be able to take Marmaduke away from him, so that Marmaduke could be done right! This can mean anything from Marmaduke doing nothing but cat loving (or cat hating) jokes to redesigning Marmaduke to be female with human breasts, depending on the person in question. This minority is always there, lurking under the Fandom's surface, waiting for prey... and the moment any kind of deviation from the norm happens, they break surface, ready to devour.
The absolute worst examples of this are when they don't like the turn of events in the strip. "You made Marmaduke sad!" they write, truly outraged. "He went to his bowl, and that fucking Pekinese had eaten all his food, so he had no food and he was sad! I don't fucking read Marmaduke to see him sad! He should always be happy!" And then they get into an eighty-post long flamewar with other forum participants on whether or not it was appropriate that Marmaduke was sad.
The problems with the Entitled in a creator's fandom are threefold:
- Conflict in a webcomic is a good thing. Bad things happen in webcomics because they either set up situations where the Funny can be brought forth or they set up situations where the Story can be moved forward. Without conflict, the webcomic becomes nothing but a barely connected series of pictures without meaning or merit. If you need an example, have a look at the Simpsons episode where Itchy and Scratchy, bowing to pressure from parents' groups, stop being mean to each other and instead give each other lemonade all the time. Sometimes, the characters are going to do stupid things or make bad choices -- that will then feed the strip material to work with for a long time to come. So get over it.
- The Cartoonist is under no requirement to worry about other peoples' emotional state. If you invest so much of your own sense of well being into a comic strip that anything bad happening to the comic strip characters feels like a personal affront, you officially need to get a fucking hobby away from your computer. If the Cartoonist does his strip as his job, his only obligation is to produce strips on time, and try to make them high quality enough so he doesn't alienate his audience. If the Cartoonist is doing this as a hobby or on the side, he doesn't even have that obligation. In neither case does he owe you or me a good life. He probably doesn't even know us. So get over it!
- Cry wolf too many times, and those rare times when outrage is warranted it won't be forthcoming. Look, there is an appropriate level of expectation involved in producing art on a regular schedule or basis. If, after 40 years of tenderhearted dog antics, Brad Anderson put in a strip where Dottie is brutally anally raped while Marmaduke is spiked to the floor with railway spikes, you better believe there will be outrage. There should be outrage, in a situation like that. Anderson has given his readers every reason to expect he won't suddenly subject them to a situation like this. But, if Anderson, Anderson's fans, the Marmaduchy Moderators and the support group has gotten accustomed to defending Anderson every time someone has a conniption because the Pekinese ate Marmaduke's food, then as soon as the far-more-justifiable outrage over anal rape and dog torture begins, his support mechanism will out of habit immediately begin defending him, hopelessly muddling the situation.
Just to make everything more difficult, there's also the question of the Creator's relationship to his Fandom. Because despite everything I said above, there's something crucial a creator of any stripe must understand about the Fandom that's grown up around him. The Creator owns his creation, and may do with it whatever he wants, but he doesn't own his Fandom and he doesn't get to dictate to them. Oh, he can try to dictate, all he likes, and the fans who weren't the problem to begin with will happily jump in with both feet. However, the Fandom as a whole is something that the members have invested in, and they do get as much of a say as the creator on how that Fandom is going to go. There are two highly public situations where a creator/owner of a property and that property's fandom came to serious terms, and in neither case was it pretty:
- White Wolf Studio, owner of Vampire: The Masquerade, had given its blessing and official status to a group called the Camarilla (after an organization in the game) which provided an official framework for developing LARP characters who then could move all around the country. Well, there reached a point where White Wolf and the Camarilla couldn't see eye to eye, and acrimony developed. On the one hand, the company had significant investment in their product line and had to be able to influence their "official" fan club's use of their materials. On the other hand, the Camarilla members and leadership had invested tremendous time and energy into the official Chronicle the group ran, as well as the organizational structure. (This is an incredibly simplified take on the situaion. I know there was far more depth to it.) Eventually, there was a messy divorce between the pair, with the license being pulled and ultimately threats of lawsuits. White Wolf owned Vampire, but the group was more than just a Vampire chronicle at that point, and the bad feelings and rift the breakup engendered extended far beyond the actual event, on both sides.
- Aaron Sorkin, the creator of The West Wing, began participating in the forums that had grown up around the West Wing on Television Without Pity. He enjoyed greatly the intelligent commentary, the humor, the feeling of community, and the implicit offers of sex he received. And then he started taking heat from one segment of the fanbase. Unlike White Wolf, he had given no official sanction to the group that he could revoke. Instead, he actually put a subplot about insane Internet forums onto the West Wing itself. His intent was to imply the forum participants on TWoP's forums were insane and stupid. His effect was to make pretty much every member of every fandom whether connected to Sorkin or not pissed off. It was one step above making fun of trekkies. Naturally, he did that later on. As a result, even though Sorkin is a brilliant writer who elevated the craft of television writing, there were far fewer tears shed than expected when he lost his job and moved on into... um... well, I assume he spends a lot of time on the Internet himself these days.
In both of the above situations, the Fandoms persisted after the hullabaloo. There is still a Camarilla, and it's still chugging along in Vampire (despite the relaunch of the World of Darkness). And Sorkin's tirade on the West Wing had no effect on the West Wing forums at Television Without Pity at all -- except maybe to remove some of the luster from the show for the participants.
So, in the end it's a two way street. Fandoms are powerful things, good for spreading the word about a community and giving a webcartoonist some much needed positive reinforcement, love, and implicit offers of sex. However, they are their own entities, unto themselves, and will feel some justified entitlement because of the energy they're putting into themselves. Some members of that Fandom will have batshit insane feelings of entitlement, leading them to tirades and demands that no one will think is appropriate, and the webcartoonist might find him or herself hating the very organization that has grown up around the strip in question.
I tend to side with the webcartoonists in these things, by the way. But I understand implicitly that it doesn't matter -- the Fandom will do what the Fandom will do, some asshats will be in the Fandom and will act asshatty, and -- most importantly -- an implicit offer of free sex over the comic strip you create will turn into the most expensive sex you have ever had.
Oh, if you're wondering... Websnark has no Fandom. Critical commentators get to have arguments for free.
1 The case can be made that the entirety of Websnark.com represents my entry into overall Webcomics Fandom, and that any critical commentary I put into Websnark represents my own embrace of entitlement and all the rest. To anyone making that case, I say: "dude, you're not paying for this. I'll do whatever I want." When it's pointed out that that isn't a denial and that I am in fact calling the kettle black, I respond by beating the crap out of the questioner and running in one direction for one hour. Thank you, Superosity, for refining my debate skills.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:59 AM | Comments (13)
-->Eric Burns-White: The difference.
First off, we've now broken two hundred strips. And a hundred and ten thousand words, total. I am so doing Nanowrimo this year.
Secondly, this is a quote from /usr/bin/w00t's front page:
What does this mean for the strip? It means that I will draw strips on the weekends. However many strips I draw, that's how many you're getting over the following week. If I go batshit and draw five? Strip every night. If I draw one? You get one. I'll shoot for the standard MWF, but I'm not going to guarantee it. No makeups, no fillers, no apologies. Nobody has felt the need to bitch about this yet, and for that I thank you. However, if a few of you should get it into your minds to do so, I respectfully suggest you try pedaling a fucking bicycle twelve to fifteen miles round trip to and from your nine-to-six-with-twenty-minute-lunch day job five days a week and see how artistic you feel when you get home.Sing it, sister.
This is the difference between a strip where the Webcartoonist has made it his job (PvP, Sluggy, Something*Positive and the like) and one where the Webcartoonist works a full day job and tries to do this stuff in their everyday life, too. If Chaobell were putting food on her table by the graces of this strip, my reaction would be this is your fucking job! Rework your priorities! But she's not putting food in the table via this strip. She's doing this strip because she wants to, because she loves doing it. And we're lucky to get whatever she can do. She doesn't owe us a damn thing.
Let me repeat that.
We're lucky to get whatever she can do! She doesn't owe us a damn thing!
So, if you're about to fire up your e-mail or LJ-commenter to take Chaobell to task because she's not going to guarantee you the free comic strip she does in lieu of other free time activities, do us all a favor and drop your computer keyboard into an industrial combine, then go find some other hobby. I for one will happily take whatever W00t I can get, and hope Chaobell's quest for motorized transport bears fruit. Not that she'll be obligated to do the strip more often then, mind. Chaobell is free to do what she will, and she'll get no argument from me.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:29 AM | Comments (1)
-->Eric Burns-White: Okay. Aeire is smarter than I am. And cooler. Smarter and cooler. Yay!
(From Queen of Wands. Click on the thumbnail for full sized lack of epic!)
I've expressed some concern that Queen of Wands was about to go into another extended flashback, where Angela -- the last almost always unremittingly fun character -- would expose some trauma in her past. I've expressed some concern that QoW was on the brink of the dreaded First and Ten Syndrome that folks can read the Lexicon to learn more about. I've expressed some concern that, while I dearly love Queen of Wands and there was no chance I'd drop it soon, I would soon be in deep frustration-land.
For the record? Not only didn't any of the above happen? Aeire just kicked my ass. She just kicked it to the fucking curb. Aeire just proved that she is vastly, vastly cooler than I am, and what's more she got my Force Commander and Oberon matched pair from my room, assembled the two together into centaur mode, and then set it on fire while I watched, just because she could.
"Geez, Kestrel -- not everything has to be an epic story. Sometimes, shit just happens."
Not only did this completely torpedo the expectations I had -- in a bright and cheerful and most all life affirming way, I would add -- but it completely recasts the multiple layer (and often very depressing) flashback sequences that Kestrel herself underwent earlier in the series. This becomes a defining moment for Queen of Wands and for Kestrel's own character development; not only does that mean that QoW isn't about to go all First and Ten on us... it means that it was never in danger of it in the first place.
This was a cute strip, if you're not a regular reader. If you are a regular reader, it seems subtle, and then suddenly goes off like a firecracker in your brain. This is what the whole series is about, right here! Kestrel is learning. She had to learn first off that it was all right to start looking out for herself and her own needs instead of simply living for her friends. Kestrel isn't at the end of her lightning bolt path journey just yet, but she's made a major turn on it, even if she doesn't realize it.
Aeire? So gets a biscuit. A tasty, tasty biscuit.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:59 AM | Comments (0)
-->October 1, 2004
Eric Burns-White: Checking in on the batshit crazy world Annie lives in...
(From Annie! Click on the thumbnail for full sized hobo lifestyle!)
When last we left little Annie Warbucks, it was believed by Daddy Warbucks and her faithful traveling companion Amelia Santiago that Annie died when her jet crashed into a lake. However, the brain damaged, amnesiac, fevered child was stolen away by a lunatic who thinks he's a two-fisted vigilante named the Phantom Commando. Hiding Annie from all search parties, the Phantom Commando systemically brainwashed and abused Annie until she too believed she was the plucky sidekick he had always known would come to his Commando's Cave, and the Junior Commando was born. ("DEATH TO SPIES! DEATH TO SPIES!")
Well, after the Phantom Commando shot several people dead (including at least one who apparently was a spy), the police discovered the existence of the Junior Commando when they found the too-small pair of boots the Phantom Commando was making his sidekick wear. After staking out a comic book shop, they gave chase to the motorcycle driving Commando. During the chase, the motorcycle's sidecar came loose and Annie plunged off a cliff and slammed into a tree. As with all extraordinarily deadly looking skull traumas involving amnesia victims, Annie's memory was restored (though she apparently doesn't remember the Phantom Commando). She was then placed in a hospital awaiting her treatment.
However... for no reason at all, Annie immediately took a hating to all the police and the social worker who came to talk to her, giving them a false name and sneaking out as soon as possible, thus leading to a county-wide manhunt for the child. She stole clothes from a line and tried to call Daddy Warbucks, but all the payphones she found were broken. So now she's hopping a freight train to get her out of the county....
Does anyone have any idea how fucked up this is? I mean... I keep waiting for her to take up smoking and mescaline and eventually writing for Rolling Stone.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:13 PM | Comments (0)
-->Eric Burns-White: Because I don't need to sell you on the content, here's some chatting about technique
So, in case you don't know, BBC's Radio 4 is broadcasting a third series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That's All I've Got To Say covered the wheres and whys nicely, so I won't retread Chris's ground.
If you find yourself excited by the prospect of new Hitchhikers radio goodness, you won't need me to tell you why. If you're not excited by that prospect, there's little I could say to make you so. So, with your kind indulgence, we'll have the recommendation as read and go on to something I think is interesting: technique.
How does someone take a decades old radio show and make a sequel to it?
For those of you who came in with the books, please understand that the radio show came first. In fact, it contained a considerable amount of additional material and a substantially different ending (including a bit on how Zaphod Beeblebrox was directly responsible for the destruction of the Earth, if I remember correctly), as well as the only time that Rula Lenska did anything other than Alberto VO-5 commercials in my experience) than the book series did. The television series (which I'm geeky enough to own on special edition DVD) was a condensed version of the radio show with some bookish flourishes thrown in, and of course, there are many too many books in the Hitchhiker's Guide Trilogy to actually call it a Trilogy, but that's just part of the fun.
However, to do a new radio series, they've actually chosen to adapt the fourth book in the series, more or less, with some of the third book thrown in, and are completely ignoring where the radio series left off. Which, if one looks at the later Hitchhiker's books, is absolutely apropos.
They absolutely nailed the "old school feel," however. In part because they brought back the theme music, theramins and all. Not a remixed version of the theme music, a la the various Doctor Who revivals, but the exact same music that heralded the start of the radio episodes and the television show. And, although Peter Jones has passed on, they used his voice as the voice of the book in the beginning, retelling the famous opening prologue of... well, almost every version, but distorted it as if the speakers on the Book were failing. Then they gradually sampled in the new actor's voice, along with an explanation that as part of the ongoing upgrades to the Book, one could now have a variable voice, though it wasn't quite working right at the moment.
As a result, the old school fan had a perfect introduction to the series, and therefore was willing to accept that Trillian hadn't even been in the second series.
Plus, it's free to listen to online. I mean, how cool is that?
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:55 PM | Comments (0)
-->Eric Burns-White: Snrk.
(From The Suburban Jungle. Click on the thumbnail for full sized take to the camera!)
John Robey is good at many things. I've said positive things about him before. And you know I love to be longwinded about why something works.
Well, this strip works. Because Robey is truly great at bringing the suddenly absurd in, and then moving it right back out, leaving the characters just a little stunned.
For the second time in two weeks, Robey gets a biscuit. A tasty, tasty biscuit.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:32 AM | Comments (0)
-->September 30, 2004
Eric Burns-White: We've turned the tide!
No presidential ads, no fart dolls, no Latin dating services... just a bunch of links for comic book art. Google Adsense has regained its sanity!
For now.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:15 PM | Comments (1)
-->Eric Burns-White: For the record....
...even as we speak, a debate that might well decide the election in America is going on, carried live on most television stations and on NPR.
I, correspondingly, have gone to a cybercafe that's playing a jazz CD, surrounded by other people who are desperately hiding from open media sources. This might make me a bad person. If so, I revel.
November can't come soon enough....
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:11 PM | Comments (2)
-->Eric Burns-White: My friend Matt refers to taking control of a situation as "picking up the shotgun." Does that apply in high fantasy?
(From Nahast. Click on the thumbnail for full sized getting serious!)
You haven't seen many pure adventure strips on Websnark. That's not because I don't like them, but because they're hard to do. It's hard to balance the needs of the individual strip's execution with the needs of the overall story's pacing with little to no Funny to balance the Story. Adventure strips typically need a lot of action to keep them moving, too. Not necessarily violence, but dynamic motion. It's rare to get all that right. But then, Nahast is rare in many ways.
Alejandro Melchor is a friend of mine, I should disclose. He's an RPG developer, same as I am, which is where I know him from. He's done a ton of work for Mongoose Publishing. He's very, very good at it. And when he put together Nahast, it was an idea of both synthesizing an adventure webcomic and a d20 RPG world at the same time. These aren't necessarily complimentary goals, but he made the right choice in the beginning -- focus on the story, and let the mechanics follow if they can, or fudge them if they can't.
The story is very good, because Melchor paces it well. More to the point, his execution is nearly flawless. Something happens in each strip, whether it's an action or a bit of exposition, so that there's always a sense of movement. That builds momentum and excitement. You want to know what happens next, but you don't have to reread six or seven strips in a row to grok what's going on.
Pacing and execution -- an excellent trait in a role playing game. An even better trait in a webcomic.
Good, good soup.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:48 PM | Comments (1)
-->Eric Burns-White: Mmm. New York City post-death. Think of the music scene, man.
From Mnemesis.A month's worth of Graphic Smash is $2.95. Some people figure it's not a good investment -- I mean, how will they know they'll like enough of Graphic Smash to actually justify three bucks? Maybe there's a strip or two that looks intriguing, but how will they know? (This, by the way, is one advantage PV Comics has -- they have lots of free preview stuff on their site.)
Well. Here's my answer to that. For $2.95, you can read the entire 84 page run of Mnemesis, beginning to end. And that's worth a lot more than three bucks all by itself.
Mnemesis is an entry into Magical Realism taken to the next level. In the afterlife, everyone simply is, and things are what you will them to be. Rather than becoming a power-trip, however, Mnemesis uses that as the springboard for a couple of newly dead people coming together and trying to remember their lives and how they died -- seems that amnesia comes hand-in-hand with death, at least at the beginning.
I won't spoil the series. I will say it went in directions I didn't expect, and employed very sophisticated storytelling without ever forcing 'sophistication' down your throat. Sylvan Migdal (the creator of the currently running Ascent, which I briefly mentioned a couple of days ago as "good soup") paces this story almost perfectly, and his artistic style is perfect for what he was trying to say.
I liked this webcomic immeasurably. I hope Migdal returns to his own particular afterlife someday to tell us more stories. I'll enjoy Ascent in the meantime, of course.
And you? You (more than likely) have Mnemesis ahead of your reading pleasure. And for that, I'm jealous.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:04 PM | Comments (1)
-->Eric Burns-White: Jesus Christ. All right, all ready. I'll block the damn site.
Clearly, I'm just cranky today, but I've had it up to here with the "George W. Bush Fart Doll" ad that keeps coming up. Why on Earth Google thinks I want that on my site is beyond me, but it's the first damn thing added to my filter list. In a few hours, Fartin' George should be banished forever.
Yeesh.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:28 AM | Comments (2)
-->Eric Burns-White: Mrph.
I fully accept that webcartoonists want to and deserve to protect their art. I don't have any complaint about that at all. Whatever steps they take are okay by me.
If, on the other hand, you use javascript tricks to make it impossible for someone to download your art in any capacity, there's no way for me to get a thumbnail of it for an entry.
I respect this. I honestly do. But more people click-through on the entries with the bit of color and art on them than the ones that lack the color and art on them. And I'm not going to go and ask for samples. I'm just not. To do so would involve pre-snark collusion, and that would color the result.
Which might be fine with people. However, if you're one of the people who does the javascript trick so people can't download your pictures -- especially if you're one of the folks who really wants to increase your traffic, and hopes that people render feedback and commentary on your work -- just bear in mind that this snark isn't on the strip I was going to snark, but instead is on the fact that I can't put up a thumbnail.
Just, you know, for the record.
On the other hand, I may be convincing a few hundred artists to do the javascript trick now... which is fine too. It's their art, and their choices. Always.
Of course, it's also my choice as to what I'm going to talk about here, now isn't it?
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:19 AM | Comments (5)
-->September 29, 2004
Eric Burns-White: It's rough when your subconscious sets you up as a straw man....
(From Penny and Aggie. Click on the thumbnail for full sized realizations!)
Okay.
I knew I just needed faith, and I'd start to full on groove on Penny and Aggie. I like the subject matter in potential. And, if it's not L'Agencie VADO, neither is it trying to be L'Agencie VADO. Today? The character just clicked for me.
I don't know yet if this series is really trying to bring the Funny or the Story, per se, but it started vibing on Cool Cat Studio's vibe today, and that's a very good place for it to be.
Man, I have a whole new Trawl I need to detail for you guys, don't I?
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:57 PM | Comments (2)
-->Eric Burns-White: The decline and fall of Esteem: why the Eagle Awards depress me.
I have three core "favorite comic books of all time." I went through a stage where I read a ton of comics each month (I'm almost completely out of comic books now, I should mention. If it ain't online, it's not likely to hold my attention), but there are three that had me, held me, and to this day I revere to the point of psychopathic obsession.
The first is the Legion of Super Heroes. Which means I'm one of those bitter people who still refuses to buy the 'Legion' they put out now, with the snake wearing Jeckie's powers and the dead "leviathan" and all the rest. The forthcoming rereboot of the Legion has me no happier. My Legion died at the end of the Magic Wars, and my desperate hopes that the corpse would reanimate ended at Zero Hour when they finally put a bullet into the Legion's brain and cut off the head.
The second is the Green Lantern Corps version of Green Lantern (though I dearly love Alan Scott and I think Kyle Rayner could have been handled well. He just wasn't). Maybe it's that part of me that loves Space Opera. Or maybe it's because I desperately want a power ring. But I've just adored the Silver Age Green Lantern, and while I think trying so hard to wipe away the last twelve years and bring Hal Jordan back is just plain stupid, I can hope it means a Corps will rise again. I might even buy that comic.
I loved the above two. But neither of them can claim to be my all time favorite comic. No, there's just room for one at the top, and that one is absolutely clear. The Micronauts.
The Micronauts.
I loved loved loved the Micronauts the way only an eleven year old could love anything. They were grand and majestic -- and yeah they were based on toys, but so what? I owned those toys. And the toys were the leaping off point for the series. They were epic, cosmic space opera. Baron Karza was a kind of evil Doctor Doom only dreamed of. Commander Arcturus Rann was the epitome of heroes, and his embodiment of the mysterious Enigma Force produced the kind of reaction in me that five or six years before fans of Darkseid and Kirby's Fourth World felt when they read his stuff. I was passionately in love with Princess Mari/Marionette, I thought Michael Golden's art was the best stuff ever (and became a dedicated Pat Broderick fan -- an opinion that carried me through his runs on Firestorm and Captain Atom later on -- when he took it over), and as for Bill Mantlo's writing? The man grokked space opera, simple as that.
The Micronauts never got to be rockstars at Marvel, though. They were also rans, after Spider Man and the Avengers (this was all in the years before X-Men hit it big and wiped away the Stan Lee era pretty completely, mind). Eventually, they were one of three "more sophisticated" books to go direct-sales only (along with Moon Knight and Ka-Zar), which proved to be as fatal for them as it was for the New Titans and to a lesser extent to the Legion over at DC (In effect, Marvel tried it with their lower-selling books, and DC tried it with their top selling books. It wasn't until the speculator craze hit that comic book stores took off enough to make direct-only workable.) So, I always felt like the Micronauts weren't getting their due.
And then one day, emblazoned across the top of the cover, just under Marvel Comics Group, was a banner. "WINNER OF THE EAGLE AWARD FOR COMICS EXCELLENCE," it read, or something like that, with the Eagle-in-a-Circle logo of that award.
I was thrilled.
Thrilled.
Someone got it. Someone got that Micronauts was good good stuff. And, because I agreed with the award, I raised the Eagle up to tremendous heights in my estimation.
Well, I haven't heard of the Eagles for years. But now, PvP is up for one. And I was thrilled -- not only were the Eagles still out there, but by God, they were adapting with the times. So I clicked on the link that was in Scott Kurtz's news post on the item, and followed it along to the ballot.
Dear God, what a disappointment.
There are three nominees from each category, chosen by "professionals." These nominees seem typically to be a mainstream fan favorite, an independent/alternative favorite, and something alternately obscure or mainstream-but-borning. Ho-fucking-hum. Take "Favorite Colour (Sic -- this was British, originally) Comicbook." The nominees are Fantastic Four, Planetary and the Ultimates. Is it really possible that Fantastic Four, Planetary and the Ultimates deserve a one in three shot at this award, above all others? Looking back over Dave Van Domelen's reviews, it sure doesn't look like those are the cream of the crop before all others. But I wanted to be sure, so I asked him. And, in his words:
FF is good, but not great. Planetary has its lovely moments, but there's other stuff I like more. Ultimates can bite me. Of the three, Planetary is least out of place. If it came out a little more often, I might even consider it for inclusion in my own top three. But when held up against stuff like Neotopia that comes out on schedule AND is lovely....Or the Manga selections: Battle Royale, Blade Of The Immortal, and O! My Goddess, which don't strike me as anywhere near the top of the current Manga listings. (Shaenon Garrity might correct me on that, but I sincerely doubt she will.) Or "Favorite Comic Character," which gives us Batman, Hellboy, and Jessica Jones of Alias (mainstream, independent and obscure, respectively).
And then we get to categories I know quite a lot about, these days. In order:
Favourite Newspaper Strip: Maakies, Mutts, Spooner
Okay, first off? I like Spooner. I've always liked Spooner. But Spooner hasn't been in newspapers for well over a year, and last I knew he wasn't drawing new strips for his website (which itself expired on August 31, and seems like he's not that interested in reviving). Maakies -- eh, if you like it, you like it. Mutts, the same....
Those are the three they could come up with for Newspaper Strip? An independent strip, a low-to-moderate circulation King's Features and a retired strip? No Boondocks, no Foxtrot, not even fucking Dilbert? 99% of the newspaper reading public won't even have heard of those three strips. But that's what they get to choose from for their "favorites?"
Internet: Favourite Comics E-Zine: Newsarama, The Pulse, Sequential Tart
A little better. I like all three sites, and if Sequential Tart were up against sites I frequented more often, it'd probably still get my vote. But still, there's a feeling like their "professionals" googled and put up whatever they found....
And then, my favorite....
Favourite Web-Based Comic: Marc Hempell's Naked Brain, Mike Snart, PvP
...what... the... Fuck?
Okay, I like Marc Hempell just fine. But does anyone seriously think he's had an impact of any kind on the Web? I didn't know he had a webstrip. Googling for it turned up a home page but no links to any actual strips. It sure as Hell didn't seem like a webcomic to me. Googling Mike Snart, on the other hand, turned up nothing but notices that Mike Snart was nominated for an Eagle. It didn't turn up any site, any links to a site, any reference to a site -- anything that suggested that maybe, just maybe this thing was somewhere on the Internet. Hell, I still don't even know what it is, and I write a webcomics blog with some obscure tendencies!
Who were the "professionals" they consulted for this piece of crap? I promise you Scott McCloud wouldn't have suggested Naked Brain or Mike Snart. Why in God's name didn't they consult with Chris Crosby, Scott Kurtz, Joey Manley, Wednesday White, Pete Abrams, Gabe and Tycho, the Comixpedia folks, the Sequential Tart folks -- people with some basis of understanding what the Hell webcomics are about? Jesus Christ.
I encourage everyone reading my words to go in and vote. Vote for PvP. It actually deserves consideration for an Eagle in Webcomics. In fact, it deserves to be up there among worthy peers, fighting it out with Sluggy or Narbonic or Penny Arcade. As it is, landslide Kurtz's ass. Send as clear a message as you possibly can that it is unacceptable to put up "nominees" the webcomics community has never fucking heard of, and if they're going to include Webcomics at all, they have to put some fucking effort into it. They have to find professionals in the Webcomics community to do the nominating. If you're going to acknowledge the form, acknowledge it. Otherwise, we webcomics fans don't need you to do us no favors.
Kurtz deserves this award, this year. Overwhelm them with votes for him. And maybe next year they'll actually nominate a full field of creators, including Kurtz. That'll give him an award he can truly be hungry for.
I hate these people for making me wonder if, all those years ago, the Micronauts only won their Eagle because it was the one choice people had heard of in a group of nobodies. I want them to suffer. FLY MY PRETTIES! FLY!
Oh, sorry. I forgot. My name is Mr. Burns. So instead -- release the hounds!
(And if you really want to see me froth about awards, ask me about the Origins, sometime.)
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:43 PM | Comments (18)
-->Eric Burns-White: Do you suppose Jeff Darlington wishes I'd just "you had me and you lost me" GPF and be done with it? Alternately, do you suppose he even knows I exist?
(From General Protection Fault. Click on the thumbnail for full sized ENORMOUS SHOES!)
So. We're still on a Nick and Ki storyline with GPF, which means I still don't much care. Only there's more to it, and it kind of crystalized for me while reading today's strip. Or more to the point, looking at today's strip.
I should point out for the record: I liked the Fooker plot that came before this one. And I'm hopeful that there's Fooker, Sharon and/or Dexter goodness to come. This is why I'm still here. But while we're treading water through the "Nick and Ki enact the transparent sitcom plot" storyline, I've been trying to analyze just why this doesn't just bore me, but actively bothers me. And then it hit me.
Darlington made a play for the Cerebus Syndrome. But when it failed, it didn't devolve into First and Ten Syndrome. It went somewhere else. I need a new crappy pop culture reference.
(You can pause for a moment, and check the Lexicon for definitions of "Cerebus Syndrome" and "First and Ten Syndrome." This will also give those who hate these terms a chance to do some deep breathing exercises, then decide they still hate them. I might not be responsive to criticism, but at least I'm willing to give a moment to let it fester. All set? Cool. Carry on.)
The incumbent danger of failing at Cerebus Syndrome is, rather that developing your formerly Funny-based strip into a delicately nuanced and sophisticated Story-based strip, you end up making it cheap pathos because cheap pathos is easier than maintaining the Funny -- which we call First and Ten Syndrome. (Despite my continued love of Queen of Wands, QoW is the strip most in danger of First and Ten Syndrome these days. You don't know how much I dreaded seeing we were going into another flashback sequence, this time from the last character who's designed more to be fun than unhappy left. But hope springs eternal.) And GPF certainly took a shot at Cerebus Syndrome. A very palpable shot. The extended news posts and FAQ entries during Surreptitious Machinations insisting that the Funny would return, he swore, just give it some time was testament to that.
Well, Darlington didn't pull it off. He didn't reach Cerebus Syndrome. Which is fine. Most people don't when they try it. Only you can't call him in First and Ten, either. He doesn't throw in cheap pathos to avoid trying for the Funny. But what he has reached doesn't work, and today's strip really epitomizes why.
On the surface, it's an innocuous enough strip. Oh, sure, my Idealized Geek Girl senses start tingling when we discover that the easily-mistaken-for-a-supermodel-unix-hacker-gamer-grrl Ki is also an expert golfer, but what the hey. Golf is moderately esoteric for the geek population (Gabe notwithstanding), so that could be chalked up as interesting character development. Or, you know, uninteresting character development. You milage may vary. And yes, we have the continually scowling father figure there, to provide us with "chances for big comedy," because God knows this whole "oppressive father makes his daughter's life a living Hell" schtick is Big Funny. And then we have Nick. Seen full figure, next to the other two.
With his enormous pontoon boat feet.
And it hits me. Nick looks ridiculous drawn next to Ki and her father here. Not disjointed, not funny in an intentional way. Ridiculous. He looks like he's a theme park employee wearing the cartoonish "Nick" suit out on the golf course with a couple of tourists. And he absolutely epitomizes the problems I have with GPF in that single panel. Nick is a cartoon character, born of a cartoonish tradition. But Darlington has been introducing more and more characters -- by his own admission -- born of a cartoon take on the superheroic tradition. Some of his characters, like Ki, have undergone some physical evolution to meet the changes. But Nick hasn't, and he looks goofy next to the more realistic Ki and her father.
And we can move this from the practical to the conceptual. Darlington is still trying to hit that Cerebus Syndrome -- he still wants there to be the serious Story and the increasingly complicated and nuanced characterizations. But he's also wanting there to be the simpler gag-a-day Funny. That comes out most cleanly when we deal with characters we either had on hiatus for a while -- like Fooker -- or more recent creations -- like Sharon and Dexter. When we take the older, more gag-a-day-born characters without complicated personalities -- Ki, Nick, the slime molds, Dwayne -- and toss them into these environments, the result is disjunction. You don't know what to expect. You don't know how to feel when you read it. Is this Story, or is this Funny? How can we tell.
I think this sequence is supposed to be bringing the Funny. But it doesn't come across. It's Ki and Nick and there's tension, so we think "ooo! Story!" And so we step away from Funny expectations. Minus those expectations, Ki's father isn't humorous or endearing, he's an actively spiteful character with no redeeming features whatsoever. And, as a result, I don't expect there to be any consequences from what's happening. If he absolutely forbids Ki to go out with or marry Nick, I expect Ki to tell him to go take a flying leap. If Nick decides that he can't marry Ki without her tyrannical father's permission, then Ki needs to dump him. But I don't expect that to happen. Hell -- Ki's mother jokingly asked if the pair had already eloped. If Ki's father forbids the marriage, that's clearly what they're going to do. There's no way I can foresee that the pair will come out of this except together. So there's no dramatic tension here at all.
So. This is clearly all supposed to be Funny. But he's using the more realistic models, and his pacing and execution are Story-oriented, not Funny-oriented, so we aren't embracing it as humor. And smack in the middle of all of it we have Yoshi (another "not my favorite character" though I enjoyed his interaction with Trudy, and think there is possibility there) actually apparently pushing the Story along....
There's a phrase I've stolen from Robert Reed, before. It's clearly entering the Lexicon, because it describes this to a tee: this is Batman in the M*A*S*H Operating Room. Batman, the goofy and silly and camp 60's version, could not work with his style of humor and storytelling on M*A*S*H, which used a blend of satire and realism (well, for the time period) to tell its story. If they showed up together, one or the other would have to break or the viewer simply would not accept the result.
Nick, with his clown feet and simple sketching and lack of sophisticated motivation, does not work next to Ki's father, with his more realistic design and serious demeanor and more sophisticated motivation. The slime molds and Dwayne's simplistic solutions and Trent's $1.98 "Evil" personality don't work next to nuanced relationship humor or Mercedes de la Croix's motivations or the weirdass evil twin thing going on with whatsername or....
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Darlington should have ended GPF with the end of Surreptitious Machinations and started a new strip with his new modified cast. He should have either left Nick and Ki, now united, there and brought them back only after a hiatus where they could simmer and mature the way Fooker did, or not brought them back except for guest shots. As it is, he's trying to blend his first year's expectations and motivations with his fifth year's (true -- GPF turns 6 on November 2), and it's just not working for me.
Well, sooner or later we'll get out of this and hopefully back to the interesting characters. I just need patience. Maybe this needs to go back onto the "Sporadically Checked" list. Maybe.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:49 AM | Comments (7)
-->Eric Burns-White: Two fifteen and awake again
So I went home and promptly slept, and slept, and then I slept. And then I woke up, and now I plan to sleep.
But I checked logs, because I'm vain (and because I'm curious how not actually posting affects my readership. Unsurprisingly, it means people don't read nearly so often, what because I'm not actually writing anything). And I checked the search strings that people used to find my page.
And one of them was "the devil's panties marcy".
Which you'd think makes a certain amount of sense. I mean, the Devil's Panties is one of the better webcomics out there and I'm sure there's a Marcy in it somewhere....
...only I've never snarked it. I admit I reffed her "The Kitty Compels You" graphic, but how would that point to my site? And there was no Marcy in that post....
Well, that's not the worst of it. Another search string was "aeire near death" -- that's not funny, yo!
Sleepies.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:15 AM | Comments (0)
-->September 28, 2004
Eric Burns-White: All right, I sort of lied. But this entry is crap, so there.
For the record? Ascent seems to be pretty good soup.
And I know a thing or two about soup.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:20 PM | Comments (0)
-->Eric Burns-White: Bereft of Snarkiness
I got nothin'.
Seriously. If I look at my daily trawls one more time, I think I'll throw up. Not because of them, but because my eyes hurt, my head hurts, I'm tired, and nothing's jumping out and saying "really good" or "really bad" today. I just got nothin'.
So, chalk up today as the first unqualified miss, even if I did put up a post saying "hi, I got nothin'."
More tomorrow.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:18 PM | Comments (1)
-->September 27, 2004
Eric Burns-White: Well, damn.
I'm not going to put a thumbnail up for this evening's Something Positive. If you want to see it, go read it.
You want to see it, I'd add.
If you think the strip lacks heart, you want to see it.
If you want to see a strip that brings daily Funny not bring any Funny at all and get no complaint from me, go see it.
Milholland gets a biscuit. A tasty, tasty biscuit.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 7:39 PM | Comments (2)
-->Eric Burns-White: I wonder how it is....
...that webcartoonists find one another. There's an interesting column on this week's Comixpedia feed on the subject of collaborative webcomics versus single-creator comics. And obviously there's success in the collaborative model. T. Campbell, Shaenon Garrity (who's just as successful in single-creator stuff, of course), Gabe and Tycho and the like all show the strength of having a separate writer and artist. More than a few people who Megatokyo lost credit the time Rodney Caston left and Fred Gallagher took over the writing as well as the art duties as the breaking point for them.
My question is... how the Hell do most writers and artists find each other for collaboration?
In the garage band world, you go down to the local coffee house or guitar shop and tack up a note that you're looking for a bassist for your band. However, I don't know of any place you go and tack up "WANTED: One Writer -- must not suck at dialogue. Gag-a-day preferred but good if you know Nordic Tone Poems too" or "ARTIST WANTED FOR COMIC STRIP: no pay and I want you to stick to my script, but your name will be on it too if you want! Please have some understanding of how large a woman's eyes and mouth are proportioned to her face."
I honestly don't know the magic. Maybe it's because I live in New Hampshire, but I just don't see it happening. The one time I looked to collaborate on a webcomic was after I'd gotten to know an artist well electronically, and she ended up having commitments crop up that no person could possibly work around.
I agree that Collaboration creates powerful comic strips, sometimes. I just don't know how it comes about. Or should we petition eHarmony.com to start an art-matching service?
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:53 PM | Comments (7)
-->Eric Burns-White: This entry is astoundingly long. It deserves to be. It's on Hitherby Dragons.
You all know I love webcomics. I love them for many reasons, but one reason is because I can't do them. We've seen the results when I try, and they aren't pretty. And so I can set aside any aspirations for drawing a strip, because I just don't have the chops, and I can revel in the artistic goodness I find without rancor.
However... I can write. I've even been told I'm good at it. Clever. I can write a story and make it readable, if not necessarily salable. All the work and time and effort I haven't put into illustration skills I have put into the written word. It's been the better part of a decade since I last let more than four or five days pass without putting a sequence of words into an order no one's tried before (not counting major surgery or other such external forces). I write because I like writing. And I dream of having impact -- not necessarily great popular renown, but emotional impact. I dream of having someone read my work and set it aside and shiver, eyes closed, unable to go on for a few moments.
I've seen it done. Dan Simmons did it in Hyperion, in a substory called "The Scholar's Tale." Sean Stewart does it. Neil Gaiman does it, though he did it better in comics than in fiction. But I don't aspire to be Simmons or Stewart or Gaiman. My dreams are humbler. I just want to have done it.
Which makes reading the glorious Hitherby Dragons actively painful for me. Because what I yearn to do with all my heart Rebecca Borgstrom does as naturally as she breathes. I have to keep reading, because I can't imagine my life without Hitherby Dragons in it, but each day I am reminded that she can do what I cannot, and that way lies madness.
I've met Rebecca Borgstrom. Met her before the days of Hitherby Dragons. I once bought her sushi and got my copy of Nobilis -- the Role Playing Game Borgstrom wrote, and perhaps the single finest development in the evolution of Role Playing Games in the last ten years -- signed by her. It was only the second copy she'd ever autographed. I knew then that she was supremely talented. I had no idea she would create a new art form within a few short years, or that it would inspire almost Grecian Tragedy levels of envy in me.
Hitherby Dragons defies simple definition. And yet, I once tried, in my Livejournal back in the dark days before Websnark. In that entry, I proposed we make 'hitherby' a noun and verb alike, to encapsulate the new art form that Borgstrom is creating with every passing day on her site. To quote myself:
Hitherby Dragons is simply, elegantly beautiful.Which makes this whole entry pretty long, but what the Hell. I'm baring my soul here.However, it's also indescribable.
Seriously. It embraces Magic Realism, but also a sense of whimsy. It's got elements of the old Fairy Tales and the new descendants of them all at once. It's got pop culture, but with brushstrokes of texture and depth.
They are themselves, and they can make you laugh, and break your heart, and make you laugh while breaking your heart. If you're not reading them now, you should.
Well, I was chatting with my friend Lon through the magic of the internet earlier today, and he made a comment about working in the comic and game mines. And I said "now I'm thinking about Comic Mines. There's a Hitherby there, I'm just sure."
And he knew exactly what I meant.
That's a compliment unlike any other, really. If you work in a style and genre of fiction so innovative, so engaging, and so captivating that a simple reference to your site name can evoke that style and genre, you become a noun. You have meaning beyond even your own work.
If I'm going to use the word 'hitherby' in casual conversation, I need to have a coherent definition, though. When grok left Stranger in a Strange Land and entered Webster's Third International Dictionary, the entry couldn't well define the word the way Heinlein did -- Heinlein's definition was ineffable. It meant love, and cherish, and drink, and hate, and any number of other things. You just knew what it meant. But dictionaries don't work that way, and if I tell you I grok Hitherby Dragons (I'm not at all sure I do, by the way) you're going to run to the Oxford English Dictionary and look it up. And you'll see that it says grok means:
a. trans. (also with obj. clause) To understand intuitively or by empathy; to establish rapport with.which isn't very much what Heinlein meant, but it is what I mean when I use the word now. And it's not wrong when applied to Stranger in a Strange Land, so if it's inadequate we yield to the limitations of lexicography and accept it. And thus the English language grows.
b. intr. To empathize or communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment.So, defining hitherby in a way that makes sense, that isn't wrong when applied to Hitherby Dragons but also acknowledges it misses the forest for the trees, I come up with:
hitherby: /Hith"er-bE/ a. (noun) A vignette or short story that employs the fantastic or whimsical in structure, form and idiom while maintaining a strong internal consistency and sense of realismIt's inadequate, but it's what I can do. Suggestions cheerfully solicited.
b. (noun) A story (often fantasy or horror) that maintains its sense of the real despite absurdist events.
c. (verb) To write a hitherby; to write in fantastic or whimsical tropes while cleaving to realistic style.It is a fine thing to become a word, I think.
I go on and on and on in Websnark.com on how more and more webcomics are embracing what makes their art form unique -- presenting an art form that couldn't exist in newspapers or books -- not the same way. Perhaps not in any way. Well, Hitherby Dragons is a textual art form born out of Movable Type that couldn't exist in the same way it does in a book. It is inexorably born out of the blog-form, and whether we use 'hitherby' to describe the individual stories or not, Hitherby Dragons transcends that definition to create the whole. Often funny, often tragic, blending folklore and physics, puns and pathos, Greek Tragedy and Passion Plays and Commedia Del Arte all rolled into one... it is like reading a painting, with each brushstroke adding more texture and color to the whole, and when you begin to glimpse the canvas over time you begin to understand how terribly wonderful the vision will be in the end.
It drives me mad, because I can't do it. I can't do it and I want to.
Take "At the Cherry Tree", a hitherby from last week. It takes a bit of folklore, a bit of Americana. Something we all own, culturally -- the "cannot tell a lie" story of George Washington. And it makes it....
...it makes it horrific, and beautiful, all at once. You understand the price of lying, the price of murder, the price of emptiness. You understand....
There are cherry trees behind his house. He goes to them, still with liquor on his breath, and there he sees the dryad. She is curled and straight: her body upright, but her hair wound round her in gentle curls and knots. It forms bark, and leaves, and flowers. It gives her more branches than her outthrust arms. Her teeth are wooden.You see, don't you? Read the entries if you don't. Read them all, but measure them out. You'd get drunk on too many at once. Measure your consumption or pay for it in the morning."George," she says. It is a minimal acknowledgment. She does not give much time to George.
"Dance for me," he says. It is rude, but he is a child, and he is drunk.
"There is sun," says the dryad. "There is soil. Leave me in peace, child. I am content."
"Dance," insists George.
"You are nothing," she says.
"I'm more than you."
So George goes to the shed, and he finds an axe, and he takes it out.
I can't do this, and I want to. I want to so badly, and I work on my craft, and my imagination, and seeing the world in that way. I work on phrasing and impact and pacing and vocabulary. And then I write a story and send it away, because that's what you do with stories, and then it comes back with a form letter and I send it somewhere else, and then I go back to "Hitherby Dragons" and she's done it again!
I understand the legend of Salieri, staring askance at Mozart, whether those stories are true or not. I understand the yearning desire to be the defining artist of a generation, and being forced to watch someone else become that because they're just so damn good. So I'll smile, and tell you all to read Hitherby Dragons. But if, ten years from now, Rebecca Borgstrom lies stricken with consumption, eyes closed and dictating words of transcendent beauty to me that I then type into my word processor, an evil smile on my face....
Well, I warned you. Didn't I?
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:29 AM | Comments (6)
-->Eric Burns-White: Of course, George Lucas would want to screen in Hayden Christensen's fa-- oh, screw it. I'm not going for the joke.
(From The Astronomy Picture of the Day. Click on the thumbnail for full sized interstellar gases.)
It's not that it's a gorgeous picture. It is. It's not that it isn't impressive. It is.
It's just... I can see the brush strokes.
Total fake, man. God's going to have to try harder if he's going to convince me.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:48 AM | Comments (0)
-->Eric Burns-White: Do you remember when blue screens were blue instead of green? Is it because of the whole Blue Screen of Death thing from Windows or what?
(From Real Life Comics. Click on the thumbnail for full sized green screening!)
So a few days back, I get e-mail from my friend Sean. Sean's a damn good writer (he's done a significant amount of work for an RPG company featuring albino canines who lack domestication) and a cool guy, so I like to get mail from him. And he brought up the last several strips of Real Life Comics in said mail, because... well, because.
To be honest, it was a sequence I was torn about. On the one side, we had metahumor -- the whole Cartoonist as character thing, with a side order of "our characters are really just actors though they're just like their characters in real life," which frankly isn't my favorite narrative device. On the other -- and this is the part that Sean brought up -- the artwork has been gorgeous. It's more than just a parody with scanned in backgrounds to ape the whole Sky Captain thing. He's selected a perfect color palette and saturation level to match the remarkable cinematography on the movie, and then added in just the right amount of gaussian blur (yeah, I know some Photoshop. Why?) to make the whole thing just work. This was definitely a sequence of strips where the behind the scenes work was much more labor intensive than the actual drawing of the strip.
Today's strip goes back to the metacartoonist thing, but oh well. Go back through the last several days and just revel in the artwork. And for those of your playing along at home, this was a whole sequence that just couldn't work on a newspaper page, period. (For one thing, newspapers don't print at a high enough LPI to make gradations this subtle work at all.) Dean deserves major props for even trying this, and he deserves a cookie for making it work.
(No, no biscuit. Metahumor needs to bring a lot higher degree of Funny before someone gets a biscuit from me!)
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:40 AM | Comments (0)
-->Eric Burns-White: Drink deep of the Snark, now in more than one place!
Over on Comixpedia, you'll find the first of what I hope will be many monthly columns by me. Feeding Snarky features... well, more of my stuff. Only it also has an astoundingly cool 'icon art,' done by the equally astoundingly cool Ursula Vernon of Digger fame. And right there, that makes it much cooler!
Anyway, check it out. Or don't. I mean, I don't see the hitcounts for Comixpedia, so I'll never know. On the other hand, there's also a new Wednesday White article and one by Meaghan Quinn and they interview Steven L. Cloud, who draws the brilliant Boy on a Stick and Slither. So there's better reasons than my sorry ass to check it out.
In other news, Venture Brothers was good this week. That is all. All the news.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:59 AM | Comments (0)
-->September 26, 2004
Eric Burns-White: Breaking an unwritten rule, for your snarkreading pleasure
(From Freefall. Click on the thumbnail for full sized shiny, shiny button.)
You know, I don't have many rules for Websnark. Try to get something written. Credit the sources for the stuff I'm talking about. Try not to suck.
And don't snark about the same site two days in a row. Heck, I prefer to have many days between snarks on a given webcomic. Sometimes, I fail at that, but I still try. You're going to get sick of me talking about stuff if I don't shake it up, and I don't want to pull from peoples' archives too often. You're supposed to go to their sites.
And I sure as Hell don't snark the same site twice in a row. That's just silly.
Well, I started reading Freefall today, on a recommendation. I posted a snark when I laughed hard enough to piss my cat off. She was sleeping sprawled across my chest at the time, you see. Yeah, it was pretty damn cute. That's not important there. And I kept going.
This shouldn't be as good as it is, damn it. It's got a pile of cliches in it. Plus a furry. And a cheerful robot. Except it transcends cliche. It has a purity to it. The characters are what they say they are. The art is clean and pleasant. And there is daily Funny. Good daily Funny.
That's not enough to get a second Snark in a row. I mean, Jesus. This is the unwritten law we're talking about! I have some standards! I HAVE SOME STANDARDS!
And then it hit me. Like a gunshot. Only without the bleeding or gangrene.
This strip is hard science fiction.
Let me say that again.
This strip, despite having a wolf-girl, robots conditioned to shout DOGGIE, squid-con men in encounter suits and homicidal computers, is hard science fiction.
The last sequence of strips, which spanned from October 13 of last year until the current strip, has covered the group getting their first mission -- launching into orbit to deploy 20 satellites. They went through launch window. They underwent magnetic acceleration and multiple stages, using air as propellent until they were too high, then water as reaction mass, then magnetic scoops to pull in iron particles. They then had to deal with Sam learning how to maneuver in microgravity (so-called). And filter changes on the air recycling system. And dealing with problems in the cargo bay, requiring cycling into EVA suits. And rechecking everything because of the danger of incipient death!
I'm an SF fan. I've been an SF fan for... well, ever. I'd be a card carrying member of the Heinlein Society if those cheap bastards sent out cards, but they don't so I have to be a dues paying member instead. I love hard SF. I love reading extended ballistics lessons in the middle of novels featuring attractive red haired supergenius women who love octogenarian men. I love the philosophical dimension to Asimov's robot stories. I. Am. A. Geek.
Freefall nails that love. And yet, there is Funny brought every day. Every damn day! The strip proves you don't need to have bikini babes, lightsabre jokes or artificial gravity to have a funny strip that pulls you in. Mark Stanley (if that is the cartoonist -- not only doesn't he have a Cast Page, he doesn't even have his fucking name on the site anywhere I could find. The copyright notice on the cartoons reads Stanley and a "Mark Stanley" moderates the Freefall forum. So no, this strip isn't perfect, damn it) has easy to follow characters, good humor, and hard SF, all on the same.
So damn the unwritten law. You get two. So there.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:42 PM | Comments (13)
-->Eric Burns-White: You know, I keep thinking I have a sophisticated sense of humor. And then someone says the words "spider monkey" and I start giggling....
(From Freefall. Click on the thumbnail for full sized computer reports.)
I'm new to Freefall. It has a certain clarity I'm enjoying. It is what it is, and the gagaday works nicely.
Then, trawling the archives, I hit this strip.
I frightened my cat I was laughing so hard.
Just, you know, for the record.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:39 PM | Comments (2)
