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-->February 12, 2005
Eric Burns-White: Oddly, it is a good grief, even after all this time.
(From Peanuts, January 3rd, 2000.)
Five years ago, on February 12, 2000, Charles Schultz's last Peanuts strip was being printed for the Sunday funnies, even as Charles Schultz himself passed on into that good night, once and for all. It was perhaps the best sense of timing in comic strip history.
A lot of people will claim that Schultz's best years were long behind him -- I know more than a few who were bitching then that Peanuts was taking up a slot that their strip some more recent comic could fill.
I remember being so angry at those people.
Actually angry. Peanuts wasn't a 'multigenerational' comic. Every last strip was drawn by Schultz. Every last joke came from his pen. And maybe they didn't like it any more, but I liked it. I'm glad he could essentially do the work he loved for his entire life. I'm glad he got a chance to know how much we all loved him. And I miss him. I miss him on the comics page, even if there are reruns there now. I miss reading stories of cartoonists meeting "Sparky" and being stunned at how accessible and friendly and supportive he was. I miss knowing that in a world of rock and pop he managed to get piano jazz on his television shows and specials because he liked piano jazz. I miss the references to skaters I'd never heard of. I miss the words "Sopwith Camel."
Fantagraphics is publishing the finest public service I know -- the complete Peanuts, in sequential order, one book at a time. I have the first two books, from back at the beginning of the 50's. I'm stunned at how good they are. How clean, how well produced, how cheerful. I'm stunned at how much energy there is and how much evolution the comic needed to have. Those early days... I don't know how better to put it... read like a webcomic. Frenetic, trying out anything, too intelligent for the intended audience. This was an age where Charlie Brown was sometimes a troublemaker. This was an age where the three leads were Charlie Brown, Shermie and Violet.
Charlie Brown... Shermie... and Violet.
By the end of the second volume, most of the gang has shown up. Schroeder is playing Beethoven (something I still hear as "beeth" "oven" in my head because I first learned that word from Peanuts, and I didn't know how to pronounce it), though he went through a sequence where he absolutely stunned everyone because he could play complicated music on a toy piano. (The black keys didn't even exist -- they were just painted on.) We saw Lucy as a baby, growing slowly into a fussbudget. By the end of the second volume Linus and his blanket are there, but he isn't talking yet. Snoopy is a puppy, and acts exclusively like a dog. Pig Pen has just shown up.
I'm going to own every last one of these volumes. When we hit the Sixties, we'll meet Five, Peppermint Patty and Marcie. Shermie will finish his disappearance into the background. Freida with the naturally curly hair will show up. Woodstock will show up. Rerun will be born.
And thousands of jokes we're all used to a million times over will appear. And I'll read them and cherish them. We'll see the World War One Flying Ace, and Joe Cool, and the Head Beagle. We'll meet Spike and the rest of Snoopy's extended family from the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm. We'll hear Peppermint Patty call Charlie Brown Chuck. We'll meet Sally and learn how selfish she could be, while still smiling. We'll see the opening of Lucy's psychiatry stand. We'll....
Well, I could go on for hours. It's a treasury waiting for us to enrich ourselves. I hope you all do so.
As for me, I'm going to remember that five years ago, Charlie Brown officially never kicked the football, and never would. And there was a purity in that I've never seen anyone else be brave enough to try.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:39 PM | Comments (10)
-->Eric Burns-White: Hey, Aquaman had a great self image!
(From Wapsi Square. Click on the thumbnail for full sized shower ruminations.)
The power is back on, and with it the heat. Which is nice, you get right down to it.
Katherine, in this strip, is feeling isolated and shy, but also comfortable there in the water. She's been thinking about fishbowls a lot. But seeing this particular strip makes me consider water. And showers and the rest.
I love water. I've always loved water. I used to go swimming for six or seven hours at a time, just playing and sporting in the water because I loved it. I actually used to pretend I was Aquaman. In my defense, I was six at the time. But the idea of being able to breathe under water while I was swimming, to be able to spend all my time at the bottom... it just seemed like the coolest thing in the world.
It's worth noting I never pretended I was fighting crime as Aquaman. My imagination only went so far.
Today, I rarely swim. I'm not exactly comfortable showing my skin off these days, because I'm as shallow as the next person. But I do love taking showers for hours at a time, just enjoying the sensations. I'm the sort of person who can use up all the hot water with a full tank. It just feels good.
So I can see where Katherine's coming from, here. When you're feeling like the world is too much with you, at that moment of supreme solitude it's easy to wish it would go on forever.
Anyway, it's better than saying OMG TEH BREASTS! Right?
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:02 PM | Comments (9)
-->February 11, 2005
Eric Burns-White: Power is not our friend, today
As with so many other people, I was at ground zero in the blizzard yesterday. The power went out in the evening and stayed out through the night. Right now it's coming on and off sporadically, but nothing's very happy right now.
I'm hopeful that it'll come back and stay back, but for the moment, you probably shouldn't expect to see all that much from me, today. I'll only disappoint you, I'm afraid.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:44 AM | Comments (4)
-->February 10, 2005
Eric Burns-White: Good guys win! Yay!
(From Order of the Stick. Click on the thumbnail for full sized kitty solutions!)
When people ask me to back up my contention that consistently well written and funny comic strips can get away without having gorgeous art, I point to a couple of well known examples. One is Daily Dinosaur Comics, which isn't bad art, so much as it is... well, the same art every day, but still. Another is White Ninja Comics, where the art can generously be described as 'idiosyncratic,' and the strip itself can conservatively be described as "Jesus Christ, read this comic! NOW!"
And then there's Order of the Stick. Which is somewhere between a stick figure comic (thus the name) and a Paintbrush comic, and is wonderful. It has the best cast page I've ever seen, it has funny plots, it has good solid story skills, it brings the Funny, and even on a purely visual gag like the one I'm snarking it just plain works.
Well, Rich Burlew, who is a fellow member of the unofficial fraternity of Role Playing Game Designers (though I've never "met" him, mind) and who seems pretty cool in general announced today that they had passed 2,000 preorders for his Order of the Stick compilation, and therefore he was leaving his day job to work on OotS full time.
In other words, he didn't do a fundraising drive. He sold merchandise based on his strip and received enough money to be able to work on the strip and nothing but.
That's a dedicated fanbase, kids. And it's because it's a damn good comic strip. I don't care if the art is based on stick figures or not. It's a damn good comic strip. The fact that they've got 2,000 preorders for their book says that better than anything I could say myself.
Oh, and sometimes people get badgers thrown on their faces. I mean, dude!
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:53 AM | Comments (6)
-->Eric Burns-White: A call for artists that has nothing to do with either me or Gossamer Commons. Hey, it could happen!
By now you should know that I'm a big fan of Todd and Penguin. It's a really neat comic strip, which I think has near universal appeal. (My sister has started reading it, which to me is indicative.)
Well, David Wright, it's webcartoonist, is popular. He's on Comics Sherpa, which is considered a stepping stone to syndication (or so I'm told -- I know little about it, other than the fact that I like the word "Sherpa"). And he's looking to start a second strip, though this one he'd just write. And he's looking for an artist to work with.
If I could... you know, draw... at all... And not have it look like a developmentally disabled vole did it... I'd be jumping at this. David's got a wonderful sense of dialogue and voice, a sense of wonder and a sense of the dramatic. In other words, I likes me the Todd and Penguin. So, if you're an artist reading these words (and I know there's a lot of you out there, because you were sending stuff to me not long ago), hie ye hither to his website, find his contact info, and... er... contact him.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)
-->Eric Burns-White: noe websnark WELL BE GONE TO THE AMERICANS!!!!!!!
(From Filthy Lies! Click on the thumbnail for full sized kill skuls!)
The word "meme" has been desperately abused in the last couple of years. People announce that they're following the hot new Livejournal Meme, which is inevitably some asstard quiz or some kind of randomizer that shuffles a smattering of your Friends List across different categories, ultimately claiming that WilWheaton is your Pimp, Gaimanblog is your best ho, and CNN_Feed is your best John.
The original intent, however, are ideas, concepts, and (oh yes) catchphrases that spread through the populace without any coordinated campaign shepherding them. They're more about the nature of human interaction than anything else.
What "Enigma" (I never know how to refer to the officially anonymous webcartoonists -- especially those who aren't that anonymous) is doing here says more about the nature of legitimate memes than the somewhat pathetic forum post some person made or the asshole who screws other players. For a brief moment, "Jerk Hacker" and "Kill Skuls" and "GONE TO THE AMERICANS!!!!!" are an argot -- a moment of recognition between people on City of Heroes. It's shared, and so even though it's... well, stupid, we find it funny.
And a month from now we'll roll our eyes and make fun of people who still quote it. Or we'll quote it (here's that word again) ironically. Or we'll compare it to "All your base are belong to us," or whatever.
And that's what Enigma's pulling up here. Not the meme itself, but the ancillary aspects of the meme -- the people who quote the phrases to be part of that shared sense of community even though they don't have the slightest idea what 'skuls' are or why you should Go. Hunt. them. They can see other people think that and "Jerk Hacker" are hysterical and cool, and damn it, they want in.
So, I likes me the second order humor here. Enigma...
Holy crap, has it been this long since I gave one of these out? Damn. These are stale. Well, what the Hell. No one actually eats them anyway.
Enigma gets a biscuit. A tasty, tasty... well, stale, but hey -- they're graham cracker based and that handles staleness well -- biscuit.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:45 AM | Comments (7)
-->February 9, 2005
Eric Burns-White: A Formal Announcement
There are huge numbers of massively talented people in this world. A disproportionate number of them responded to my call for artists for my webcomics doings. This has been an exciting time for me, and I've been humbled at the skill, talent and enthusiasm I've gotten to see.
There are several artists who could have easily been selected, and I'm actually working on a couple of other projects now based on my interactions with some of them. But in the end, a collaborator and partner has been chosen, and I'm excited as anything to announce it here.
His name is Gregory T. Holkan, and his portfolio, art projects and own online comics can be found over at Seppuku Online. In particular, he's got an ongoing comic called Nemesis that's pretty dang spiffy. This new project's highlighting his black and white/pen and ink skills, which are tremendous.
He's also enthusiastic and intelligent, and has already had lots of great suggestions and thoughts, from the thematic to the artistic to the name of the strip -- its working title had been "The State Street Shuffle," but I didn't like it. Greg and I bounced thoughts around and came up with a new title.
So, now we have several weeks of drawing and writing and bouncing stuff off each other and web design ahead of us. We're going to get a buffer and we're going to show what we get to people who have more experience than we do, and most of all we're going to have fun.
And sometime this spring, you're going to get a chance to read Gossamer Commons.
So, I'm pretty psyched.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:11 PM | Comments (6)
-->Eric Burns-White: Anacruilicious!
I'm a couple of days late for this, but Brendan Adkins's Anacrusis for 2005 February 7, titled "Keisha", is another excellent example of the Anacrusis form. For those who came in late, Anacrusis is a unique forced writing experiment where Adkins writes precisely 101 words of story, making each piece essentially self-contained, five days a week.
"Keisha" is a great example of the form -- fiction, but with a poetic feel. And it hit a great point about the second coming of Jesus, done in few words but very focused.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:08 PM | Comments (0)
-->Eric Burns-White: On the Mac, we got something that looked identical to the Banana Jr. instead of Clippy. I always felt a little superior because of that.
(From Irregular Webcomic. Click on the thumbnail for full sized assistance, Skipper!)
People know that I can get... tired... of clich»s and pop culture references and jokes that go past their expiration date. The archetype for this is people making jokes about Alanis Morissette not knowing the definition of the word irony, and the fact that that itself is ironic. This is a joke that got played out in 1995, when the actual song came out. It got desperately overplayed out in 1996. Current retreads of the joke just make the Baby Jesus cry and makes VH-1 retrospectives about the 90's 15 minutes longer, on average. (And frighteningly, somewhere in the last 10 years I actually started liking the song. But that's neither here nor there.)
But sometimes, a joke that becomes a clich» and even overtired regenerates. It becomes a part of our shared culture. It becomes a shorthand for a thousand other jokes. I don't particularly want to get into significator theory, but what the Hell, we're here -- it becomes the sign that represents something far more, and brings instant recognition and understanding.
Somewhere along the line, Clippy crossed over into that category. Even though current generations of Microsoft Word have improved their little helpful sprites immeasurably, Clippy is instantly recognizable as a symbol of worthless feature bloat. It's not just that Clippy is paternalism incarnate -- it's that the 'helpful tasks' he pops up to help you with are nothing of the kind. "Would you like help writing a letter?" No, Clippy. I've been writing letters since I was 3. I think I've worked out the intricacies of writing the date at the top. Where the Hell were you when I was putting together a three source massmailing to be printed to PDF, followed by labels?
And so, Clippy showing up in a comic strip gets a grin out of me. Even though it's not functionally possible to hear a new Clippy joke, and even though Clippy humor has, if anything, been more overplayed than jokes about "Ironic," Clippy still works in humor. When he shows up, we have an instant introduction of all of Microsoft's worst traits in a cheerful cartoon sprite, and that can be used effectively and with humor.
Help Desk is of course the king of this, but Morgan-Mar shows Clippy's use to distinction here. Good show as always, sir.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:16 PM | Comments (6)
-->February 8, 2005
Eric Burns-White: The limitations of the Snarkish form
(From The Jaded. Click on the thumbnail to see today's adventurous entry!)
So earlier today, it was brought to my attention that the only snark I've given Fans was when I didn't care for the inclusion of Helen Narbon. And that got me to thinking... because I read Fans, and I like Fans, and it's just plain wrong that it hasn't gotten some pleasantness from me. And so I've been thinking about why that is.
And to a degree, it's the problem with high-story stories. It's one thing when I've been snarking a high-story comic a lot -- then, I'm moderately sure that the audience will know what's going on, or can at least figure it out from context. But it's progressively harder for me to talk about the resonance I felt when I read Guthrie's song to Cassandra, and how and why it pissed her off, and the assumptions people make about genius, because I know it involves explaining the devices involved in a way that makes sense without overexplaining it. And that raises specters on how few words I've devoted to Nahast or Ascent, both of which I read every week, but which have the same issues. Or more to the point, I have the same issues over, since they don't really have issues at all..
And that brings me to The Jaded, which is frankly good stuff, done by Ping Teo, who I adore. And which I don't think I've ever said anything about.
I'm snarking this entry because of the use of chalk on black (I think). It creates an incredibly evocative picture. And when I saw it, I latched onto it, because it's something you don't see nearly enough of in webcomics, even though it's not hugely difficult. It creates a sense of mood, of power, of texture and tone, and Teo handles it well.
And as I set to upload the thumbnail, it really struck me that I haven't talked about the tightness of Teo's story, or the elements of her characterization. Or how it resonated with me that she's including a character who smokes, even though Teo doesn't smoke and is allergic, and how I've done the same thing in fiction even though I don't smoke and am allergic. And her sense of darkness and her sense of dialogue.
But all of that takes context, and context is hard to do.
There's always more that is good than I have the words to say why, and that bothers me sometimes. I think Teo, and Campbell, Waltrip, Melchor, and Migdal and many others all deserve better from me.
I'll work on it.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:17 PM | Comments (6)
-->Eric Burns-White: I'm going to have Joan Osborne in my head for the rest of the day.
(From Overcompensating. Click on the thumbnail for full sized Action Comics!)
You know, if Superman were real, there'd reach a point where he would finally just get pissed off. I mean, he was raised in America, right? And we're trained by movies, television, stories (and yes, comic books) to grit our teeth and bear adversity until the day when the bad guy goes Too Far, and then you go in and start punching and punching and punching.
Of course, the rest of us can't light our breath on fire with rays from our eyes, but he's Superman. He can.
Rowland also declared an end, more or less, to WIGU-TV and the launching of Magical Adventures In Space the series. I'm a big fan of Topato and company, but I'm not as sure about this as I was about WIGU-TV. WIGU-TV gave Rowland tremendous freedom. I'm also not sure why we didn't just flip the channel to watch some MAIS for a while, and then go back to American Platypus when he tired of the MAIS plot.
Anyway, it almost doesn't matter. I'm going to be here through it all, and I always liked Princess Dongle as a character. So, I'm all good with the switch. And also, there's Superman. Dude, he's Superman.
Of course, Cheney's powered by a Kryptonite Heart, so this won't end well any way we look at it.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:19 PM | Comments (15)
-->Eric Burns-White: Acknowledging Professional Best Practices, or BREAD GOOD!
You know me. One of my pet peeves are people who make their comic strip their job -- which is to say, the wellspring of their income, be it through syndication, subscription, donation (the Public Radio model), advertising or merchandising -- and then treat it like a hobby. You know the ones most guilty of this -- the people who sometimes post recriminations but go three or four days without posting... or even longer. The people who are dismissive of their audience. The fucking "Shirt Guy Whothefuckever" stick figure strips you sometimes still see, years after "Shirt Guy Tom" got retired as lame.
I don't count people like Randy Milholland or Scott Kurtz in this, by the by. I did, sort of, back when I started Websnark, on the theory that Kurtz should update at a consistent time of day. Well, I was wrong, and boneheaded. There's a difference between your strip being a priority, and your readership being a pack of anal fucks. That day, I was an anal fuck, and I admit it. The fact that there's always a PvP strip (and 99% of the time always a Something Positive) shows that threshold. So, understand who pisses me off and who doesn't.
Because that can annoy me, the people who are rock steady on updating don't get the love from me they deserve. Superosity, Nukees, Narbonic, Scary-go-Round, Wigu... these folks are just always there, every day. You can set your watch to them. They deserve recognition for that. And dozens more I didn't mention here but who still deserve to be noted -- I'm sure my faithful readers will pile in comments on all the people who just get it right, and good for them.
But this snark, while acknowledging the people who bring the professionalism, is actually meant to celebrate something more: Best Practices.
Professional Best Practices are, in a nutshell, the practices that consistently can be shown to be most effective in a given field. Run amok, they can be a scourge on any endeavor, as the practice becomes more important than the product, but used appropriately and in moderation, they stand as a hallmark -- the methodology that gets things done. Our school is a Best Practices teaching school, and since adopting those Best Practices, found through research and rigorously tested, our indicators have all shot up. Say what you like, but when the same population of students ups their average SAT scores by close to a hundred points, you're doing something better.
Well, I've begun to identify Best Practices in cartooning, and today I'd like to talk about the king of Best Practices. His name is Howard Tayler, and he writes Schlock Mercenary.
Schlock Mercenary updates on time, each and every day. I mean, he nails updates. But it's no big deal for Tayler to nail updates, because he works with a buffer. A sizable buffer. I think his preferred buffer is fourteen strips. That's fourteen days worth of completed comics, plus an equal number of completed scripts. He generally has a block of completed inked drawings, a slightly smaller block of completed colored scripts, and a block of scripts and penciled strips.
What does this mean? Well, among other things, it means that when he had a commercial project come up last week, his strip was uninterrupted. He could do the freelance work, give it the time and attention he felt it was due, and not have any worries that Schlock Mercenary would appear each and every day.
That's respect for his audience and respect for his strip, right there, in a nutshell.
This isn't a practice, however. This is a policy. He set a policy of having a buffer of X size.
The practice in question is a scrupulous adherence to deadlines in the everyday, and a scrupulous reclaiming of buffer in situations where it's needed. Tayler doesn't treat his strip like something he doesn't need to do in a timely fashion because he has a backlog. He knows he needs seven strips a week, period, even if it's another two or more weeks before those strips appear on the web. He has a quota and he meets it, just the same as if he had no buffer at all, and any day he missed a strip would be a day with no Schlock Mercenary. When a commercial project comes up and he has to set aside the strip while he works on it, he does, confident he won't lose anything... but then he busts his hump the following week to get caught up, the same as if he were running on the edge of deadline.
Not all artists can do this, and I don't mean to denigrate those who can't. You don't need three weeks of strips in the can to be a professional. But this practice works astoundingly well at promoting consistency and a reputation for being solid, and Tayler deserves to have that acknowledged publicly.
I'm taking lessons from this, by the by. As the search for an artist continues for my own strip (we've narrowed the field down considerably at this stage -- we're very, very close to an announcement), I've been very up front with expectations. Before we even put this strip on the web in any form, I want twelve completed inked strips in the can, so we start with a solid buffer. (It's going to be a 3-day a week strip, generally between 6 and 8 panels per day, so we're talking about a month-long buffer.) When we get to that point, I intend to have at least another 12 strips scripted and in the artist's hands, giving him or her the chance to comment, edit, complain, suggest, or what have you. So, a month of strips ready for publication, plus a month of scripts ready to be drawn, on day one, which will be a Monday.
Then, each week, both I and the artist would be responsible for three strips. We'd both have until the following Sunday to do them, but the idea would always be that we have three strips worth of work to do each and every week. That way, if there's a major problem, or a commercial project, or just the point where we separate ways professionally, the strip can go on without trouble while we unsnarl things.
The artists so far have been cool with this -- after all, it's exactly the same amount of work a week as if we were running with no buffer at all, so it's not unreasonable. (I also don't expect the 12 strips to be done a week after announcement. We have time to do this right.) We also have an advantage in that this strip is going to be story with humor, as opposed to gag-a-day. It's also not going to be topical, per se, so we can work with a nice, healthy lag time.
Why go to all this trouble? Because I've seen the continuum of comics producers -- the guys who update incredibly steadily, the guys who run at the edge but always get the strip out, the guys who swing and miss but are constantly trying to keep up, and... well, Piro -- and I've seen what produces the most solid result while generally keeping the creators unstressed.
And it's Howard Tayler who's at the forefront of it. Good show, sir. Good, good show.
Oh, his strip's funny too.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:18 AM | Comments (29)
-->February 7, 2005
Eric Burns-White: Ways I've Cursed Myself
In plotting out the evolution of the comic strip, I keep thinking oh crap -- this strip will appear and I'll get twenty e-mails saying "hah hah! You went for Cerberus and you landed in First and Ten!"
He who lives by the Snark, dies by the Snark.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:24 PM | Comments (19)
-->Eric Burns-White: Weird Database issue
We had a database hiccup, which was blocking comments (or me updating Websnark) for a little bit. It seems fixed now, but I'm going to keep an eye on it for a little while.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:06 PM | Comments (2)
-->Eric Burns-White: Despite the fact that I prefer Foxtrot, you realize Jason's *never* going to actually grow up in that strip, don't you?
(From... I can't believe I'm typing this... Cathy. Click on the thumbnail for full sized nuptials.)
So, Cathy got married this weekend.
I don't like Cathy.
I don't like the strip. At all. I think it's not... well... funny. I think it peaked a long time ago. I think it's one of those strips that's found a dedicated slot on the Comics Page, so it's not going anywhere. I think there are a dozen strips I'd rather see get its slot, that do more as humor strips, as womens' strips, as any kind of strips. I'd kill to see Narbonic as a gag-a-day strip about empowered women in place of Cathy and her bathing suit and "acking."
So let's give it up for Motherfucking Cathy. She got married.
I'm serious.
Look, part of the reason we despise so many strips on the comics page is because not only aren't they funny, they're not trying anything new. Ever. I have a perverse love for Beetle Bailey, but I know Beetle is exactly the same person he was in 1969. I know Hagar is the same person he was in 1979. I know Andy Capp remains the same lovable wife beating drunk.
But the core premise of Cathy is "a single woman trying to cope with life's issues, including dating and a mother who is desperate to get her married."
Cathy got married. The entire premise of the strip has changed. In an corporate culture where change is feared and editors are a cowardly, superstitious lot, Cathy Guisewite has completely twisted the entire core of her comic strip.
That takes guts, kids. Especially when you consider she could simply have done another ten solid years of strips exactly like she did before. I'm not saying the new strips will be any funnier. But they're not going to be exactly the same. And she might well lose some fans who liked the old way better.
That deserves recognition. Jim Davis won't marry Jon and the Vet any time soon. Beetle Bailey won't get promoted or cashiered any time soon. (Or losing a leg or getting shipped to the Gulf, for that matter.) The kids in The Boondocks won't be growing up any time soon.
But Cathy got married.
Good show, Ms. Guisewite. Good show.
Now make it funny.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:28 PM | Comments (19)
-->February 6, 2005
Eric Burns-White: On the other hand, I was into the attractive jumpsuit science babe from the prologue. But then, I'm just like that.
(From Sluggy Freelance. Click on the thumbnail for full sized Arrrr!)
Folks know I was a fan of the That Which Redeems arc over on Sluggy Freelance. Folks also know I'm a fan of pirates. And, like many people, I've been missing Bun Bun.
Welp, we got Sluggy, we got Bun Bun, and we got pirates.
Meh.
I'm sorry, this sequence is literally doing nothing at all for me. Now, Abrams has admitted he's having some trouble with writer's block. And honestly, I can see evidence of that. This all feels... forced, somehow. Like he's doing it because he has to do it, not because he's feeling it.
Maybe it's the fact that Bun Bun's been gone a long time, and when we see him again, he's once again at the top of the heap, this time on a Pirate Ship. I know the joke is Bun Bun's unstoppable and deadly and all, but there's no sense that he so much as underwent a setback when he was divested of Holidays and lost his bid for power. This feels like a retread.
I don't know. Maybe Abrams will surprise me and I'll end up enjoying Oceans Unmoving. But for right now, I'm sticking with 'meh.'
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:10 PM | Comments (18)
