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April 23, 2005

Eric Burns-White: Still, Enterprise would be even better if someone had a Lion's Roar attack.

I'm a little rubbery -- I had a sandwich out at a food court which looked perfectly fine -- roast beef, some light cheese, tomato -- but which apparently had a big ol' sugar source in it (probably the dijon mustard was honey dijon, even though I specifically asked that it not be. Or perhaps the pickles were bread and butter instead of dill). That causes a reaction a couple of hours later which I'm still kind of getting over, so I'm a little foggy and shaky when I stand and stuff. Which isn't really relevant, because what I want to talk about tonight is Good Media Stuff.

First on the agenda is Kung Fu Shuffle Hustle¹, which was fantastic -- and extremely satirical. It didn't just satirize the conventions of Kung Fu legends and cinema -- it had a brilliant Matrix parody (sans computers and everything) in the middle of it all. Also, toads. And shouting. And a motorcycle chase without motorcycles. There was full on brilliance there, though the beginning had humor that was off timing just a touch.

On the other hand, it also had the dance number in the beginning. And dude. The dance number. Yeah.

Then, there was Star Trek: Enterprise -- a TV show I've often despised and often begrudgingly liked. Well, this was the first part of the mirror universe episode they've been touting for a while. And the episode was vastly more interesting than Enterprise tends to be -- I'll give you that. It's the first time we've ever seen the Mirror Universe without Our Heroes on hand to be a contrast.

But that's not what made it cool as Hell. No... for that, we turn to the opening credits.

See, the opening credits of Enterprise have a discoed up version of an old Rod Stewart power anthem, while the evolution of exploration is played out in graphics in front of us. It's all meant to be very life affirming and thrilling, and before they discoed the theme music it sort of worked (though some people have always hated the theme music).

Well. They redid the whole sequence for the Mirror Universe, showing the rise of warfare, as it grows increasingly more mechanized and deadly and destructive, with martial music in the background. Even some of the graphics from the regular credits are there, like the unnamed circle ship with nacelles flying... only this time it's firing torpedos at an inhabited planet, slaughtering millions.

It's incredibly dark and twisted and I absolutely loved it. It ended on the Sword-Through-Earth symbol of the Empire. I would watch this series obsessively, I think.

Finally, this week's Justice League Unlimited was pretty good.

Anyway, I'm going to drink another gallon of water. Since I've been putting complex carbs and protein in me to try and balance the blood sugar crash out, I should also keep things as flushed as possible. Or maybe I'm making it worse. I dunno. But drinking a lot of water seems like a good idea.

¹ Paul Southworth, who does the always fun (when it was regularly updating) Krazy Larry, has let me know that I actually got the name of the movie wrong. Because, as has been said before, I'm an idiot.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:06 PM | Comments (30)

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April 22, 2005

Eric Burns-White: There is something to be said for being named a Fellow.

I've already snarked on my opinions of this year's Origins Awards nominees. And yet, I am going through and doing my duty as a Fellow of the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design. There being no write-in option, I'm doing the best I can.

That being said, I don't want to discuss the Origins Awards.

I want to discuss being a Fellow of the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design.

Look, I'm a geek. What's more, I'm a geek with a degree in English Literature. I am essentially pretentiousness incarnate. So the opportunity to add "Fellow of the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design" is just about nerdvana for me. I mean, look at it. I'm not a member -- I'm a Fellow. I'm never going to contract the Academy down to its initials again -- the sheer flow of 'the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design' deserves to be cut and pasted into conversation wherever possible.

Should I have to decide between Dead Inside and Dogs in the Vineyard for Best RPG of the year? Yes. Yes I should. Is it sad that instead, I have to consider "D&D Basic Set" on that list? Yes, yes it is. But still. I take a certain geeky pride in knowing I am a Fellow of the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design. I wish we had lapel pins, so I could wear one on my tweed sportscoat to formal events, the way the Business Manager wears a Rotary Pin and one of the faculty members wears his Mensa pin.

(As a pretentious geek, I too am a (lapsed) Mensa member. However, I have my limits. I have my limits.)

I think my fellow... er... Fellows and I should begin to go whole hog with this. At cons of all sorts, we should have gatherings of the Fellows of the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design, where we sip drinks in martini glasses and have light piano jazz playing in the background. We should have closed room parties where cheese trays are served and we bandy about terminology off the Forge and sniff at d20 -- most particularly d20 developers, of which I am one. We should adopt highways and send letters on pretentious letterhead set in Goudy Old Style to editors of journals that have nothing to do with games of any kind, where we make references only we would get in a tone that implies the editors of those journals are idiots if they don't understand. We should find a deserving college and give a hundred dollar scholarship to the most promising amateur Adventure Game Designer, sending press releases about it to the school newspaper. (For bonus points, we should ensure said student is in a Frat, just to see if we see his name in the obituaries the day after.)

Don't you get it? We're Fellows. We are collectively a Fellowship.

Forget the Lord of the Rings references -- we have Intelligensia tropes to adopt, now!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:37 PM | Comments (23)

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Eric Burns-White: On the other hand... 'dag?' What the heck is 'dag?'

(From Narbonic. Click on the thumbnail for full sized Dag!)

One of the core reasons I like Narbonic as much as I do (and that amount is "a lot," for those of you new to the scene) is the seamless blending of whimsy and story Shaenon Garrity pulls off. Take this current storyline. It definitely develops as a story, logically and carefully. You believe every character is doing exactly what he (well, mostly she) is doing, and you believe in their reasons why, even if those reasons are evil and insane.

And at the same time, we have hit a mexican standoff between the Evil Mad Scientist and the Perky Evil Intern Assassin that has been broken up by the Hot Heroic Guy who also happens to be a transmogrified hamster.

I have no idea what's in the food Shaenon Garrity eats, but damn I hope she can hook me up.

I'm full on loving this plotline. And I loved the last plotline. And the plotline before that. Garrity is at the absolute top of her game right now, and Narbonic is, for my money, the best comic strip in cartooning today.

Yes, even better than Mary Worth.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:44 AM | Comments (12)

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Eric Burns-White: Best of all, Greg designed this kickass hat for Trudy.

(From Gossamer Commons. Click on the thumbnail for full sized NOT A SNARK BECAUSE DUDE, IT'S MY STRIP!)

Time moves far, far more quickly than one might imagine. At this stage, we have six full weeks of strips in the Gossamer Commons archives. (Technically, we've been out for five weeks, since we did the prologue all in one day). It seems like a fair enough amount of time has passed to discuss it again -- or at least to discuss the process end of it. There's been some shakedown stuff, and if nothing else a new webcartoonist might find this interesting. If not... well, you can always go reread Einstone The Destroyer's snark, and I'll do something else to follow this up, I promise.

On the quality side of things... I'm not really qualified to judge. I can say that Greg Holkan's art has exceeded my expectations, and I expected him to be great as it was. I'm a lucky person.

Folks are generally positive. There have been some who don't like it, or who don't like where it's gone, and if I were doing it over there are things I would do differently. Pacing, mostly. Along with a bigger mix of humor and gag strips in the first several. We're going through a run of humor right now that I think works pretty well, and then we have some humor and story queued up, and then we have some hard story stuff, and then back to humor. So, it's going in waves.

Though I'm trying to at least sow the seeds of story in the humor, and I'm trying to evoke a smile or two in the story parts. We'll see how it goes.

On the process side of things... we're finally at about 95% on the site. Wednesday has done a phenomenal job. We started things off with iStrip, but figured out pretty quickly we couldn't stick with it. The reasons for that were threefold -- no automated RSS feed (and it was annoying as Hell to update the RSS on a strip by strip basis), the future strips were renamed into something easy to predict, with no mechanism to prevent people from looking ahead to read -- I had one person send me some spelling corrections for strips that were queued two weeks in advance -- meaning I wasn't uploading the strips until the day they went up, which wasn't what I hand in mind, and most of all, there were spelling errors in the status messages on the admin screen.

Hey, it sounds minor, but when you have an error you can't correct staring you in the face every time you go into your site, it sticks out.

Anyway, most of the free automated systems didn't have RSS components either, so Wednesday, being ambitious and mighty (and a little foolhardy) proposed developing a WordPress based Content Management System. Over the next few weeks we did so, and as of today pretty much all the functionality is live -- up to and including RSS and Atom feeds that are automagically generated, delay posting, and a very simple interface for me to go in and update the FAQ, the Cast Page, and so forth. Which means I'm getting back on track with weekly updates to all of those things.

Which brings me to my end of the process stuff. I really am trying to do all the things I advocate here on Websnark, and I think it's bearing fruit. Having just published our eighteenth strip, I have as of today finished scripting strip #36. We have an About page that synopsizes the strip's story elements so far. We have an updated FAQ. We have a Cast Page, and it will be updated to the current strip later today. Having finished the tool that lets me update simply and cleanly, I'm going to be trying to keep those support pages updated on a weekly basis. (That was always my stated goal, but we needed to get WordPress into shape before I could really keep it. This we have now done.)

And we have a forum, and it's pretty active -- certainly given the youth of the strip. We have fans, and we have some detractors, but the latter are generally lucid and intelligent and make points worth making. We have a livejournal feed, and Bloglines feeds, and fan art.

Most of all, I'm enjoying Gossamer Commons immensely. I love writing the scripts. I love getting notes from Greg. I love seeing the art and sending notes to Greg. I love having Wednesday's reaction to things (there are ways she acts like an editor, since as the webmangler she tends to see things well in advance). I love having speculative threads talk about it.

I love seeing the completed strips. Love it. More than anything else, I like reading Gossamer Commons. I like going through the comic and realizing that something has been created here that didn't exist before.

We're not going to become the next Penny Arcade or Sluggy Freelance. We don't expect to. But we're going to keep putting the strip out, and we're going to like every minute of it.

And isn't that the best -- the only reason to do this in the first place?

In the meantime, I just hope people enjoy it. I'll do my best not to bring it up for another four or five weeks.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:01 AM | Comments (8)

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Eric Burns-White: AAAAAAIIIIEEE!!!!

(From The Astronomy Picture of the Day! Click on the thumbnail for full sized HOLY SHIT! SAVE THE CHILDREN!)

Look, I respect Albert Einstein. I really do. I think he's a man of nearly unparalleled greatness in science -- the equal of Newton, of Archimedes, and of Fire. (Fire named her greatest invention after herself, you see.)

But that doesn't mean I don't desperately fear EINSTONE, DEADLY PHYSICS GOLEM! He's going to start by crushing that telescope he's looking so bitterly at, and then follow it up by EATING CHILDREN! Death! Horror! Death and horror!

And in case he gets bored? He has a GIANT METAL BOOK HE CAN CLUB US WITH!

Horror! Horror! HORROR!!!!

Also, did the sculptor have to make him look so unstylish? His sweater's not exactly flattering to the father of Relativity. Even one who is going to kill us all.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:59 AM | Comments (17)

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April 21, 2005

Eric Burns-White: Don't want no Fancy Funeral -- just one like ol' King Tut!

(From Nodwick. Click on the thumbnail for full sized contractor blues!)

From Order of the Stick we move to the other side of the "life from a fantasy adventurer's" aisle -- Aaron Williams's Nodwick. And I think today's is a perfect representative of what I like about this strip.

For one thing, at least on the Gamespy version of this, the strips are self-contained. We have setup and proceed to execution, examining a theme pretty solidly inside of seven panels. And those seven panels tell a lot. We get the essential trope -- the construction of a "tomb" which is actually a dungeon -- and develop it through real world concerns. Contractor disputes. Tomb Depot. Cost overruns. Adventurers sacking the thing before it's done. And denouement, of course. This would actually make a good basis for several weeks worth of strips, but Williams presents it with a core brevity that's hard to beat.

In ways, it's what puts Nodwick over their fellow Dork Storm Press publishee, Dork Tower. DT is good, but there isn't that same essential brilliant distillation of the point. In ways, Nodwick's been my favorite of the "game based comics" as a result.

The other side of all of this is something Nodwick and Order of the Stick share in common -- both deal with the foibles of fantasy gaming -- OotS through the mechanics side of it, Nodwick through (through lack of a better word) the implied sociology of a world based on adventuring. However, neither fall into the trap of being extended Murphy's Rules derivations.

Murphy's Rules, for those who don't know, is a series of comics published for years and years and years by Steve Jackson Games, most recently in Pyramid Magazine. They're generally single panel cartoons drawn to point out the ridiculous elements of adventure games. The legend of the strip points out the rule in question, and the strip takes it to its logical (and absurd) extreme. For example, a recent Murphy's Rules pointed out that in the classic game Nethack, your character can equip shirts, robes, helmets, gloves, boots, shields, and body armor, but not pants. The accompanying cartoon I leave as an exercise for the student.

Murphy's Rules is often funny, but gaming comics all too often fall into the trap of being Murphy's Rules all the time. Every crucial point comes down to some way the game system has either failed or is exploitable. Nodwick typically eschews that tack -- the point is, there's a lot of implicit banality in being a henchman and living in a D&D style world, without feat checks ever being involved.

Anyway -- the whole concept of Tomb Depot makes me laugh. So there.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:40 PM | Comments (11)

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Eric Burns-White: Who wants to lay odds they forget to untie them?

(From Order of the Stick. Click on the thumbnail for full sized slavery considerations!)

I've been enjoying this whole run of Order of the Stick -- it's just darn fun. I'm also glad it doesn't immediately throw us back into the main plot/plot, but continues on the sidequest for a nice block of time.

But that's not why I'm snarking this particular strip. No no. Oh, sure, I think the banter is grade A and the sense of fun is there and it's just generally good. Absolutely. We're both together on that point.

No, I'm snarking it because I just like to say "your approval fills me with shame."

Try it for yourself. When you're sitting in a business meeting, and you come up with a good idea, and someone you don't particularly care for thinks your idea is good, grin and say "your approval fills me with shame," and then move on to the next topic before they can fully resolve what you just said. I intend to do it later today!

So, you know, if anyone has a job for a systems administrator with compulsive blogging disorder, this might be a good time to mention it....

Rich Burlew gets a biscuit. A tasty, tasty biscuit.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 7:26 AM | Comments (7)

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Eric Burns-White: I'd think painting on gossamer would be pretty unusual, myself.

(From Freefall. Click on the thumbnail for full sized badger badger badger badger...)

Submitted without comment.

(Except to say that the whole concept of "Snarky's Mother" makes me giggle.)

(And now I can't get the badger song out of my head.)

(And I have frighteningly fond memories of the Star Wars Holiday Special, particularly the Boba Fett cartoon.)

(Oh, and I slept last night. From 8:30 or so to about 6:30 this morning, so I'm doing much better today, thanks!)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 6:49 AM | Comments (3)

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April 20, 2005

Eric Burns-White: A Problem Statement

At my day job, we do things through Problem Statements. These are tools that let us work out exactly where the problems are, define them clearly, and brainstorm solutions. They sometimes mean nothing gets done -- or at least not done in any kind of timely fashion -- but they also mean we can truly identify where the core of an issue is and work on it, instead of ancillary or symptomatic concerns.

So, it's about time I apply the methodology to Websnark, because I'm having a definite problem, and it's not getting any better.

At first, I thought the problem statement would have to deal with the (sometimes vociferous and almost always loud) complaints that I'm not writing the specific things people would want me to write. Snarks on webcomic strips. Snarks on specific webcomics. Snarks on the letter writer's favorite webcomic. Or alternately, that I am writing things people don't want me to write. Snarks about my cat, or my comic strip, or my philosophy, or DC comics, or word processors. And always, the ever present fear that I'm not writing enough. That people will be disappointed. That I'll lose readership. That....

...well, whatever.

But those are symptoms, ultimately. It's taken me a while, but I've come up with a problem statement, finally. And I'd like to share it.

Problem statement: Websnark is not my job, but I feel like I'm being locked into a position of accountability and responsibility for generating the content people want at the rate people want, instead of doing what comes to mind when it comes to mind and -- most of all -- actually enjoying it.

Suggested solutions:

1. Set up a schedule in advance of what I'm going to snark and when, to ensure a mix of the stuff people want to see while maintaining a level of the things I want to write. Rejected, because that's insane. I don't want to do this. So I'm not going to, period.

2. End Websnark. Rejected, because I actually like Websnark, even if there are days I want to remove my brain through an eye socket with a spork because of it. I like all of you. I like having a forum. I like writing.

3. Remember that Websnark's mission is now and always has been "write about what catches my attention, when it catches my attention, and move on," and write what I actually want to write. And if that means that people abandon Websnark in droves, decide that honestly, that's okay.

We're going with 3.

Websnark has never been defined as "a Webcomics blog." Not by me. I talk a lot about webcomics because I like webcomics, and I'm interested in them, and because I think they matter. However, in trying to drive myself to exclusively write about webcomics -- or at least kick the balance so high in the majority that I feel guilty when I write about anything else -- I've been learning to dislike webcomics intensely. And that serves no one.

Does that mean "no more Webcomics coverage?" Of course not. I put a huge amount of each day into reading about them, doing stuff with them, and thinking about them.

But I'm done with trying to come up with artificial reasons to snark them, coupled with finding the energy to write those snarks.

Inevitably, this will produce another flock of letters on how I'm losing folks, or essays on the same. And... well, that's honestly okay. Let's be frank -- there reaches a point of pinnacle on the Web. You're new and interesting and exciting and avant garde, and then you become mainstream, and then you become old hat and someone else is new and exciting.

The likelihood that Websnark will continue to grow, given that, is negligible. The likelihood that it will shrink is almost certain. So, the question is, does this become about stemming that, or do I just write what I want to write, when I want to write it and if I lose readers, that's life?

It has to be the second option. It has to be. If it's not, then this whole exercise is pointless.

Does this mean I'll have an increasing number of public declamations about how I've gone downhill? Probably. That's life. If I devoted myself to doing exactly what those people want, then a different constituency of readers will begin talking about how I've lost my spark and sold out to the lure of readership.

Does this mean I'll lose the respect of the webcomics community? I honestly don't think so, but I could be wrong. On the other hand, if I'm only doing this to get the respect of others, I don't deserve that respect in the first place.

Does this mean I'll continue to open the Movable Type window with a sense of obligation and dread, instead of the excitement and pleasure I've always associated with writing here?

No. I think the moment you declare it doesn't matter if I lose readers, so long as I don't lose myself, you free yourself from the burden of expectation and obligation.

And the thing is, this is not a change in policy. Let me quote from the "About Websnark" bit that's sitting over in the corner of the main window:

What the Hell is all this?
This is Websnark.com, a commentary blog. I comment on... well, stuff. Usually the stuff I find on the web, though not exclusively. Essentially, I write about whatever interests me at the time of writing.

[...]
Why all the webcomics stuff?I like webcomics. A large percentage of the stuff I read online are webcomics. So it's the stuff I'm thinking about, which means in turn it's the stuff I'm writing about. You see? Of course you see.

Wait -- I come here for the webcomics stuff. What's all this about Astronomy or pop culture or fandoms or crap like that? Isn't this a webcomics site?
While webcomics make up the (vast) majority of what I talk about, this isn't a 'webcomics blog' so much as it is a place for me to snark about whatever I want. If that's TV instead, or fandom stuff, or pop culture, or the Astronomy Picture of the Day, that's what it is.

I'm sticking by that. And I'm serving notice I'm sticking by that. What you see come across here is what's going to come across here. If that means I never mention Greystone Inn again, then so be it. (Even if it deserves it, mind. I'm not singling GSI out.) If that means I never actually get around to reading Perry Bible Fellowship, that's what it means.

If that means some of you find other stops on the web to spend your time on, I understand. And I thank you for the time and energy you've put into this, and I hope you've gotten something out of it. I like all of you. I like debate. I like the community that's arisen. I like the Snarkoleptics. I like all of it.

And yeah, it jazzes me to have Scott Kurtz or Maritza Campos or David Wright or Shaenon Garrity acknowledge what I've done. These people are giants to me -- they've given me tremendous amounts of pleasure, and asked nothing in return but that I keep reading. But I can't write Websnark for them, either. I can only write it for me, ultimately.

So no, we're not going to end Websnark (though I've been tempted in the last seventy-two hours), we're not going to end talking about webcomics, and we're not going to start forcing snarks that we think will be popular.

(And by we, I mean me -- I don't speak for Wednesday, here. What she choses to do is always her decision.)

What we -- what I -- will do is write what I want to write, bring as much integrity to it as I can, and as much passion to it as I have, and trust that someone out there will want to read it.

I'll keep showing up. I hope some of you will too. In either case, thank you, both for the past, and for the present, and for the future. We'll see where we go from here.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:02 PM | Comments (43)

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Eric Burns-White: Hatstand

For the record, I'm not... what's the word... sleeping, right now. Much at all. Which has my brain currently at the consistency of tapioca.

I actually have things I want to snark and discuss, and strips and the like queued up. I'll see if I can hammer some of them out today. However, I ask indulgence based on the fact that at around three hours of sleep a night, I'm not currently at a high point in my capacity to get things accomplished.

On the other hand, when I do manage to get some writing done, it's trippy.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:07 AM | Comments (2)

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April 19, 2005

Eric Burns-White: I'm going to need to change the lexicon now, aren't I?

I seemed to have been pushed into exhaustion. I spent the morning asleep, and the afternoon feeling like I should be. So if these posts don't make any sense to you, please understand I'm completely hatstand.

That being said, I could have sworn I dreamed this, but Science Fiction Blog confirmed it.

First and 10 is coming to DVD.

I may be the only person in America who does this, but I need to own every season. I need to own every Delta Burke, O.J. Simpson, Shannon Tweed minute of this thing. I owe them that much.

It's only the first couple of seasons, so far, so we're not going to be in the serious bits yet. If ever, because I can't imagine sales will be brisk on these. So humorously enough, I'm going to be getting First and 10 from before it fell into First and Ten syndrome.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:07 PM | Comments (5)

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Wednesday Burns-White: [w] It Only Counts If

Dear Brent:

I know that you are being mean and cynical today. I understand this. But could you confirm something for me, before going off on the mocking of fabric-based talismans?

Is the gaming fez, in fact, made of outing flannel?

If no: what are you on about? And where can I get one which is?

If yes: why on earth would you make it into a pillow? Why not a sport coat?

Please respond at your earliest convenience.

Yours, except not,

-- weds.

Posted by Wednesday Burns-White at 10:14 AM | Comments (12)

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April 18, 2005

Eric Burns-White: A brief quote.

(From Medium Large. Click on the thumbnail for full sized social chameleon!)

Here's something I came across, courtesy of Wednesday White, who got it from Comixpedia:

Why did "BC" cartoonist Johnny Hart give himself over to God, and then to total madness? Because writing a comic strip is a lonely, dispiriting, depressing enterprise teaming with self-doubt, self-loathing and self-employment. To combat such demons some cartoonists turn to God. Others turn to drink. Absolutely none turn to sex, given that the average cartoonist makes a Dick Tracy villain look like Clive Owens by comparison. And such a self-realization can be far to harsh for one soul to take. You see, we cartoonists are not a handsome lot. And lord knows few of us can earn a living wage practicing our art. Now true, we do possess hours upon hours of free time within which to masturbate, but that hardly makes up for not meeting new people or being unable to afford ADA-approved toothpaste. But why is the actual act of writing a comic strip so depressing? Because when you get right down to it it's just you and your thoughts, and there's nothing like being left alone with your thoughts to realize that the last creative idea you had was way back in 1975 when you decided to make a bionic frog by inserting a pen spring into the patient's hind leg, only to wind up with a paraplegic amphibian.

Who wrote this? Who wrote this?

Francesco Marciuliano. Whose art director wears a Diesel Sweeties tee shirt, I would add.

Who is Francesco Marciuliano?

Well, he has a pretty good webcomic called Medium Large going. You should check it out. That's where the Sally Forth joke strip at the top comes from.

Oh, and he actually write Sally Forth.

He writes. Sally Forth.

The man (currently) behind the smirky goddess herself has a comic strip where he blasts her very smirky nature and discusses the soul crushing nature of cartooning -- while also publicly calling Johnny Hart insane, I would add.

My mind is blown.

My whole fucking universe is blown.

This is like finding out the writer of Barney and Friends is a chain smoking, Harley Driving leather warrior who patrols the lawless west, and learning that the dinosaur suit itself is worn by a gorgeous hardbodied supermodel ninja who seeks to pluck out the still beating heart of Daniel Day Lewis. The cartoonist of Sally Forth has no right to be this fucking cool.

Naturally, I'm now reading Sally Forth. I mean, damn.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:59 AM | Comments (26)

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April 17, 2005

Eric Burns-White: Also, nowhere in the article do I make reference to 'Chicky-babes.'

It's that time of the month again -- time for my latest Comixpedia Column. It's Women in Webcomix Redux month at the 'pedia, which... actually gave me some trouble. I have a good number of female webcartoonists I follow. I've also written Comixpedia columns about some of them. But... I dunno. I have difficulty segregating them from the main body of webcartoonists in my head. Shaenon Garrity, Glych Greenlee, Meaghan Quinn, Aeire, Ping Teo, Wednesday White, Lea Hernandez, Danielle Corsetto, Jennie Breeden, Mel Hynes, Kelly Cooper, and all the people I don't remember but whose stuff I look at on a regular basis help build a tremendous part of the overall cosm of Webcomics. I don't see any good way to slice them free of the whole and say "here we talk about the chicks!" They are what they are.

Of course, I'm a guy. There is a school of feminism that says I don't actually get to have a say on these matters. (Not one I subscribe to, but still.) However, Ping Teo's own column covers many of these same themes, in similar ways. I recommend that column too, by the by.

In any case, I found a topic that kind of touches on the above while not. So go have a look. It's free, after all. And then go looking at other articles, because they're generally quite good. And the number of articles written by people named Eric/k is up to three, and that means quality!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:29 PM | Comments (44)

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Wednesday Burns-White: [w] Falling Out of Love with the God Shot III: I Know This Guy...

The thing with Bob Williams is, he knows everybody. Or, if he doesn't know them yet, he will. The hero of Jack Chick's Bible Series is just cool like that.

Some people are blessed with divine gifts. Prophesy. Tongues. Masses of flaming red hair draped over cleavage that a man would go to jail for. Bob? Bob has the gift of always being around when someone needs the savin'. (Or, occasionally, the wrath of God tough lovin'. But mostly the savin', 'cause Bob's not willing that anyone should perish. Much.)

When you're on tour of the Holy Land and some guy blows up a bus down the road from you? Bob is there to explain to you why you need Jesus straight away. When your best friend died right in front of you and you're lying around a burn ward in agony? Bob's right there to tell you how much execution by fire sucks. When you're cussing up a storm to pass the time because you're twelve and you're badass? Bob's totally going to tell you who Jesus is. @*!!

Here's the thing with Bob: he's who every script evangelist wishes he could be. Placed at the right spot, at the right time, Bob will lead any man to Christ, or curse him to death in the process. (Not, you understand, with curses -- that's the job of the witches. Of the witch, precisely, but we'll get to Holly in a bit.) He has the power, and the skill, and the blessing. Also, he's a tool.

No. I mean that in the secular sense. Bob is such a tool.

You see, Bob Williams is a Mary Sue on a scale not seen since Chick and Carter's Crusaders universe comics. (Yep, that includes Alberto, even though Alberto Rivera himself is a completely different proposition... but I digress, and Eric's already touched on him.) Although Bob hasn't the Crusaders' campy charm, let alone their bullet-deflection or outing skills, he trumps them in many ways.

Many depressing, ill-rendered ways.

Continuity isn't particularly good for the standard Chick tract distribution model. The idea with Bob's series is that you pass the tracts to your target someone that you will see on a regular basis, in order; when these were coming out, you were presumably intended to pass them along as and when you got them, or to pass the URLs along as they went online (more or less at the start of each month, sometimes accompanied by the restoration or featuring of a "classic" tract -- it's slower than most webcomics, but Chick does understand the power of regular updates.) No longer merely content to hook the collector through the usual distribution mechanism, Chick was looking to get people interested in the adventures of Bob, the community of people around him, and the cancerous evangelism of everyone he knew.

The problem is, Bob isn't actually very interesting.

He's not interesting as a character, for the same reason that few Sues are intriguing to those who aren't the writer, or the writer's intimates. Bob doesn't have much of a personality on his own; he's just alarmingly competent (for some derivation of "competent," anyhow) and well-connected. Those of God love him, and those not of God ... don't.

In fact, there are relatively few characters here who have any real sense of definition or power to them. Chick tracts are arguably not the greatest things to be asking for character development from, but older pieces were quite good at conveying a very bold, strong impression in a very few strokes. Yeah, we can chalk it up to Chick recovering slowly from the stroke, or being distracted by The Light of the World's near-completion, but the whole point is for us to be intrigued by this universe. This is meant to be a serial, told in snapshots; continuing characters should engage us.

I can only really call two individuals to mind, even after having read this series over about a couple dozen times since its completion, who stand out. That's pretty depressing. Even more depressing, only one of them recurs, and that's to get run over by a truck and fall into Hell with the other one.

Holly was never really a target of Bob's preaching, merely his smugness. She's a witch with a demon, and she likes it that way. Holly was probably intended to represent a contemporary neopagan, visible and proud. She ends up a harsh, vitriolic caricature. She makes some amount of sense, though; on his own and with the help of hat-talker William Schnoebelen, Chick has published a considerable amount of ridiculous antipagan literature. Not everyone who's going to respond to Schnoebelen or Chick about this sort of thing is utterly reasonable; I imagine Chick's gotten plenty of half-cocked mail about his quarter-cocked work over the years. Holly strikes me as the natural result of that cascade effect.

She's still ridiculous. She stands out because she actually gets to go off and have a grudge against Bob for a fashion, and doesn't immediately end up in Hell like most Chick-victims who reject or put off the salvation thing. When she does go, it's while driving sitcom-reject medium Gladys to a hotel so that she can get away from Bob. (Gladys is, incidentally, the other notable character. She's an egotist; she's a false prophetess. Woo. This is hell of depressing.) You'd think, after all that buildup, the Hell Toss would have been glorious, but we barely get a zig worth moving.

I've frequently heard Chick tracts and comics compared to bad pornography, and with good reason. You get broad characterizations (or archetypes, or even stereotypes), you get character interaction which hits fairly predictable points along an assigned/expected spectrum, and you get some version of the climactic outcome you were expecting when you went in. Some climaxes are, of course, better than others.

Either you get the God Shot or the Hell Toss. In the latter, the victim turns up in front of God's throne and gets found wanting, then gets pitched into the flames. In the former, we get orgasmic salvation and conversion: made new and clean, freed by her submission, the victim pretty much explodes with the Holy Spirit. Viscous tears of joy course down her face as she rises, slowly, from her knees. This is what you really want to see, right? Souls won to Christ. This is what you really want to have happen to you, or to others, right?

Not that many of us are passing pornography to people we're interested in in order to explain to them that we'd like them to... yeah, okay, the analogy just broke down. But you see my point.

The problem is, really, is not that it's porn. That sort of thing has its place in all kinds of storytelling. We watch He-Man, Sailor Moon, and other magical girl shows for the stock footage and the monster smiting. We read C-list shoujo manga to watch the plucky, plain heroine eventually land the appealing, but irritating rogue. We go to blockbusters for the explosions. That's fine. The problem is, here, this is workmanlike porn. This is shoddy porn; this is not particularly well-considered, poorly constructed, and -- though Chick might claim otherwise -- not desperately respectful or cognizant of its audience. It just gets the job done, and cynically so at that. This is why Soul Story was such a magnificent piece of work by comparison; it may have been exploitative and formulaic, but damned if it didn't try to make a connection, to appeal, and to work. It did the job out of love; this does the job out of goalmaking.

To be fair, the Bible Series does set the stage for further plot and continuity in Chick's tracts, particularly once Fred Carter was freed up from the film to draw them. Unfortunately, it backfired. In the next installment, we look at Officer Carter, Li'l Susy, and one of the most disappointingly potential-laden Chick antagonists yet written: Ms. Henn.

Posted by Wednesday Burns-White at 6:50 PM | Comments (12)