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September 30, 2005

Eric Burns-White: Because I listen... bigger pictures!

(I promise I don't only think about John Stark.)

One of the recurring comments I've gotten this week has been a difficulty in reading the text in The Adventures of John Stark. The strips are, simply put, too small. And I agree. I wanted them bumped up enough to make them easy to see. Unfortunately, Comic Life (the program I've been doing the strips in) just won't resize graphic groups, making in-program alterations prohibitive. And its output options were limited to 72 dpi, 150 dpi or higher in resolution. So I could double the size or leave it as is, but I couldn't, say, export it at 96 dpi and bump it up nicely.

Well, I've got a solution -- export in the larger resolution in tiff, then batch convert to JPG at 80%. The result is a 514x800 image that should be plenty easy to read.

The problem now is it's too large to fit without scrolling. I could shrink it down to 600 in height, but that brings back some of the trouble in reading the text. So. My plan is to enlarge the existing strips and the buffer, then recreate the layout in a monitor-friendly 800x600 at 72 dpi that should resolve the issue once and for all.

However, part of the problem there is I've got three more weeks of strips in the can. Meaning that even if I rebuild the template, you won't see the benefit until this time in October.

(That's right. I'm working on a month buffer. See what power you possess when you... er... have no art requirements whatsoever?)

I'm vaguely considering redoing all the old strips in the new template, ultimately. But that seems like cheating, somehow. Anyway. I'm soliciting comments. Take a look at the current size, let me know what would make your heart glad, and we'll move on from there.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:32 PM | Comments (35)

Eric Burns-White: In class, we also sometimes learned from claymation and other stop action photography. This was our multimedia, damn it!

John Stark has consumed my brain. Not just the comic. The man. But more on that in another snark. Today we're going to talk about the structure of the strip..

So, I'm looking over the archive page for this week, which now has six strips on it. And it's in the "elevator style" of archive which Joey Manley has espoused in the past (I'm going to shift to page a day when the functionality is put in to do so, though I can at least understand why Manley doesn't care for it as much). This means, particularly with the structure I have for the strip so far, that one blends into the other like a long, continuous strip. Or Infinite Canvas. Which isn't the point.

But, that's not what occurred to me today. No, what occurred to me today is "huh -- it looks like one of those filmstrips from when I was a kid, only not formatted so well."

I don't know if generations that followed me -- generations that have VCRs and DVDs and the like -- know the joy of the filmstrip or the 16 mm film in class. The films fairly rocked -- you would use an old Bell and Howell projector, which would inevitably have some sound problems which at least one kid in the class could imitate perfectly (I'm one of those kids in class, for the record), and you would watch whatever cheesy or cretinous film was a relic of the sixties that got pulled out on Day 119 of the school year, like "Our Friend Iron Ore Refining" or "Make Way For Posture!" Then, if the class was good -- I swear to God they always said this. We had to be good to get this -- they would run the film backwards to rewind it, and you could see iron pour back up out of the ingot mold or childrens' posture steadily worsen. And there would be giggling throughout.

But almost more trippy than that... was the filmstrip.

The film strip was just that. A strip of film run through a special projector, one frame at a time, while a cassette tape was played. The cassette would say something about the frame we're on, and then there would a prerecorded "beep" that told whichever kid got tapped to run the filmstrip projector to advance the strip one frame, and then the cycle would continue. Sometimes the frames were pictures, but more often they were whacked out drawings -- like a form of mescaline for second graders. Kids of my generation dream of that "beep" sound. To this day if you played it for us we would reflexively look for the next frame to come up.

You realize, this is how I should have formatted John Stark. 4 or 8 panels of film strip, with "beeps" in between, and different "narration" from day to day on the side panels. I suppose it's not too late, though I don't really intend to change things now.

Of course, the strength of Webcomics Nation is you can always start another series. It's trivial. Maybe a clip art series of "educational film strips" would be a fun project sometime.

Of course... by definition a film strip comic would be... you know. Infinite Canvas.

Fucking infinite canvas, sinking its hooks into my brain....

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:27 PM | Comments (41)

September 29, 2005

Wednesday White: He also looked an awful lot like Dave Broadfoot, later on. I just noticed that today.

Writing about famous, recently dead people with whom one is not acquainted is a bit on the tricky side.

Pigeonholes make rotten gravesites. Of course, you're in something of a quandry anyhow, going down this road; what do you know this person for? Chances are it's for one high-profile job. You're somewhere around Barstow, at the edge of the desert, when the tri-ox begins to take hold. Suddenly, there's a terrible roar, and the sky is full of caped guys flying out of their wheelchairs, all swooping and screeching and diving around your car, which is going a hundred miles an hour towards the Experience down in Vegas. And you hear a voice reciting the lyrics to London Calling. Over and over and over again. And you'd like to call for help on the shoe phone, or possibly the finger phone, or the coconut phone, but you figure there's no point in mentioning this to anyone. Penny's probably blogged it all by now anyways.

Which brings us to Jerry Juhl, who died this past Monday from cancer complications.

Some of you are going, "Who?" Stop that. Right now.

Juhl was the writer behind an incredible quantity of Muppet material. He started out more or less behind the puppets -- covering the pregnant Jane Henson on Sam and Friends, co-piloting the LaChoy Dragon, and such -- but found his strengths were better suited to writing. He co-wrote most of the cinematic Muppet movies; he worked on specials like The Muppet Musicians of Bremen and Hey, Cinderella!; he wrote for shows like Fraggle Rock, The Jim Henson Hour, and Sesame Street. Second head writer on the Show. Creative producer on the Fraggles. He worked on the Meeting Films. His fingerprints -- his handprints -- are all over the Muppet oeuvre. His involvement with the Muppets predates even that of Frank Oz.

(Also? He worked on The Cube. That's versatility right there.)

Untangling specific moments where you can point and say, "Juhl did that bit right there," isn't easy. You can cover how profoundly he influenced the core Show characters out of the gate, but things start getting slippery beyond that. It's not all down to the usual problem of a group effort getting chiefly attributed to a single driving force, which you get a lot of with the Muppets and Jim Henson in anything coming out after Henson's death. (Henson was charismatic and very hard-working, but he was never a Joss Whedon.) Even before that, though, the emphasis on documenting Muppet lore has very often been with the performers and technical staff. This is fair enough, since that's the sort of material fans tend to be after, but this makes learning about the very tangled writing process for all of the Muppet projects a bit frustrating. Right now, for example, I'm having a really hard time turning up an obscure note on Gonzo's early history.

No, not Muppets From Space, the script for which was Kirk Thatcher's instead of Juhl's at the end of the day. Before that.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume I saw it in Of Muppets and Men, a book I read into the ground as a child and would perform terrifying acts of derring-do to own today. (Our family begged the local library to let us just buy it and have done with it. I'd have it on constant renewal, for months at a time, until the librarians would yank it forcibly back and beat me with novelty clubs.) I'm positive it turned up in magazine articles from the era as well, and possibly in passing during documentaries. (My R2 disc of the accompanying special is in another country. I can't check that particular one right now.)

We know that Gonzo's chicken fancying comes from an ad-lib Dave Goelz made concerning passing poultry: "Nice legs, though." His nature, though, was never so clear. Up until Muppets From Space, he was a "whatever" or a "weirdo." If you asked further about this, though, it'd come down to Gonzo's mother.

No, we don't know what Gonzo's mother was. But we knew what one of her pastimes was, while she was pregnant with him.

Gonzo's mother enjoyed sitting in the Nevada desert. She enjoyed watching the pretty lights in the beautiful night sky.

The pretty lights from the nuclear testing.

That informed Gonzo for me, growing up. My family didn't care for him so much -- too bizarre, too flagrant -- but, once I realized exactly how you end up looking like a tweaking Grover with a twisted beak, I had no issues at all. He fell into place for me. And if he wanted to run away to Borneo to launch his Bollywood career, or swing with semi-anthropomorphized hens, hey, great. When the kids at school are throwing rocks at your head for whatever's wrong with you this week, and no one's bothered to show you an X-Men comic? Muppet mutants are pretty compelling stuff.

But I can't remember whose idea that was. Goelz? Juhl? Chris Langham? I want to say Juhl, obviously, to point to that and a slew of other character details and say, "he did that." I could probably do that with Fraggle Rock if I had the interviews from the R1 series 1 boxed set to hand, but I don't have them, either.

Which is probably missing the whole point of writing about what Jerry Juhl did for the Muppets. Reading interviews with him, you get the sense of a very communal workflow which he worked hard to shape and direct. (This is, of course, the way of television, but one gets the impression it was much more so.) Pointing to moments becomes an exercise in playing with one of those weiner-shaped water balloons, the ones which are all wrapped in upon themselves and slip out of your hands when you squeeze them with any force.

The Muppets are in a curious state these days. Recent and upcoming video releases have the old material in sharp focus, but new developments are a bit alarming. The team suffers from a certain amount of attrition and flux. Richard Hunt died two years after Jim Henson. Many of Frank Oz's characters have been handed over to Eric Jacobson, and a number of Henson's have been split between Bill Barretta and Steve Whitmire; Barretta is now going through the same mastery process it took Whitmire considerable time to deal with, with more key characters at once. If you had the principal credits from anything up to Manhattan stashed away in your head, something's going to give if you look at them today. Even as Kermit prepares a fiftieth anniversary world tour (and, make no mistake, I'll go and find him in whichever major city I can reach), the Muppet Holding Company are auditioning new puppeteers to play the original cast on cruises and at theme parks. No matter how one feels about the state of play these days, it becomes increasingly obvious that one needs to cherish what one had. They're building on a legacy, but they're still starting somewhat from scratch.

Boiling Juhl's work down to a soundbite would be a disservice. He was woven all through the Muppets. He doesn't have that one first book, or that one unforgettable role, or that one song. With his stuff, you just can't point at all; you have to make broad, sweeping gestures with your arms.

And you'll look really silly when you do that, too. "He did that!" you say, swooping dramatically. And then you fall over, possibly down a flight of stairs. With cakes.

And that? That's the right thing to do, right there.

Posted by Wednesday White at 9:01 PM | Comments (16)

September 28, 2005

Eric Burns-White: On death and dementia and things Positive.

This one's going to be a little more serious than normal. I hope that's okay with folks.

See, I've been thinking about the reactions folks have had to yesterday's snark of the current Something Positive. It seems Milholland really hit one out of the park, this time. People have been seriously affected, and no one's trying to burn down his home as far as I know. Certainly, it means a lot to me.

In part, because of the juxtaposition of Monette's words and the document on the table. "I love you too, Daddy," she says, in a voice full of tears. They're tears that come because Monette is overwhelmed, because she has had something wholly alien to her happen. She has screwed up, badly, and the man who adopted her as his daughter used it as a chance to show her how much he loves her.

Monette hasn't had much of that. Her birth father was horrid to her -- dismissive of her and her stupidity. Her friends -- even the ones she has been closest to -- have never been afraid to be snide about how dumb she is. Her closest friend in the world walked out on her -- leaving her with bills galore -- with nary a glance back.

And now she's loved. Loved by parents who think the world of her, and -- astoundingly enough -- believe in her. And in that environment, something's beginning to grow out of her. Something... dare I say it... positive. And they would never leave her.

But Fred Macintyre is old. And Faye, though not as old, is getting on in years. And one of the two at the very least has been screened for Alzheimer's Disease and the prognosis isn't a good one. Happily ever after isn't -- all things come to a close, and there's a countdown timer on this home Monette has finally found.

And it hits close to home for me.

Not because of my parents. Oh, they're not getting any younger and we make jokes -- you have to make jokes, or you go nuts -- but they're both healthy and mentally acute.

But, you see... both of my grandmothers suffered from forms of dementia. One passed on, but went through periods of fear because she couldn't understand what was happening. One is... well, she's comfortable. She's in a good home. The last time I saw her, she had no idea who I was, mind. I'm not sure she knows who any of her children are, much less her grandchildren.

But she seems content. And she's well cared for. And, of course, she's loved, even if she doesn't know it.

Both sides. On neither side did my grandfather survive long enough to know if it would be a problem there, but there's at least some genetic predisposition on both sides of my family to an eventual mental decline on my own part.

And that terrifies me.

My whole life, the one thing I've had going for me was my mind. I know things. I put pieces together. I can write. I can think. I understand the universe. I contain stories and multitudes and attitudes and opinions. I am legion and I am myself.

But I'm not quite as sharp as I was in my twenties. I don't pick things up like I used to. Take CSS. HTML was no problem for me. And more to the point, the concepts involved made sense to me, and as I learned them, I learned markup, and it all worked. Sometimes I have to look things up, but I know what I'm looking for.

CSS? It's like I'm dealing with an alien language. I can make out some of the words, and I can make guesses as to some of the effects at poking with things, but for the most part it's opaque to me. I don't understand. I can't understand. I tried, so hard, but I couldn't get it. I can't build the framework in my head.

And I realize that's going to become more common with time.

That's the fear that can keep me up long hours at night. What will happen to me when I lose my mind? When I don't recognize things? When I make no sense.=? When the world is huge and alien and frightening and I can't figure it out?

Those who immediately think "too late" should know that the joke has already been done.

It's almost odd to consider. See, I've never much worried about it, because I've known -- known -- I wouldn't last long enough to make it a worry. Hell, I was pushing five hundred pounds. Getting out of bed in the morning was courting a heart attack. I'm still not out of heart attack country.

And I'm a survivor of advanced congestive heart failure and idiopathic cardiomyopathy. In both those cases I've recovered and become healthy (though my health is still somewhat fragile, as all of you should have guessed by now). However, even as a survivor there is some -- to use the term for it -- diminished life expectancy involved. There's every chance that even if I make it to goal weight my heart will just stop sometime in my sixties and that'll be that.

...or my fifties....

...or possibly my forties....

...but not my thirties, more than likely. I've put at least another six or seven years on my life with the weight loss. That doesn't suck.

So, I've been somewhat morbidly comfortable with my eventual painful death. I've had time to work it into my experiences.

The thing is... medical science is improving all the time. All the time. And one of the areas it's getting massively better in is recovery from cardiac issues and heart failure. Hell, had my cardiomyopathy and congestive heart failure gotten critical six or seven years earlier -- six or seven years -- I would have needed a heart transplant to survive. Now, thanks to beta blockers and ACE inhibitors, we got my original heart back to a manageable size and functionality. With diminished life expectancy, but since my life expectancy without them was, oh, 2001 if I was lucky, we're calling that a net win.

By the time I'm into my sixties, I fully expect them to be a lot better at rehabbing and improving cardiovascular performance. Tons better. So there's no reason to expect that they won't be able to keep me around for another forty or fifty years after that. And after those fifty years, there's every reason to think that medical science won't have ways to make my hundred and ten year old ass feel at least as good as it does right now. Remember, the Baby Boomers are ahead of me, and they're going to demand the best damn research into fixing aging that monumental amounts of money can buy. As an early-generation Generation-X'er, I can slack right into the benefit of it the way I slacked into everything else behind the Baby Boom.

Maybe that means they'll work out dementia and Alzheimer's and all the other conditions that used to be lumped together into "senility." There's research going on, certainly. Maybe.

But maybe they won't.

Death I can deal with. We all die, and I'm on borrowed time as it is, and I'm grateful. I really, really am.

But living to a ripe old age with a rotten and corrupt mind, a swirl of old characters and dead friends and confusion and outdated understandings at best... that's very close to my definition of Hell. And I can see it happening. So clearly.

Fred and Faye, in Something Positive, have before anything else, tremendous dignity. It's what makes it funny when Fred charges into a room and discovers Monette having sex with another woman.

Alzheimer's takes dignity away from you, along with rationality and comfort.

Milholland hit one out of the park, all right. It's a damn good take on a damn hard subject, and everyone wants to see what happens next, and almost certainly it'll be weeks or months (or years) before we do.

In the meantime, late at night, it's just me and my mind. And I'm wondering which one of us will check out first. And wondering if it's cowardice to hope it's me.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:33 PM | Comments (55)

Eric Burns-White: You know, if he doesn't want you reading it, why does he keep linking it?

(From The Adventures of Brigadier General John Stark. Click on the thumbnail for full sized archive page where this strip appears. It's the one where Ethan Allen gets called a dick, for reference.)

The John Stark comics are doing great, and I appreciate it. And hope you follow along the link to read today's, and go back and read the last few days. That would rock. But as of this writing, John Stark has climbed to #50 on the WCN Top 100. You guys are fantastic. Tell your friends!

(Yes, the primary category for this entry is Self Promotion. And thank you to Wednesday for creating it.)

However... on that same list... Unfettered by Talent has climbed to #39.

What is wrong with you people? It's terrible.

Do we need to do this every couple of days? Do we? All right then, we will! Here's another list of comic strips more worthy than Unfettered by Talent that you should be reading. All on Webcomics Nation. Read them! Bury Unfettered by Talent!

• Kara, Kali and the Wind: An absolutely gorgeous series, completed and ready for you to read. It's a fairy tale, and I'm a sucker for fairy tales that aren't reduced in scope for children.
• Return to Green Hollow: A second fairy tale -- this one quite different than the first. (And rendered in beautiful pencilwork.) Also a complete story, which also sells a minicomic version. Diana Sprinkle and Michael Vega have outdone themselves -- they got it absolutely right.
• Virgin Head 24 Hour Comic: James V. West, who did Catharsis in our last rundown, has a 24 hour comic in today's. It's rough-drawn, of course, as most 24 hour comics are, but he got it finished and it's a lot of fun. Also? There are breasts. I'm just saying, if you're a Safe For Work sort of person, this isn't likely your cup of tea. Otherwise, it's worth a look!
• Magic Inkwell Comic Strip Theater: I should warn that there's a music file attached to this, so if you're in an office cubicle, you might want to be wary. However, the idea that the work of Cat Freaking Garza is currently ranked below Unfettered by Talent offends Odin and makes the Baby Jesus cry. Go! Read!
• Pewfell Vol. 1: The first volume of Pewfell stories and strips by Chuck Whelon. Lots of fun, and I swear to God the last page is a fantasy pastiche on The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.
• Welcome to Oddville. Oddville is an alternative strip in the papers those kids love so much, and it's a good one. This one's interesting to me, as well, because Jay Stephens is one of the first people I know of who's using the "Modern Tales" Subscription Model, the way American Elf does. (Benjamin Birdie, over at Genre City, is doing subscription stuff, but he's got something of a different take on it.) If you know from Oddville, you'll know if you want to subscribe or not. If you don't? Well, today's is free, so go ahead and give it a try!

There. Between those and the other strips on the Top 25 and 100 lists, you should be enjoying the rennaissance of good cartooning that's going on out there. Without needing to go to Unfettered by Talent. And if UfbT's numbers continue to go up, we're going to just have to do this again and again until people get the point and start reading quality webcomics!

(Why do I suddenly have this image of other WCN artists driving the numbers up on Unfettered by Talent?)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:55 AM | Comments (43)

Eric Burns-White: I say Fuck a lot in this snark.

(From FLEM! Comics. Click on the thumbnail for motherfucking Jay!)

Back on September 5, 1999, FLEM Comics -- up until then kind of what happens if Gary Larson and Hunter S. Thompson had a child who was practically raised on heroin -- decided to experiment with a few strips of continuity.

And thus, the Jay Storyline was born. And lo, it was glorious. And mind numbingly disturbing. I swear to Christ, if you read through it you will be offended, I don't want to hear about it, and that is that. There was dog raping. There was dog raping. It was often times brutal.

And funny as Hell. The Jay Storyline was the kind of thing that could have me out of my chair laughing myself sick even as I was horrified at what I was laughing at. J. Grant's take no prisoners attitude towards his humor meant nothing -- nothing -- was out of bounds. I remember one memorable sequence where the lead characters were getting high on cocaine. This wasn't a cautionary tale, mind. They were doing coke because... here's a shocking thing for you to consider... people actually do coke because they like it, and they like the effects. Cocaine didn't ruin the characters' lives, in this story. Instead, this story was about the humor that came out of actually doing cocaine.

That takes courage. Or at least not giving a fuck about what people think or say about you. And Grant is astoundingly good at not giving a fuck what people think or say about him.

And then one day it ended. He was sick of it.

And a fan base clawed their eyes out in despair. Because it rocked.

He actually put up an April Fool's Day gag a couple of years later, teasing the return of the Jay Storyline. But he seemed to have set it aside for good.

And then yesterday there was a test pattern on FLEM! And then today... what appears to be a return to the Jay Storyline.

Now, Grant's fooled us before. He enjoys it. He laughs at our pain. He howls derisively. "I bet I can get them to claw those expensive ocular surgical implants out in despair," he says, casually, to his Two Lumps partner Mel Hynes. "Watch them! Watch them dance and scream in pain! DANCE FOR ME!"

But whatever happens next? I'm fucking there for it.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:32 AM | Comments (16)

September 27, 2005

Eric Burns-White: Holy shit.

(From Something Positive. Click on the thumbnail. Just click on the thumbnail.)

If you read the last few Something Positives, you probably had some idea how today would go. It's a trope we've seen Randy touch on before. Someone does something really braindead and stupid. Someone else points how mind-bogglingly insensitive it was to someone else, and mentions how upset they'll be. And then the two characters have the confrontation, and rather than flying off the handle they prove to be understanding. In the end, they not only show empathy for the person who screwed up, but they make it clear that the degree to which they love each other is more important than whatever happened to screw things up. Think Aubrey with the Bert puppet. And many other examples.

And here we are, today, and everyone figured Fred would explode at Monette, and of course Fred doesn't. It's not as important as Monette is to him, after all. In fact, this is a way that these comics, which connected Fred to Davan, could connect to Monette as well. All perfectly expected and normal.

And then there's the last panel. Read it carefully.

Holy shit.

I mean... holy shit.

At least one regular reader of Something Positive responded with a hearty "fuck you, Randy" in his Livejournal. I understand that.

Randy Milholland gets a biscuit. A tasty, tasty biscuit.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 5:51 PM | Comments (56)

Wednesday White: I am celebrating Eric having been totally out of it by not having slept last night. Er, wait.

In this week's edition of the Blank Label Comics Podcast, you can hear what Eric sounds like when he's completely zoned out on Benadryl. He's surprisingly coherent, and not at all the same as when he's smashed. Also, you can hear lovely anecdotes about our readership here, learn more about the site's goals and intentions, enjoy tidbits concerning Gossmaer Commons, and discover the magic audience number that took me completely by surprise.

Yes, you too can learn what kind of mail Websnark gets.

Also? Less giggling than that time where he was all talking to Kurtz. So, it's basically a win.

Posted by Wednesday White at 4:16 PM | Comments (11)

September 26, 2005

Eric Burns-White: Fear drives exploration. We always suspected that was the case, right?

So, a good number of people have been coming to have a look at The Adventures of Brigadier General John Stark, which is heartening because... well, hey. I like people reading the things that I write. It's especially heartening since at the time of the statistics I had, there was only the one strip, which had already appeared on Websnark. (The second strip is there now. Like all good gag-a-day webcomics, it features a penis joke. My father must be proud of me.) In fact, on Sunday I was second on the daily "top 25 webcomics" list at WCN, and as of the moment I'm fourth for today. I mean, hey. Rock on.

(For the record? I have the next two weeks queued to go already. Admittedly, this is not the hardest webcomic to do a buffer for, since the art never changes and I have a program that lets me quickly and easily insert the artwork. But at least until mid-October, I already know I won't miss a daily update. Yay! A winner is me!)

However, looking at the top 25 of the day also gave me pause... because I discovered that (at least yesterday) Unfettered by Talent was on the list too... and looking at the top 100 all time strips on Webcomics Nation I discover that Unfettered by Talent is currently #54!

This cannot be permitted to stand. Unfettered by Talent sucks. Clearly, people need to start reading a lot more Webcomics Nation strips. Here's a few to get you started, but you should also look at the lists in the sidebar of the Webcomics Nation home page:

• Irrational Fears. Ursula Vernon, of Digger fame (as well as the designer of Snarky in the corner of this screen), presents a full color odyssey to search out the monsters that plague our subconsciousness. It's one of the most popular Webcomics Nation strips, and I'm going to do my part to keep it that way, because this right here is damn good stuff.
• Gods and Undergrads. I am seriously getting into this story about a sophomore in college and the slice of divine life she finds there.
• JACK COLE, A Life in Comics. Gary Chaloner, who was fortunate enough to work with Will Eisner on John Law, brings us a series of interwoven stories, illustrated and textual, crossing between fact and fiction on the life of one of the greatest -- and most tragic -- comic artists of all time. Jack Cole, the creator of Plastic Man, noted and revered for his glorious sense of whimsy and the anarchic, ultimately took his own life. Chaloner isn't quite over that. (And neither am I, for that matter, even though it happened before I was born.)
• World War Two Wild West Zombie Tales. Exactly what it sounds like. Plus, gorgeous artwork.
• Catharsis. A self contained story well worth your time to go through. A touch of theology, with just a scosh of... well, you'll see.
• Amazon Space Rangers A. Prosser's story of... well, Amazon Space Rangers. Also, family. A perfect way to follow reading World War Two Wild West Zombie Tales
• Space Goth. Once again, I'm not sure how to improve on the title in this description. This is more a Space Goth come to Earth, than Goths in Space, just for the record. There's a qualitative difference, you know.
• Playing with Dolls. Ever since the first edition of The Sims, people have been making up stories to go along with screenshots. But Spike takes it to a whole new level, harnessing the high graphical power of The Sims 2 and building coherent narratives from her "doll collection." It's the facial expressions that nail it for me.
• Polly versus the Tentacle Monster. A surprisingly PG (well, okay, PG-13. Well, all right, with slight R tendencies, but no actual nudity or anything) 24 hour comic from Ghastly, who has been sadly underrepresented in Websnark to date
• [nemesis]. What? I was going to go through a list of stuff for you to read on Webcomics Nation and not mention [nemesis]? Greg Holkan. Good stuff.

This should get you started, but it just scratches the surface. I think Webcomics Nation is a success to date, because there's a ton of good stuff just waiting for you. And, of course, a photo-comic with static art about Revolutionary War Era Generals and their statues.

And none of it needs to be Unfettered by Talent. Really.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:38 AM | Comments (39)

Eric Burns-White: It's like I'm being punished, only I wasn't bad! I WASN'T BAD!

The ISP transition alluded to on Friday went well, though there are repercussions. The school I work at actually has its own IP range, as opposed to an IP range assigned by an ISP, so when we switch providers we also need to change routing tables, which then have to propagate. This means that a certain number of people trying to send us mail or come to our website can't do it for sometimes north of 72 hours after the transition, and a (much smaller) subset of web sites won't return requests we send to it properly. They literally send the requests to the old address.

"So what," you ask. Why should you, the reading audience care? Well, most of you probably won't. However, bear the following two facts:

1) I'm having issues with my cable modem at home, so I need to use the campus network instead, so my access is the same at home and at work. Which is no big (we just got a big pipe). However;

2) All of Keenspot and Comic Genesis are among those sites we cannot reach right now.

As a result, I haven't seen any 'spot or 'nesis comic since, you know, Friday.

For the record? I read a lot of those comics.

Theoretically, the routing tables should finish updating today. Alternately, my at-home cable should clear up. Either way, really. Until one or the other happens, though, I'm... well, stuck. So if something really amazing happened on a Keenspot comic today... um... well, I hope you guys liked it.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 7:34 AM | Comments (10)

September 25, 2005

Eric Burns-White: It's like wearing pimp clothes, only without the sexism or the stereotyping!

You'll notice another sidebar tweak -- one that folks have asked for before. There's finally a link to other projects -- I've got a link to Gossamer Commons, if course. You'll also see a link to The Adventures of Brigadier General John Stark. That's right -- John Stark's voice has taken flight in my brain, and at least until I run out of ideas, he's going to appear daily at Webcomics Nation. The first strip is up -- the one you've seen before. I've queued up strips straight through to the end of the week. (I'm not sure if it's ripping off Daily Dinosaur Comics, Sinister Bedfellows or both, but I'm having fun so what the Hell?) As Weds and I develop our little online forays, we'll make sure there's appropriate linkage going on.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:30 AM | Comments (16)

September 24, 2005

Wednesday White: Also, the CAP Alert guy accuses Piggy of "gamming." Unfortunate pun, really.

So, I'm talking to Eric. I'm not sure how it happened that he confessed unto me the egregious sin of not having seen The Muppets Take Manhattan, but there it was. Shaaaaaame on him.

He tried to placate me. "I did see Muppets In Space," he said.

"Muppets From Space," I replied.

This man needs education. I think that you should know that.

Anyhow. The salient point is that we're now confused about what makes Muppet cross-species romance acceptable in some situations, but freaks us out in others. While trying to sort out what other films or specials Eric might not have seen, we realized that the coupling of Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog is something we just take for granted, but Gonzo's relationship with Camilla still verges on the distressing (and, in point of fact, it has been rather heavily downplayed over the years). "That's different. They're never going to breed," asserted Eric.

What of The Muppet Christmas Carol? "Those kids are adopted. Robin's one of them."

What of the pig daughters? Look at those eyes. Those are frog eyes. Those are little figs. "True. Although those could be contacts. They're Miss Piggy's children; they'd be taught the value of accessorizing."

I throw it open. Is it the power of denial? Is it whether or not the Muppets in the pairing register to us as human? Camilla doesn't speak, although she communicates well and she plainly understands English. Does this make her a little less easy to identify with? Or is it just Gonzo's initial carnality (and, to some extent, promiscuity -- for a while, their relationship was at least somewhat open, if fraught with jealousy) that's bothersome?

Also, why are we willing to excuse the fact that, charming as she is, Piggy's an abusive spouse?

Are chickens just funnier, on average?

It's really no wonder Sam gets so het up. I'm surprised he lasted that long.

Posted by Wednesday White at 3:02 PM | Comments (61)

Eric Burns-White: How you can tell you've been working too much lately

The alarms started going off on time, around six thirty this morning. I push up off the couch -- fell asleep there last night, clearly unexpectedly. I push up off said couch, wander into the bedroom to kill the alarm, then back out to grab coffee.

The power of the Keurig is hot, tasty coffee on demand. I got through three quarters of a cup before really putting together my morning plan. Grab a shower, change, head over to work, settle in for the day. It's a plan I've executed before. And I'd gotten up early enough to let me check mail and answer a few letters before I needed to really get into it.

I was part way through my second cup and bringing up webcomics when it hit me that it's Saturday. And unlike most of the last block of Saturdays I've worked, I really don't need to go into the office. I actually have the day off, barring my pager going off.

It's not, by the by, that I thought I had to work this Saturday. It's that I had no idea it was Saturday for nearly an hour.

I'm going back to bed.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 7:20 AM | Comments (21)

September 23, 2005

Eric Burns-White: The quote is actually a quote, for the record. I didn't make the quote up. I wouldn't do that with a quote.

So, we're in the process of waiting for doom (doooooooooooom!) at my place of employ. (We switch our ISP -- and migrate our IP range in the process -- at 3 pm Eastern Daylight TIme, which means the giant switch gets thrown.) Until this happens, I'm actually at loose ends. And, well, I needed to eat lunch at my desk today.

Which... is actually how I normally work anyway.

Anyhow, the multimedia teacher, knowing my interest in webcomics and webcomic production, pointed me to the Macintosh program Comic Life, by Plasq. Comic Life is software designed to take images (most particularly, pictures sitting in iPhoto, though it will work with anything), and quickly and easily lay it out into a comic grid. They have lots of premade formats, from four panel through full comic page.

Well, I wanted to see just how "quick and easy" this thing could be. And so, I downloaded the software and, in the course of eating my lunch, I created my first self-created webcomic since Unfettered by Talent. Well... not counting my guest comic for Daily Dinosaur Comics I did because... well, it's fun to do those.

So, hidden away behind a "click for more" link at the bottom of the entry (RSS readers? Click on the link to go to the entry on my blog) you will find a brand new photocomic, using the first comic I found.

It stars Revolutionary War Era Brigadier General John Stark.

Look, you take pictures of stuff you want to take pictures of, I take pictures of stuff I want to take pictures of.

The software was a little bit annoying, here and there (I would love to get more granular controls for image scaling, for example), but it certainly is easy to use. It seems to be yet another way to unleash one's inner creativity without needing... well, the ability to draw.

Next, I'm going to try out some of the filter sets -- there are apparently ways to make things look drawn even when they're not. And that's what I'm shooting for. (They also apparently can take pictures directly from an iSight, which rocks.)

So without further ado... The Adventures of Brigadier General John Stark. (And yes, the logo in the first panel sucks. I've come to terms with that.)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:17 PM | Comments (12)

Eric Burns-White: Because a year seems long enough, don't you think?

Observant people will notice a change in the sidebar, because people tend to be observant even when you don't expect them to be. But, rather than tease you about it, I'll just say it right out.

The "You Had Me, And You Lost Me" section had three entries yesterday. It has only one today.

We should probably talk about that.

The essays all still exist, of course. If you click on the category link for "You Had Me, And You Lost Me," you'll see all of them. However, both the Megatokyo and the It's Walky essays were posted over a year ago. It's Walky ended in that time. And it's been a year since I've done more than glance at Megatokyo.

Some time ago, someone wrote to me and suggested that leaving the essays -- as popular as they are -- on the front page was uncharacteristically mean spirited, despite the fact that the essays themselves are not meant to be mean. And that person had a point, and we discussed it a little at the time. And at the time I decided to leave them up, because I felt they said something important about me and about the site.

That hasn't changed. But something else has: time has passed.

I still get comments on the Megatokyo essay. And I still get e-mail. People who agree with me. People who disagree with me. And every so often I make a reference to that essay. But when I make references to it, I have to caveat them. "I don't actually read Megatokyo. These things might have improved. I don't know. This should not be considered supplemental criticism."

And it occured to me that at some point, you can't very well have people reading your essay, linked from your home page, and reacting to it like it's current. You have to let these things sink into the historical record, and from there into their historical perspective. (For some value of "history" that applies to "a blog" and "one year.")

So, I discussed it with Wednesday, and she concurred. From this point forward, You Had Me, And You Lost Me lasts one year. For that year, the essay remains on the home page, and neither Wednesday nor I will make current critical comments about it.

At the end of that year, while the essay will remain on the site, it will go off the front page and specific prohibition will expire. Which means that Megatokyo and It's Walky (not that It's Walky hasn't been subsumed by Joyce and Walky anyhow) are legal. General Protection Fault will expire, similarly, on 16-November-2005. (In a practical sense, that means it'll have one or two weeks less time on the front page than the others, since both of them expired at the end of August/beginning of September, but I don't think anyone will care.)

If some more current essay doesn't appear between now and mid-November, the sidebar entry for "You Had Me, And You Lost Me" will disappear. But I'm making no promises -- "Oceans Unmoving II" has launched, after all.

Now, does this mean I'm going to unleash pent up fury at Megatokyo now that there's no direct prohibition? Does this mean that on 17-November I'm going to start an eight part series on GPF?

Well, no.

See, the thing is... I don't read those strips any more. That's actually the whole point of "You Had Me, And You Lost Me." The reason to put one of those essays up in the first place is to discuss the reasons why a strip I used to love isn't so loved any more. They are cautionary tales. And afterward? I walk away. I'm not going to rule out picking up the Megatokyo trade paperbacks and reading them. And I'll always leave the possibility of being "re-had" by something. (I won't pretend I haven't looked at the sites that went on the list in the past year.)

And, more to the point... Wednesday still reads GPF. And I believe she reads Megatokyo too. And I read both Shortpacked and Joyce and Walky. The fact that something's off my list doesn't mean it's off hers.

I had someone ask if Wednesday could write a "You Had Me, And You Lost Me" essay. The answer is "of course." And if she did, it'd go up on the sidebar for a year and I wouldn't discuss it for a year. But it just seems to me that it's not fair to the strips in question to leave the front page links up more than a year after the essayist stopped reading, and it's not fair to the other writer on this site to tie their hands for more than a year on subjects that mean a lot to them.

So. Anyway.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:10 PM | Comments (43)

September 22, 2005

Wednesday White: In this waking hell I am / witnessing more than I can compute.

Achewood's Cartilage Head reminds me of Vulva, but only in that he succeeds where she fails.

Vulva is a performance artist from the British TV comedy Spaced. Her former working partner Brian, now a painter working exclusively from negative emotions, remembers everything they used to do together in a halcyon light. Near as anyone can tell, of course, they pranced around local parks during the eighties and ripped off the music video for "Subterranean Homesick Blues," but Brian feels that they were doing very important work.

One day, Brian receives an invitation to Vulva's new show. It's built up as a massive to-do, a tremendous achievement, especially in Brian's head. Nothing he's done for years has been Important Enough to bring to Vulva, or so he now imagines. She was the scintillating talent; he was just... there. He conjures up a laughing, golden version of his beloved former partner, who then drips mockery all over him: "Abstract expressionism is so mid-to-late eighties." And, in fact, when he sees her again before the show, she doesn't disappoint; she condescends. "I can't believe some of the shit I used to do with you." So, off goes Vulva to perform the pinnacle event of her career with Hoover.

And it's shite.

Mind, of course it's shite. Spaced is nothing less than caustic with regards to contemporary visual arts throughout both series, frequently deservedly so. Further, Vulva and Hoover's performance more closely resemble what an outsider expects performance art to be, especially if their perception's been informed by the excesses of the seventies and eighties. But it's such shite. It couldn't be anything else, with all the buildup, all the ego-bluster. Sound, fury; shite. Only Brian was actually weeping.

Only Brian thought that it was beautiful. They'd let his friends in for free, and they didn't care. No one had cared; really. Barely anyone had bothered to show up.

Tickets to Cartilage Head, meanwhile, can't be had on the open market. Cartilage Head is someone you have to know about. When someone offers you the tickets, you just don't turn them down. Even if you don't want them.

The average man, or the average cat, he doesn't want them. But he has to take them.

Ray Smuckles, at the crux of it all, is a coward. He's not built for trouble. Historical pornography falls into his lap. Possessed shoes lead him into prosperity. When the girls in his bed drink too much and cry, or pass out, he leaves them juice. He slips away. When the child in his charge is in trouble, he entertains his way out of the mess, or he turns a blind eye. Maybe he feels it's his job, ever since he and Beef heard the gunshot; who's to say. Either way, he was born suckling silver utensils, and that's probably how he'll die -- trouble's not a thing that Ray does.

Roast Beef has to know what he's doing, giving Ray the ticket. Roast Beef is a child of depression. Ray is a cartoon cat.

This can't be Cartilage Head's first barbecue. The pre-printed cards with which he communicates suggest he's been this way before. Everything about him carries a monogram and a style. His basic stage show is vaguely distressing -- dancing connective tissue, weeping all the while, pushing itself apart for show -- but it's no initiatory experience. It's no descent. Is it remarkable that he picks the cat in seat Z-11 for dinner? For all we know, there is no other ticket. You don't go to this show if you're ready.

Wine rises from below. This is another world.

Cartilage Head relishes the companionship. He craves the intimate audience; he's delighted to perform for you over dinner, if you're the one he's chosen. He can't be someone people eagerly seek out for company; at best, he keeps with Trouble Man and No-No, or possibly his ushers. More than likely, he draws up wine on his own. The test of a man isn't what he'll do when he's wanted; the test is when he's needed.

So he pushes himself apart for Ray's pleasure, to his peril. And Ray flees. This is the measure; contemporary occultists should learn from Cartilage Head. Such as Vulva convince themselves that they make a mark, or a statement; largely, they wrap themselves in nonsense and cosmetics.

Cartilage Head finds the ones who would betray a dying man. And feeds them.

Posted by Wednesday White at 7:43 PM | Comments (44)

Eric Burns-White: It's like putting out a call to the Blue Blaze irregulars!

I am developing a need to develop resources for various projects. Among those resources are folks wise in the ways of language.

In particular, I could use a reference point for Latin (modern or classical -- or both!) and Greek (also modern, classical or both.)

I could also use a conversation with someone well versed in alternative punk music -- particularly current/modern alt-punk with a certain measure of popularity that seems ironic. (Otherwise known as "the kind of music you might expect any given 19 year old Suicidegirl to listen to.)

All of the above are for writing projects of one kind or other. Thanks in advance!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:30 PM | Comments (34)

Wednesday White: I also don't understand arithmetic.

Sam the American Eagle would shake his head. So would Fozzie Bear.

Seriously. What kind of world is it where the fine boys at Penny Arcade sell Twisp and Catsby shirts, but the many did not buy them?

I am rife with confusion. Replete. Suffused. What the hey, people. It's just one more thing that doesn't make any sense to me at all. Up there with Lea Hernandez and Bill Mallonee not being superstars in their fields. And the CBC lockouts continuing apace, but more on that later.

(Also? Perl. I never could learn perl. As far as I know, perl is this thing that people do when they want to say to me, "Wednesday," they say to me, "you are a very silly woman who is addled with insufficient coffee. Everyone knows perl. Also, you should write a video card driver for X.")

Anyhow. How'd that happen?

Posted by Wednesday White at 11:50 AM | Comments (17)

September 21, 2005

Eric Burns-White: Rita

I am having a bad day, and yet my bad day is measured, because there are worse days out there.

Hurricane Rita has, as of this writing, just been upgraded to Category 5. It's barometric pressure is worse than Katrina's was at Katrina's height.

Galveston, Texas is in its path. Houston may be hit very hard as well.

At least two webcartoonists live right where it's going to hit. One -- Chaobell, late of /usr/bin/w00t and currently of various rather incredible Silent Hill poser works -- has publicly talked about her preparations. The other I'm not sure has publicly stated information, so I'm not going to identify unless given permission. Regardless, I hope Chaobell and [REDACTED] and any pets they may or may not have are well and truly far away from the hurricane's path right now, and my hopes are with them.

And with everyone in that city. And throughout the affected area.

Because my bad day? Is nothing. Nothing. I'm going to be fine.

Please let all of them be fine too. Please.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 5:07 PM | Comments (29)

September 20, 2005

Eric Burns-White: I don't suppose anyone at Fox is interested in a modern fairy tale with jazz undertones? Anyone? Anyone? Damn.

(From You Damn Kid!)

Okay , it's official. I'm surprised. And we now officially have a frontrunner for "biggest story of the year in Webcomics," and -- with all apologies to Owen Dunne -- I never expected it to be You Damn Kid.

For those who don't know, Dunne's comic strip -- which has been running since 1999, and is a perennial favorite of the people who recommend comics to me -- has been optioned for development by 20th Century Fox Television.

What does that mean?

Well, first off, it means a pretty decent payday for Dunne and for Keenspot. I don't know how decent a payday, but I do know a thing or two about how much development companies pay for short story rights, and it could easily be six figures. In the writing world, significant optioning is the long green, and this is about as significant an optioning as we could imagine.

(It's also possible that they didn't get six figures. Or even five. We literally have no idea, and that's not going to change. But let me dream for a minute, okay?)

Secondly, it means it's possible that a Keenspot comic might -- might -- end up on Fox. That's network. And that's huge.

We know Fox is very interested in animation right now. We know that Fox felt burned by Cartoon Network/Adult Swim successfully marketing Family Guy when they let it languish, and we know that they've started a lot heavier interest in animation. We also know that Adult Swim gets demographic numbers that makes the people at The Late Show With David Letterman weep.

At the same time, 20th Century Fox Television doesn't equal Fox. They could just as easily develop You Damn Kid and try to sell it directly to Adult Swim. Or, for that matter, to G4 (which has been pushing for late night Adultswimish humor to try and get some of that sweet demographic). Or to whoever might want to buy.

Or, the development might stall out. Or a pilot might get made and might not sell. Or a lot of things. A lot more shows get optioned than made.

Now, if You Damn Kid gets made and put on the air in network, that's monumental. That's life changing. If it's a hit, then suddenly a whole lot of webcomics could get serious interest in them -- our corner of the media suddenly becomes a place for inexpensive mining for potential hit shows. But even if You Damn Kid never gets made, this is huge news for Keenspot.

You see, according to the information we have (and Dunne has confirmed it), it's Keenspot that negotiated the option. So... for a couple of years now we've know that Keenspot's been shopping strips around. And there's been some laughter about the subject.

Only now, they've done it. And it's a truism that your second sale is a lot easier than your first. Suddenly, Keenspot has credibility in the development cycle. Certainly, if You Damn Kid goes somewhere, it's going to be easier for the Crosbys to successfully option other Keenspot strips.

Suddenly, being on the 'Spot has a potential for, as stated, long green. And, while a hit cartoon based on a webcomic will be good for webcomics in general (I can see G4 suddenly hungry for Penny Arcade, or Adult Swim really wanting PvP or Something Positive, just to throw a few common names out), it's going to be a bonanza for Keenspot and for strips on Keenspot.

The next year is going to be very, very interesting.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:33 PM | Comments (62)

September 19, 2005

Eric Burns-White: It Be Both September 19 an' also PIMP DAY! Scupper me wi' a handspike, else!

Darrrrr! It be talk like a Pirate day! Tis a holiday I can sink me hook into!

Also? My next Comixpedia column is up, over to Comixpedia.

I can say without fear of contradiction that it is, in fact, a column. I'm not making any other promises.

Darrrr!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:29 PM | Comments (35)

Eric Burns-White: Duck V. Top Hat: two very different style strips, two very different style print collections.

Occasionally, I have stuff back up on me. Specifically, stuff I really need to write about, like, here. For example, sitting on my desk I have three -- count them, three -- print compilations of webcomics that I haven't discussed. Two of them come from the exceptional Jin Wicked, and represent Volume I and Volume II of Crap I Drew On My Lunch Break. The third comes via the cheerful Dave Kellett, representing the first print collection of Sheldon.

I cannot imagine two more different strips, it's worth noting. One is a standard four panel gag-a-day comic, very traditionally designed and laid out and targeting a newspaper/syndicate market. (And doing a very good job, I would add -- Sheldon is a fun strip.) The other is a quasi-journal/quasi-surreal strip in a solid webcomics tradition that reflects the highly idiosyncratic and artistic style of Ms. Wicked, who is as much a personality on her site as her art (and who is a character in her strip -- which also does a very good job, I should add.) It seems inconceivable that I'd actually try and discuss these print collections in the same Snark. It's more than Apples and Oranges here -- it's Oranges and Coffee.

So! Let's get started!

The print collections, in one way, absolutely represent the intentions of the authors. Dave Kellett, as I said above, is working in the tradition of the four panel newspaper strip. He's working in a grand tradition -- each strip needs to stand on its own, setting up and executing a punchline. At the same time, he doesn't eschew running continuities from day to day or even week to week.

His print collection -- Pure Ducky Goodness -- reflects that fact -- it's 8.5" x 9" (not quite square), optimized for showing four panels horizontally as if it were in a newspaper. It was offset printed (in CANADA, as it proudly claims in several places) and clearly lives in the Starline Media offices waiting to be shipped out. It would look perfectly at home among the mutant book sizes and shapes that make up the "humor" section of Barnes and Noble where the newspaper comic strip collections live.

And, given that we get a certain sense of expectation as a result, the collection solidly works. The strips included fully establish the premise by page two, and subsequent strips deliver. It's a picaresque more than a heavily 'story' based comic. The premise is simple -- and almost quaint, this many years after the bursting of the dot com bubble. Sheldon is a kid who was also a software prodigy. In the halcyon days of Tech Stocks soaring, he managed to become a billionaire. Unlike most dot coms and software companies from that era, Sheldonsoft managed to retain its billions.

At the same time, Sheldon remains... well, a kid. A somewhat nerdy kid at that. He still goes to school, his grandfather raises him the best he knows how (we do not know what, if anything, has happened to his parents -- they're simply a non-factor. I like to think Bill Gates rubbed them out), which means public schools and restraining Sheldon's sometimes insane spending (hey, give a ten year old many billions of dollars and see what happens). One of his insane projects gave a duck the gift of speech, which gives us Arthur the Wonder Duck, which is the requisite sarcastic animal. (I said Sheldon was good. I didn't say it was innovative.) It's fun stuff, and since United Media/United Features already acts as Sheldon's web distributor, I'm a little surprised they haven't tried to move it into newspapers. It's certainly a good fit.

And no, that's not an insult. Yeesh. Webcartoonists.

The collection is a good solid read -- you end up flying through the strips because you're having a good time. And, because I'm special, Kellett drew Arthur saying hi to me on the front page. I mean, dude.

Jump over to the Crap I Drew On My Lunch Break editions (cleverly named Crap I Drew On My Lunch Break Vol. 1 and Crap I Drew On My Lunch Break Vol. 2) on the other hand, and you see an entirely different philosophy and aesthetic at work. Wicked's strip is a semi-journal -- more a conversation between her and her audience (albeit a funny one) than a studio strip. Comparing Sheldon's Comics.com home with Crap I Drew On My Lunch Break's almost blog-layout feel shows a completely different set of priorities. And the print editions reflect that as much as Pure Ducky Goodness reflected Kellett's intentions and priorities. The books are a standard sized 6.6" x 10", designed to fit easily in a bookshelf instead of the oversized comic collection shelves. They're produced via Lulu.com's Print on Demand service, rather than in volume through offset printing. (As an aside, the reproduction of Wicked's often subtle shading and linework is excellent, though heavily antialiased stuff can look a hair fuzzy in print here and there.) And even as the original strips also had blog entries/livejournal stuff going for them, the reprints do one strip per page along with full commentary underneath. It becomes a heavily value-added buy: you're getting an entirely different experience from the print collections than you do from the website, and that seems like one of the best reasons to go to print I've seen.

And, of course, the strips are excellent. Funny, as I said, but also a joy to look at, with lush lines and hatching. Wicked knows her craft.

As a side note, while she did sign the books for me, Ms. Wicked did not draw me a picture of a duck. Nor even of a rat. I'm just saying. On the other hand, there is a specific section in the back of the books for Wicked to draw or doodle on if you meet her at a convention, and she also includes question and answer sections where she answers questions her readers pose to her. Once again, the byword is conversation, and Wicked is a good conversationalist.

Which highlights yet another dichotomy between the two styles. With Sheldon, the personality of Dave Kellett is expressed (where it is expressed) in the humor of the strips -- you don't get a sense of Kellett himself as you read them. In Crap I Drew On My Lunch Break, Jin Wicked isn't just a character in her strip, the strip itself is a reflection of Jin Wicked, and her personality is explicit and overt in what she does. Neither approach is superior to the other, it's simply very different.

Am I recommending (either or both) volumes of Crap I Drew On My Lunch Break over Pure Ducky Goodness? Or vice versa? No, actually. I think both comics translate to print really well, and I think they both absolutely meet the goals they set for themselves. Sheldon, in the end, feels like a commercial strip and its collection is perfectly balanced to those needs. If you love your old Bloom County or Foxtrot collections (beyond simply loving the strips) and you like Sheldon, you'll love that. Crap I Drew On My Lunch Break feels more like an artistic expression and a conversation, and its collection is perfectly balanced to those needs -- reading the collection gives new new insight into the artistic view and world of Jin Wicked.

The best thing I can do is recommend you look at Sheldon and Crap I Drew On My Lunch Break online. If you enjoy one of those strips, the collection associated with it won't disappoint you in the least.

And, weirdly enough, I think Jin Wicked would enjoy Pure Ducky Goodness and Dave Kellett would enjoy Crap I Drew On My Lunch Break. But don't quote me on that. I've been wrong before.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:07 AM | Comments (5)

Eric Burns-White: Also? The Foglios draw women with large breasts. That doesn't hurt. I'm just saying.

(From Girl Genius: Advanced Class! Click on the thumbnail for full sized vos musical family!)

It's been a few months since Phil and Kaja Foglio's grand online experiment began, and that's a worthy enough time to check in on how things are going. For those who weren't paying attention, Phil and Kaja Foglio -- two people who are, not to put too fine a point on it, revered in the online comics community -- decided several months back that the expense of producing a regular comic book was simply not profitable, and that it literally made more sense to put their stuff online and use it to hook readers into buying the compilations. To that end, they launched two webcomics -- Girl Genius 101, which reprints day by day the classic Girl Genius strips of yesteryear, and Girl Genius: Advanced Class, which continues the story of Agatha Clay/Heterodyne as she makes her way through one of the most grandly glorious steampunk visions every committed to paper. A series that is funny and serious, bringing intense story grounded in adventure and romance alike, there literally is nothing else like Girl Genius on the market.

The question is, how has it transitioned to the web? Especially when one considers that it's still driving the concept of print sales (hey, they have kids to feed) so they're not going to be getting into web-publication only tricks.

Well, first off, let's actually look at today's strip. I picked it for a reason. First off, it's a beautiful strip, full of Foglioish tricks that range from horror to whimsy. The musical notes that the Silverodeon plays alone denote the wonderfully alien nature of the steampunk technology that Sparks can produce.

More to the point, however, this strip brings us full circle back to the title. This isn't Agatha Heterodyne and her amazing adventures. This is Girl Genius -- Agatha, even among the almost supernatural Sparks, is a cut above. The things she does with technology are fully amazing. When she rebuilds a steampunk nickelodeon, it's not just something she's taken from junk and turned into working parts -- it's astoundingly and hauntingly beautiful. Agatha is a woman of destiny, and whatever she turns her hand to eventually results in something superior.

So. Having addressed the strip... let's talk about their web presence as a whole. And let's talk about best practices.

See... a webcomic is a hungry beast. If you do a Monday/Wednesday/Friday strip, it actually wants to have comics showing up on those three days of the week, and it has absolutely no interest in your personal life, your travails, your troubles, or the fact that drawing three full comic pages a week isn't particularly easy. You can't slack off for two weeks, then have two weeks worth of orgiastic frantic drawing to make your month's deadlines (well, not without having at least a month in the can already).

And we make allowances for it. We really do. We understand as readers that schedules aren't all that easy to keep. And if someone has a day job on top of their webcomic, we understand that the day job needs to take precedence, since it involves the artist continuing to eat.

But, as long time readers know, when your webcomic becomes your job, all bets are off. This is now officially how you put food on the table. The moment you become a professional, it becomes incumbent on you to act professionally.

With Girl Genius, it's even harder. Oh, the Girl Genius 101 strip is one thing. That involves... well, getting things scanned in if they're not already digital, which they might be. And it's not trivial. Setting up archives isn't hugely fun at the best of times. But it would be there, each and every day it's supposed to be. And if you get right down to it, that should be enough for a hungry fanbase, right? "Hey, look. We provide a webcomic three days a week, that before cost money to get to. And when we finish a batch of pages on the new storyline, we'll put it up." Their fans would accept that. Heck, webcomics fans would take that deal in a heartbeat.

Phil and Kaja Foglio put up three finished new pages each and every week. If they've ever missed a deadline, I can't find evidence of it. They've done that since April. This is their job, and they know it, and they act that way. Factor in the fact that they employ an outside colorist who needs time to work on the pages too, and you have a rigorous schedule that they have always, always met.

And it proves an interesting point -- a point that I think Ursula Vernon's Digger makes admirably as well, I would add. (And it's worth noting that fans of Girl Genius would probably love Digger, but I digress.)

See, there's at least one other webcomic out there that is... well, effectively a page at a time rendering of a print comic. You've likely heard of it. By on-site restraining order, I'm not really allowed to discuss it any more. And two of the issues listed in that essay are inconsistent updates coupled with a pacing that is vastly more oriented to a print collection that the web.

Well, here's the thing. Girl Genius (and Digger) are both clearly paced for print publication. It could be argued that both involve more finishing time than that other strip, as well (though that's disingenuous -- it's hard to render good pencils for publication. But still). But neither one dramatically annoys the reader with their pacing. Both of them are exciting and fun and seem perfectly well paced, even though clearly they're not being produced with a "first panel-setup-last panel-execution" format the way a webcomic only meant for the web would be.

Why?

Because they're always there, on time, when we expect them. When you get three pages of Girl Genius a week, each and every week, you never get a sense that the pacing isn't right for the web -- because the pacing seems right. It keeps moving all the time!

If you update on schedule, regularly? You get to do longform and not annoy webcomics readers. Or critics. Because there is a constant sense of movement.

(It is worth noting that strip I can't mention might be perfectly fine in that regard these days -- I don't actually read it any more. So don't take this as a further criticism because I'm not currently qualified to criticize. Instead, take this as an elaboration on the point detailed in that original essay.)

The Foglios have gone on record saying their transition from print comic to web comic with print collections has been successful. According to Phil Foglio's Livejournal, they've got a hundred and forty thousand readers now, and they're selling print collections briskly. Now, you might be thinking that they brought those readers with them. I submit that if they were selling a hundred and forty thousand plus copies of their print comic a month, we probably wouldn't be discussing this now. (Foglio says elsewhere that they've more than doubled their readership, and I believe him.) They clearly feel the move to online has been a good one. And they clearly see themselves... well, as webcartoonists. As part of the club. When they jumped into the pond, they did it with both feet, putting their futures on the line along with the rest of us.

For reference's sake? I launched my own webcomic exactly fifteen days before the Foglios launched Girl Genius 101 and Girl Genius Advanced on the web. At this point, we have about four thousand readers, and we are considered vastly -- vastly -- ahead of the game. The Foglios started with a five figure readership, but that doesn't change the fact that it's become a six figure readership in that time. And it's been long enough that it's not the cachet of the Foglio name. (Not that said cachet isn't considerable in webcomics fandom.) No, they have those readers because they're putting out a really good strip, and they're doing it like... er... clockwork.

This might well be the biggest "webcomics-as-business" story of 2005. And it's a darn good story at that. And it's a darn good strip as well, and that's a combination I can get behind.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:30 AM | Comments (44)

Eric Burns-White: A brief, disturbing note.

Everyone who keeps track of their statistics and who has the modules enabled to track search string pings knows the surreal joy that is reading your search strings. I'm certainly no exception to that. I mean, how nice to know I track for people searching for "Superhero porn."

However, it disturbs me that I receive so many search pings for the string "it puts the lotion in the basket."

I mean, honestly.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 7:49 AM | Comments (19)

September 18, 2005

Eric Burns-White: Timelines.

Back about a decade ago, I sold a serial to Greg Fishbone (these days of Last Week's News among other things -- and someone who just this weekend had a book accepted by a publisher, so good on him!) called Paragon's Last, Desperate Stand. It was a five part serial detailing the efforts of Paragon, Mightiest Man on Earth, Last Prince of a Dead World, the Diamond Hard Man, et al to fake his own death, because he was sick to God of being... well, Superman. To that end he recruited his arch nemesis's help. The first part detailed Paragon coming to that decision. Each of the following covered his attempts to do so following a different trope based on the Superman mythos that I was clearly satirizing. Part 2 was going to be their attempt to fake his death in the middle of the Crown City Chronicle's 75th Anniversary, only "Paragon's Girlfriend" (actually his ex-wife, at this point) managed to foil the evil Dr. Lucas's "plot." Frustrated, the pair would try again in Part 3, this time heading to his home town. Only once there, his childhood sweetheart and high school best friend manage to foil their efforts. And so on and so forth.

Well, we didn't get to the point of the series being published. Sadly, Mythic Heroes didn't last long enough. So it's been sitting on my hard drive as two completed parts and an outline since the mid-nineties, waiting for something.

That something cropped up about three weeks ago, when I started plugging away at a different short story (in a nutshell, it's a story about retired Batman villains going to a Supervillain-fan convention). And I needed a background for it that couldn't actually... you know, involve Batman. And I had a background sitting over there in the Paragon story, so I pulled it up and reread it. And discovered that man, I've learned a thing or two about writing in the past ten years.

But there was something that interested me in that old story. Namely... the fact that Paragon, his ex-wife, 'chum' and so forth... were all pushing fifty. In formulating my story, all that time ago, I clearly threw out the convention that said that super heroes never get any older.

And this got me to thinking. (And Common Grounds and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay had some influence on that thought.) I mean, besides the rather unfortunate take on real time superhero aging done by John Byrne in Generations, we haven't seen much done with real-time super heroes. And reading the 30th anniversary party of the Liberty Balance in Common Grounds kind of solidified it in my head, since the heroes of that party were from the seventies and early eighties, and hey -- I'm beginning to feel my own age.

And, as it turns out, I have a copy of Bee Docs' Timeline.

So I started to play with a superheroic history that needed to evoke elements of DC and Marvel, but not actually be DC and Marvel. And all with the idea that these people actually aged as time went on. I timed the start of the modern heroic era with my own Junior High years. And I worked on the high points. Figuring out where different characters I would need for my stories would be born. When they would premiere. When they would retire (important, for the supervillain convention story). My Justice League analogue got a renaming (it had been the Liberty Protectorate, but as there was a Liberty Balance in Common Grounds, I thought better of it).

It didn't hurt that working on a timeline is something you could do with three minutes to spare here, and three minutes to spare there. Given my work situation, this was the closest thing I could do to writing for most of August.

Timelines do interesting things. They form a sense of evolution. Particularly when you considered that these characters and events would only exist in backstory -- the stories (and it had grown into a collection of short stories, some satirical, some serious) would be starting in late 2005 and moving forward from there. So, this was becoming a continuity that only one person knows... an evolution that only exists in a virtual notebook.

It's fascinating. Because quickly enough it began to reflect the evolution of super heroes themselves.

Oh, the times don't match up. My Superman analogue first appears publicly as "Paragon" on January 3, 1982, and that doesn't sync with any major comic company's "eras." But it syncs up perfectly with mine -- especially when I throw in some behind the scene stuff in the seventies (and some WWII era mystery men stuff from way back when). But growing out from there lets me do the goofy Batman years, and then build in a reason why my Batman then becomes morbid and gritty in the nineties. I can build in events for a Wonder Woman analogue, and a Flash analogue, and a Green Lantern, and a Captain America. Their organization was founded in 1986, and could grow from there. And various detritus formed around each, as time went on. I could see a sense of continuity bogging down in the nineties -- even though everything was straightforward -- and found that I was culminating into an "event" over the course of 1994 through 1996, at the end of which things were streamlined and "modernized," and a series of hip new heroes had displaced some of the old ones (old being relative, of course.)

And now, ten years after all that... you have heroes who've been doing this stuff for thirty years, and they're sick of it. Because you also end up factoring in real life events. I know when different heroes married their significant others. And I know when they divorced, too. (Lois Lane probably wouldn't be Superman's biggest fan at fifty. Nor Steve Trevor Wonder Woman's biggest fan at fifty. Ignoring for a minute the whole retconning of the Steve Trevor thing post-Crisis.)

It's also worth noting that when you actually lay out events and treat them as actual history... then they have impact. Impact which quite honestly the comic book companies these days fail to have with their major events. Think about it -- by far the most successful of the supercrossovers from a storyline standpoint was Crisis on Infinite Earths. Everything in Crisis was planned, it held together tremendously well, and at every moment there was a sense of finality.

And these days? Pretty much everything done in Crisis has been eliminated. I think the only death that happened in Crisis (of someone not so insignificant as to be irrelevant) that hasn't been reversed is Barry Allen, and frankly death is the best thing that ever happened to Barry Allen. No one gave a damn about him before he died. Now he's the patron saint of the DC Universe. (Not that they aren't trying their best to sully that, along with the rest of the Silver Age Justice League, but that's another rant.) Hell, Supergirl is back. Kara Zor-El, running around in a fashion nightmare. It bothered the Hell out of me when they made Superman's eulogy of Supergirl a lie (it ended with "I will remember you forever," and then John Byrne promptly made him forget her). But to simply put her back? Start over? I mean, yeesh, guys. Exactly how much emotional investment do you expect us to have in these characters?

(And the argument that this Supergirl is for a new generation doesn't wash, since... well, they're not marketing comics to this generation. They're marketing them to my generation. Hell, they're hoping a significant portion of the folks who read Crisis will come back for this upcoming megaevent. So they're effectively trying to have it both ways.)

In making up my timeline, I discovered time and again that an event that happened in 1988 informed a subsequent event in 1998. There was a real sense of weight to everything, because these things, even just as backstory, were cast as stone. When someone dies in my timeline... they die. And when the supervillains grow darker and more gritty... then the people who were around for the goofy, primary colored years feel a sense of disgust. And even though this is just a barebones sketch of major events, I can already sense that if this were a comic book series, it would take a hundred issues to tell. Maybe two hundred issues. Or twenty or thirty issues each of Paragon, Freya, The Nightwatch, The Justice Wing, and so on and so forth.

I wonder if it will ever happen that a comic book company will launch a line explicitly with the idea that events move forward in real time -- not the "world outside your window" thing that Marvel tried with the New Universe, but an actual four color superhero comic line where every twelve issues, another year would tick over on the calendars, our heroes would get another year older, their lives would continue to evolve, their deaths would not get revised or resurrected, a series 'reboot' would involve something more than just starting it over... and thirty years after it started, people would actually be thirty years older and the next generations of super heroes would actually be the next generations.

Probably not.

Though, maybe it's worth applying for an NEA grant and trying it. It seems to me there could be a real artistic -- a real aesthetic process here. Maybe the first one in super hero comics since the Marvel era.

And at least these comics would have an excuse for marketing to the same people who were reading at the start as at the finish.

In the meantime, I have a well laid out timeline. From here, I'm probably going to bounce back and work on my pulp story or my hard SF story for a bit, now that I'm getting writing time back. But this timeline and its events -- and those twelve stories -- are waiting for me whenever I get to them.

And I find myself wanting to keep going. Wanting to see where my heroes and their descendants go over the next twenty years. Or the next two hundred. But I don't try to find out. I need to write the actual stories before I can suggest what happens after them, and besides, worldbuilding is addictive. Sooner or later, you have to take it out and drive instead of just fiddling with the transmission.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 7:03 PM | Comments (23)

September 17, 2005

Wednesday White: If Ray seduces any of them over the phone, I'm going to cry.

I started out tonight by being disappointed in The Trek Life, a cynical fan-niche comic strip. The characters are Star Trek fans having tepid, faintly amusing Trekkie experiences. The most remarkable thing about the strip is that it's Paramount-sanctioned; it looks for all the world like something they're going to try and pitch to newspapers once they've gotten some buzz out of the startrek.com placement. It does nothing that piles of other geek-subculture comics haven't already done, and usually done better. The poorly socialized protagonist isn't ironic enough to be resonant, but he's too bland to be offensive. And it's obviously a cash grab; there's already t-shirts, for crying out loud.

So, I went and had a look at the character profiles to see what they were setting us up for. (That link goes to the press release, actually; the gallery's in a popup. If you open the page directly instead, it tries to forcibly resize your window. So you're warned.) Got a couple of doughy, ordinary-looking guys. The slightly doughier one is more pathetic than the less doughy-looking one, and the less-doughy one has a bloatee. Okay.

I got to page three -- "Carl has made it his mission in life to catch Kate up on all things Star Trek, even if it means loaning her episodes from his growing DVD collection (with property damage insurance, of course)" -- and thought three things:

1. Wow. That's pink, all right.
2. Yeah, those are definitely some biouxbies up there. Stickin' out and everything. Yep. Those are some hooters.
3. She doesn't match the other two at all. She clearly leads a completely different lifestyle.

Why is this still happening?

We can complain all we want about the range of acceptable humour in geek-subcultural webcomics right now, the limits of characterization and plotting and gags available to female characters there compared to the male ones -- but that situation is improving somewhat. (It's not fantastic. It sucks that the solace there comes from the process existing at all. It angers me somewhat that geek males of all types can find some well-realized representation of themselves in webcomics right now, but women are still comparatively constrained -- and that we still have to think in terms of exceptions there. It pisses me off considerably that I could just cut and paste my Comixpedia article from last year and still have very little else to add. But that's also not the point today.)

Something this targeted and insipid, though, is only going to do what's well within the bounds of safety. I've got a hard time believing that someone -- several someones -- at Paramount didn't sit down, read PvP and Dork Tower and so on, and say to themselves, "Hey, how can we cash in on this 'online comic' lark without pissing off Joe Q. Eighteen-to-Thirty? He's just a regular guy doing the best he can. What about these comics would he like? What makes him uncomfortable?" And, don't get me wrong, that depresses me too.

But the two bland guys in your "Normal" Range of Trek Fans there? They don't have to be attractive. And that's just as problematic as Kate up there, really; why can't a hardcore Trek fan have luck with the ladies, for example, or be less doughy than the midrange fan, or have good hair and decent clothes? Why the hell is the tacit implication that, the less fixated upon Trek you are, the smaller you get, anyways? (Near as I can tell, the smaller I've gotten, the more serious I've been about Trek fandom, and vice versa. At the height of my little Deanna Troi fixation there, my ribs were showing!)

It's just depressing. These are the Generic Star Trek Fans, folks. That's the lowest common denominator; that's the safe, marketable, plush, baby versions right there.

Maybe they're aiming for Dilbert or FoxTrot readers here to some extent. I suspect, though, that The Trek Life, if it lasts that long, is more likely to end up resembling Cathy.

Posted by Wednesday White at 8:28 PM | Comments (47)

Eric Burns-White: Of course, with my luck this is all a dream

(From User Friendly! Click on the thumbnail for full sized cumulative action!)

I've been reading User Friendly since... well, ever, as near as I can tell. Certainly since early 1998, and I want to say I was reading it in December of 1997, among that very first wave of readers of what was for a time the most popular webcomic on the web, and what continues to be one of the biggest.

Which, no doubt, is why I kept reading it, even though it went on my "Why do I read this webcomic, again?" list before the launch of Websnark.

The reasoning was simple enough. Illiad focuses on gag-a-day, which is easy to hold onto. If you smile at one out of three strips on a seven strip a week comic, there's no real reason to stop reading. But his occasional forays into character development have generally left me a little flat. And top of the list on that was the relationship of A.J. and Miranda.

Clearly, A.J. and Miranda both being into each other but with coincidences always keeping them from out and out admitting it to one another has meant to be a running joke. However, as running jokes go, this one was a wash. Just enough tension was generated that false start after false start served to irritate rather than amuse. This wasn't Charlie Brown's football--

Oh wow. It's a new lexicon term! Another new lexicon term! Right!

Charlie Brown's Football is relatively self explanatory. It refers to a humor strip using a familiar setup and a familiar ending as a springboard for a variety of subtly different jokes. The strip itself was classic: Lucy invites Charlie Brown to place-kick a football. Charlie Brown expresses doubt, given her clear track record in the past. Lucy offers assurances. Charlie Brown believes them, and makes a running start for a kick that will send the football to the moon. Lucy pulls the football away, causing Charlie Brown to go flying, landing painfully on his back. Lucy then points out the fallacy, loophole or other logical point which permitted her to do such an act without violating the earlier assurances.

Charles Schulz got about forty-seven years of strips out of that setup. He performed amazing variations. (Not the least of which was the time that Lucy didn't pull the football away, but Charlie Brown missed, kicking Lucy and breaking her arm.) It's certainly possible some readers got sick of it, but for the most part, people accepted the ritual on face value. Certainly, the running gag worked in the fifties and it worked in the nineties.

Lots of comic strips -- particularly four panel gag-a-day strips -- develop their own examples of Charlie Brown's Football. It's not simply that it's a running gag. Ignatz throwing a brick at Krazy Kat is a running gag, but it's not the same kind of ritual that the football is. Probably the clearest webcomic example comes from PvP. The strips where a panda mauls Brent fulfill the requirement. Some topic is raised. Brent expresses interest, and asks for clarification. The person clarifies in some way that evokes a panda, bamboo or the like. A panda savages Brent. It's not just a panda coming and eating Brent's head. It's the whole ritual.

The A.J./Miranda near-misses had the element of the ritualized about them. However, there was always a sense that the only reason these two weren't getting together was because the artist didn't want them to. Miranda is too self-confident for us to believe she wouldn't walk up and say point blank "are you into me?" to A.J. And if A.J.'s social paralysis was so profound that he couldn't respond to it, then it didn't end up being funny. It was just kind of sad and pathetic, and there was no good reason for Miranda to be attracted to him.

So, whenever the relationship reared its head, I kind of groaned. This isn't going to go anywhere, I would think, and sure enough I'd be right. Once again -- there was no tension, only a sense of annoyance.

And so I went through the last week with a sense of resignation. Here we go again, I thought.

And then on Thursday, there was a nag-strip designed to delay the strip for thirty seconds. And three different times I went through that series of safari tabs, and three different times I lost patience or just needed to do something else, so I never actually saw the strip where A.J. finally said something to Miranda. So it didn't register until yesterday, when I went back and holy shit they're kissing.

So I went back. And I realized I was floored. Illiad was actually resolving it. However many years later, kind of out of nowhere, there was actual movement.

Now... the thing is... it wasn't worth the buildup. Six months to this moment would have rocked. However many years it's been before this kiss made it all kind of meh. And yet, I'm actively interested in seeing what happens next, and that hasn't happened with User Friendly since the missile silo storyline was sidelined because of 9/11.

So, good on Illiad. From here, there's possibility, and that's a cool thing.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 6:02 PM | Comments (22)

September 16, 2005

Wednesday White: Organza roadkill.

At first, I thought it some sort of elegant adornment from a well-wrapped birthday present. But that's ridiculous, I thought. Around here, the chic presents bear Purple Ronnie tags, or pink ribbons with sequins. Sequins that spell out appropriate words, such as "bling" or "knickers." Or perhaps "minger."

No, this was most definitely an insect.

I had never really seen a dragonfly before. Not up close. Phobia meant that I'd catch the silhouette, then promptly flee. I remembered their shadows from Bible camp; I'd mistaken them for demons. The boards full of stuck bug corpses at museums were of no interest whatsoever; not only would they be creepy, my reasoning went, they'd also be dried. Phobia jerky. Brittle. Not quite right.

This one was soft. Plump.

It seemed intact, at least until I noticed how it fluttered in the breezes. Something had glued the underside of its head to the sidewalk, tenuously anchoring it there. The rest of the creature fluttered up, forming forty-five degree angles with the ground. I knew its mercury eyes couldn't be holding it down, but it would have made sense if they had. Nothing about it was visibly crushed, but plainly it was broken past repair. As if you could mend a dragonfly.

Its wings were just shy of invisible. After a summer of crane flies and moths, I hadn't expected them: small silver nets, edged with gold, playing with the dying sun. Tiny organza ribbons on a wine-stained bamboo body. Tiny organza ribbons on a segmented flute, held down by mercury balls.

If I'd taken it home, it might have crumbled, and where would I have put it? Where would I have kept the sun? I had no camera; I could walk home and get mine, then return, but by then the light would have faded. Perhaps a passing cyclist might crush it; perhaps a pedestrian might tread upon it. If I waited til tomorrow, time and wind and rain and foot would grind it into pulp, then dust, and then there would be nothing.

Such is the way of things: I saw a dragonfly today, and it was already gone.

Posted by Wednesday White at 3:47 PM | Comments (13)

September 15, 2005

Eric Burns-White: We're up!

The Gossamer Commons submission for the Webcomics Telethon went up at 4:00, and is on the main page until 4:20, when the next strip takes the space.

I've been anxious for it to go, because I'm really, really proud to be a part of this telethon. But also because Greg Holkan, who did the art, absolutely blew me away with the first panel of the strip. It's staggeringly good, and it should help people realize what a top talent Greg is.

Sometimes, people get fooled when they look at [nemesis]. [nemesis] is highly stylized -- featuring characters that I can best describe as the Powerpuff Girls after they've grown up and taken up cigarettes and alcohol. However, the stylization and chibiness of the figures doesn't change the level of sophistication that's going on. As with this strip, it's a subversion -- you take the happy-go-lucky elements of comics and animation, and you make them subtly wrong.

I'm thrilled with our entry. I hope you guys like it too. I'm excited we've raised all this money. And I hope that we can do some real good.

But I'm also just proud of the way this came out -- artistically, as a writer and as a collaborator, I couldn't be happier.

I hope you guys like it.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:00 PM | Comments (26)

Eric Burns-White: Sometimes "adult" doesn't mean "tits."

Something kind of wonderful is happening over at the Adult Webcomics Telethon.

See, the Webcomics Telethon (which is in the held-over day and still churning out comics every twenty minutes. And they're not done yet. I know this because dang it, the Gossamer Commons strip hasn't come up yet. And yes, I obsessively check for it on the hour, at twenty after and at twenty-til) has done truly great things -- we're up over twenty-five grand and people are feeling really great about what's going on. But when Blank Label put the telethon together, they decided to keep stuff (mostly) in the Safe For Work/PG-13 category. Which is fine. (Though it meant I had to revise my script, because Trudy? She likes that word "Fuck.") And they also wanted to have everything "in hand" before they actually went to 'press,' so they could set everything up and test it out before the telethon went live. As a result, people who want to jump in and help (or participate) who didn't get something in by deadline don't get a chance.

Well, the Adult Webcomics Telethon was created to be a refuge for people who want to participate in the process but... well, let's just say its for the folks whose comics don't fit into the above. And at first, it was the White Lightning Productions regulars and the like who jumped in. And, of course, there was nudity and sexual content. I mean, duh.

But then... something started happening. Something that's in the beginning stages right now, mind. But something cool.

I guess it started with Chris Crosby and Owen Gieni, who decided to do two crossover strips between Superosity and Sore Thumbs. The Crosby-drawn strip went up on the Webcomics Telethon. The Gieni strip -- which, in Crosby's words, was a little more "spicy" (though I think it would actually run in a PG-13 movie without trouble) appeared on the Adult Telethon.

Then, Ryan "how many hours of the day does he put into comics, anyway" Estrada discovered that Welton Colbert had produced a strip and sent it along (featuring "gratuitous nudity" that doesn't actually show anything that directly ties back into the Webcomics Telethon strip Colbert appeared in). Now Brad Guigar, who was the coordinator of the Webcomics Telethon, has thrown in one of his Courting Disaster strips. Which is... as they all are... "spicy." But again, it's not like it has actual nudity or sex in it.

Now, there's plenty of nudity and sex in the donated strips. I'm not going to claim otherwise. And hey, cool. Long live nudity and sex. But it seems to me that something even cooler is happening here. People are beginning to use the Adult Webcomics Telethon to participate in a broader, more general way. Israeli artist Eva Speranza produced the comic strip I thumbnailed and linked to, above -- a strip with no adult or salacious content at all -- and sent it on in. A strip that seems more to be an expression of grief and pure artistic expression than anything else. A strip that no one at the Webcomics Telethon would have batted an eye at running.

And it hits me... the Adult Webcomics Telethon is on the cusp of becoming something entirely different. If the Webcomics Telethon is one professional collective's response (doing tremendous work and operating with very specific guidelines), then the Adult Webcomics Telethon, operating without restrictions on content and happy to accept new submissions right now, is on the cusp of becoming a freeform poetry slam. It's on the cusp of becoming interactive, where strips can even react to each other.

I mentioned before that the Adult Webcomics Telethon might be a good place for Fetus-X or other strips where outrage can't be contained by PG-13. And that's of course still true. But it seems to me it could also become the place where, freed of all content restrictions, people contribute strips less in the "please give generously" mold and more in the artistic one.

I know I'm thinking about it. I should get together with Greg or Weds -- someone who knows the business end of a pencil better than I do -- and see if they might be up to doing a strip where Trudy says "Fuck."

And maybe some poetry. Because I have a lot of emotion wrapped around this tragedy that wasn't a good fit for the Webcomics Telethon... and it might be nice to have a place to express it where it might do some good.

EDIT: There's some residual weirdness in the navigation links between strips at AWT. But this page has direct links to all of the currently published strips. Obviously, there is no guarantee that any of the links on that page are even remotely 'safe for work.'

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:48 AM | Comments (37)

September 14, 2005

Eric and Wednesday: FAQ: About Websnark (Revised 20 April 2006)

What the Hell is all this?

This is Websnark, a commentary weblog. We comment on... well, stuff. Frequently the stuff that we find on the web, though not exclusively. Essentially, we write about whatever interests us at the time of writing.

Who exactly are you people?

Eric Alfred Burns and Wednesday White. Eric started the site in August 2004; Wednesday came on board in February 2005. See the Cast List.

Why all the webcomics stuff?

We like webcomics. A large percentage of the stuff we read online consists of webcomics. So it's often the stuff we're thinking about, which means in turn it's the stuff that we're writing about. You see? Of course you see.

Wait -- I come here for the webcomics stuff. What's all this about superheroes or games or Jack Chick or your personal lives or crap like that? Isn't this a webcomics site?

No. While webcomics make up the (vast) majority of what we talk about, this isn't a 'webcomics blog' so much as it is a place for us to write about whatever it is we want to write about. If that's TV instead, or fandom stuff, or trashy religious entertainment, or pop culture, or the Astronomy Picture of the Day, or even whatever happened to one or the other of us on any given day, that's what it is.

Also, these days? Chick tracts are also webcomics, by some definitions.

Why 'websnark?' What is a snark?

The word "snark" comes from Lewis Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky" "The Hunting of the Snark¹." It's a kind of beastie. In computer terms, a snark is some kind of threat or problem on a computer. However, the word has come to also mean sarcastic commentary or the sarcastic expression of opinions. He snarks, she snarks, they snark. That kind of thing. So, since our humour typically runs to the sarcastic, Websnark becomes our place to snark about the web. Eric picked the name out. (Eric tends to be more positive than negative in his snarks, because he's a wuss. Wednesday tends to be a little less shiny, because she's a fussbudget. Balance kicks ass.)
Elsewhere, 'snark' has come to refer to weblog posts about webcomics; it used to just mean posts from here ("My comic's been Snarked!"), but the term's drifted. It's both appealing and humbling to see how the term's shifted meaning and focus.

So, that means you're a webcomics site, right?

No.

What schedule do you follow when posting?

When you read it, it's been posted. There's no set schedule. Sometimes, if either of us gets a chance to queue things up a little, we'll set them to post through the day at regular intervals, but there's no promise. We'll occasionally disappear for a few days as other commitments or health considerations take precedence. We try to get something out at least once a day, though.

What gives you the right to criticize other people's work?

Well, we pay for our hosting, you see. Which means that we're paying for the press this is printed on. And said press is in the United States of America, where the site's owner lives, which means the right comes from the United States Constitution. (Yes, even for the Canadian in the crowd, what since she's using that American press.) If you're reading this in another country... well, we get to publish it, but whether or not you get to read it is your own lookout.

I love your site, especially when you really lay into crappy work! Why do you spend so much time saying nice things instead of bad things?

Eric: I hear this more often than you might think. It always surprises me, though. I mean, is schadenfreude really that important to you?

The answer to your question is quite simple, however. I snark about the things I encounter on a daily basis. The things I tend to read are things I like. Now, if I like them, I'm not going to insult them on a regular basis, am I? So, there's going to be a lot more "this is so fucking cool!" from me than me trash talking things. It's the way it is.

Wednesday: Wait. I'm confused. I don't like anything.

How can you say such mean things about [Megatokyo/It's Walky/General Protection Fault/Whatever]? That's my favorite webcomic! You suck and are wrong! And bad! Wrong and bad!

These are, by definition, opinions. They're not 'wrong,' they just belong to one or the other of us. We're not always going to agree. (Eric and Wednesday can't even always agree.) You are perfectly free to like things that we don't. You're perfectly free to keep reading things we've put on the 'You had me and you lost me' list. We respect that. We're also free to dislike them. And to make fun of them. It's what we do.

How can you say such nice things about [Sluggy Freelance/Something Positive/PvP/Whatever]]? That webcomic sucks! You suck and are wrong! And bad! Wrong and bad!

Eric: Once again, you'd be surprised how often I get this one. I like stuff I like. If you read the snarks, you'll figure out what it is I like about them. You might not agree with me, but I hope you'll at least see my point. Still, it all comes down to the same thing as the last point -- I like what I like. Don't sweat it if you don't like it.

You don't seem to read one of my favorite webcomics. Can I suggest it to you?

Absolutely! Some of my favorite recent finds -- like Freefall and Questionable Content -- came from people suggesting comics to me. I can't promise I'll get to them soon or snark them when I do get to them, but I truly enjoy reading webcomics and cartoons of all stripes, and so I'm always glad to have more to check out!

Hey! I know a webcomic that's really terrible! Would you look at it so you can make fun of it?

Um. No. We don't go looking for things to insult just so I can insult them. That's not criticism. That's just being mean. We don't care if you think we're funny while I'm being mean. We don't choose to be mean to people just because we have a website. When we are sarcastic (or even mean) to sites, it's usually after we've been following that site for years and really liked it at one time (or even still like it now). So, don't bother e-mailing us links to Gonterman comics unless you actually like Gonterman's comics and you want us to read them because you think that one of us will like them. There are plenty of all-negative snarksites on the web, if that's what you want. We even read and enjoy some of them. But that's not our thing.

Wednesday adds: This is distinct yet again from trainwreck fascination, which I see as a valuable learning tool. I don't enjoy being mean, but I do enjoy figuring out why something's broken.

Why do you have thumbnails of other peoples' comics on your site? Isn't that a violation of copyright?

Nope. Even though we wouldn't call this a review site, much of it is critical commentary. It's perfectly legal to use examples of art we're commenting on or producing critical work about, under fair use, in the United States of America. Your local laws may vary, of course. Further, we always either thumbnail art (so that the 'salability' of the original image is not diluted' or excerpt bits of it before putting it up, and we also credit our sources. The combination means that we're perfectly able to use the art on my site, even without asking first. (Or even when someone says we can't -- no one gets to restrict fair use.)

Hey -- I clicked on a thumbnail to get the full sized comic, and it took me to the webcomic itself! Why don't you have full sized images on your site?

For several reasons. 1) We don't want to inadvertently overstep the bounds of fair use, so we specifically excerpt or thumbnail only, here. 2) We don't think it's fair for Websnark to become a 'first stop' for people who want to read cartoons -- they should read those cartoons in the context the webcartoonist intended, on their site, seeing their site design, advertisements and so forth. 3) Much of the time, we're extolling the virtues of a webcomic. Naturally, we want to increase traffic to the site in question. 4) Websnark is not made of bandwidth.

You think you're so smart! Do you think you can do better?

Eric:Well, I don't know if I can do better or not. I certainly can't draw. I try to write pretty well. But in the end, that's not really the point. I write criticism because... well, I am pretty good at that. Mostly.

Wednesday: Not yet. I use writing as a learning tool, and part of the reason why I became involved with writing about webcomics in the first place was to sort out for myself what works and what doesn't. It's an ongoing testing process. But many critics aren't themselves primarily creators -- Roger Ebert, to use an overly worn example here, is not exactly best known for his screenwriting, but his film criticism is no less valid.

I'm an webcartoonist, and I'd like your feedback. Will you give it to me?

Glad to! No promises on how quickly we can get back to you, though!

I'm a webcartoonist, and I don't like the snark you wrote about me. Will you take it down?

Sorry, but no. You are fully free to comment on the snark, refuting it. We won't remove your comments unless they're outright inflammatory beyond responding to us. (We've never actually deleted a comment on the posts to date. We don't permit commenters to insult others in the thread, though, and have had to lock a couple as a result.) If you can convince us that we were wrong about something, we'll put up a snark saying so. But the original posts don't come down. For better or worse, when they go up, they go up for life.

Seriously, dude. I don't like what you said. If you don't take it down, I'll sue you for slander.

Okay, first off, slander is oral in nature -- we'd have to publicly speak lies about you to slander you. The term you're looking for is libel. Second off, this is a commentary site. Everything on this site is opinion. And, legally speaking, opinions are not libel, because they don't make a claims about you -- they make claims about one or both of us. They are the truthful assertion of what we think of you. See, if one of us were to claim you fucked dogs, and you in fact didn't fuck dogs, that'd be libel, and you could sue. If, on the other hand, we say that you seem like a dog fucker to us, that's an opinion being expressed -- in our opinion, you have qualities that put us in mind of dog fuckers. I'm not claiming you actually fuck dogs. It just seems, in our opinion, like you're the kind of person who would. That's not libel -- it honestly is our opinion of you. And you don't get to sue us because we have a different opinion from yours, y'damn dog fucker.

What's that phrase in your masthead that changes periodially for?

That's the raison d'etre of the site, as the French say. The reason for its being. And it stays crunchy in milk with the great taste of raisins in every bite. Mostly, it's there to set a tone. We make no claims for its success.

Do you have a list of past raison d'etres?

Sure! A partial one, anyhow:

• We snark, because we love.
• Because "Comixpedia" was already taken.
• No, no one gives a crap what I think.
• Because my cat never comments on my opinions.
• Because Charlie Brown never got to kick that football.
• Less expensive than Scotch and less painful than running your head into the wall; it's win-win!
• Someday we're all gonna get killed by someone who likes Yu-Gi-Oh.
• Noted for its clever turns of phrase, and... stuff... like... you know, that... stuff....
• Fishing for compliments since August.
• 50,000 words in 30 days? Simple. Making them cogent? You've got to be kidding me.
• Jesus Christ, I'm drinking wheat!? How the Hell do you drink wheat!?
• Two writers. One cat. 4000 miles of ocean. Let's do this thing.
• Oh no! I have psychosomatic Kaposi's sarcoma!

What's that creature in the corner of the screen? He's so cute! Where did you get him?

Eric:That's Snarky! He's a Snarkasaurus. He was created by Ursula Vernon, the webcartoonist of Digger, when I asked for someone to do quick doodle art for my Comixpedia column "Feeding Snarky." That I got such a fantastic piece back from that request blew me away, and I later commissioned that more complete piece from Ursula to be the site mascot. He's sleeping because a guy called Mckenzee, who's one of our dedicated readers, coined the term "Snarkoleptics" as a title for the fan base.

I love your site? Can I link to you? Or to individual entries? Or stuff like that?

Sure! Of course! Hell yeah! The only way a site like this grows is if people tell their friends about it, and we like it when people read our stuff. Also, it gives us a serious lift when people like (or hate) something so much they post a link to it. There is no greater joy for a writer than impact. Further, we think "link policies" aren't only unenforceable and potentially illegal, they're just downright rude. It's the Web. Links are what create it. Jesus Christ on a stick, be glad when people want to see your stuff.

Do you have a link button I can use?

Not at this time. A couple of people have created them for me and use them on their own sites, and that totally delights us. Sooner or later, we'll either ask to use one of those officially or make our own, but for now, there's no official one.

Will you link to me? And use my linking button?

Only in the context of a Snark, right now. The closest thing to a links page we have are Eric's daily trawls. (Wednesday's still working on her equivalent ma.gnolia collection, since she finds it easier to make lists when there are extra toys involved.) If you produce something that we read every day, you might end up in one of the trawls. But right now, we pretty much link stuff in the actual snarks. As for linking buttons -- we don't currently use them. It's nothing against you.

Hey, I want to send you e-mail. What's your e-mail address?

The best place to send us e-mail is at WEBSNARK at GMAIL dot COM -- decode it and let fly. It's like a reverse rebus, isn't it?

¹As reader NathanielK reminded Eric. Not that he should have remembered that on his own or anything. It's not like he named the fucking website after it or anything.

Posted by Eric and Wednesday at 5:07 PM

Wednesday White: Sniffle.

(From "How We Got Engaged!" by Dave Roman and Raina Telgemeier. Click to melt.)

Congratulations to the happy couple, recognizable to y'all as the respective authors of Astronaut Elementary and Smile. Roman handed the first five pages of'How We Got Engaged!' on a cross-country flight this summer; later, Raina drew what happened next.

Comments would dilute the meaning. Analysis would subtract from the impact. No justice can be done this one from a distance, because it's real. It'd be stuffing a butterfly in a jar. No matter how eloquently or simply wrought it is, expounding on this comic's simple beauty would be trivializing what it means, and what it's for. It'd be reviewing someone's love letter. So I'm not going to do that.

Just go. Go. Look.

Now.

Posted by Wednesday White at 10:55 AM | Comments (27)

Eric Burns-White: Naturally, this is the day when we could potentially have a huge new influx of readers....

So, a couple of people have noticed Gossamer Commons seems to be... well, down. A database/WordPress error crops up when you go to the page. Which makes it seem like there's a problem on our end. Only... well, GC's hosted on the same server as Talk About Comics, and Talk About Comics is also down.

So it's not impossible that there's something wrong with our site, but it's more likely to be on a deeply unhappy box that needs some attention. (Which, if I know the landlord, is happening even as we speak). So, patience, all!

(With luck, it'll be fixed before our strip comes up on the telethon...)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:24 AM | Comments (10)

September 13, 2005

Eric Burns-White: Hour 22...

...and the telethon has raised over $17,000. That's just staggeringly cool. Hand in hand with it we have the Adult Webcomics Telethon (not safe for work -- I mean, duh) which covers the comics that wouldn't otherwise fit into the generally SFW telethon. (They haven't racked up -- huh huh huh, he said rack -- the donation numbers that the other telethon has, but there are ways in which I see the two as two sides of the same coin. A person might not be able to make two donations, after all... but that doesn't mean that more adult-oriented webcartoonists shouldn't be able to pitch in without feeling they have to conform to a family standard.)

I'd kind of like to see the more... direct artists contribute pieces to the AWT as well. I know one or two artists, feeling outrage about Katrina in some way that can't really be "safe for work", who would probably broaden it. (Though I suppose people heading over there might not expect to see, say, Fetus-X among the strips. On the other hand, that might be a good reason to include it.)

In any case, people rock. They really do.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:39 PM | Comments (21)

Eric Burns-White: Drawing against the darkness.

The Webcomic Hurricane Relief Telethon has begun. Every twenty minutes, for the next two days, there will be a new comic strip. Some will be funny, some poignant. Some related, some unrelated.

Gossamer Commons has a strip contributed. So does Greg Holkan's Nemesis. Webcomics superstars and virtual unknowns alike have contributed.

I was unhappy to see they don't take Paypal, though having heard of some folks having problems with Paypal since Katrina, I guess I can understand why. I've contributed to the ARC already since Katrina, but I'm putting more money in tomorrow, after I get up. In the meantime, drink deeply. This is an event. Three comics an hour for forty-eight hours. Our community should be proud of that.

Let's make them prouder still, by opening our wallets and our hearts.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:27 AM | Comments (24)

September 11, 2005

Eric Burns-White: 20 days.

I had last Sunday off. I really shouldn't have, but I didn't end up going in. I did work on Saturday, and on Labor Day, however.

And I worked yesterday and today.

And my average workday for the past twenty days has been over ten hours.

I'm very tired. I'm very tired.

But the students started coming back today. A couple more weeks of craziness, and then we settle down into the year.

And I have seen the art turned in for the Webcomic Telethon by Greg Holkan.

It's phenomenal. It's perfect.

We're not going with a political piece. Not for a telethon.

20 days. And five more before it's over.

I'm not getting out of bed on Saturday.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:39 PM | Comments (6)

September 9, 2005

Wednesday White: Meanwhile, City of Heroes players are just being temporarily distracted by their characters' bottoms. It's frequently surmountable.

(From 07 September 2005's Badly Drawn Kitties. Click for honeymooning cat and polite religious practitioner.)

First of all, I'm wondering if Lydia's waiting for Dirk in the hotel lobby. It seems a little odd to send your husband out for ice cream otherwise; you might as well go along to the shop, or the little truck, or the roadside gelato vendor, or whatever. I'm going to assume that that's where she is.

Hawaii's a popular destination for honeymoons and other couple-oriented pleasure trips, I'm told. So, if you already know that the state you're in is Officially Romantic, and people turn up there a bunch to bonk, it might not be such a great idea to go trolling for virgins in the hotel to begin with.

I mean, dude.

It's nice that the fellow's asking around so politely, though. Getting voluntary sacrifices for that sort of thing must be such a pain in the ass. He's not even baiting and switching the virgins with vegetarian dinners, or pizza parties, or multimedia anti-drug presentations starring Kirk Cameron and the music of Van Halen.

The World of Warcraft burn's a little mean, though. It's not that they're virgins; I've met plenty of players who've known the touch of a partner's sensitive tissues. It's just that they have different priorities in life. It's a lifestyle choice. Sex just isn't that much of a... concern at those difficult times when leveling's an issue. Yeah.

Yeah, that's it. Gotta be.

Disclaimer: I don't play games. At all.

Posted by Wednesday White at 5:41 PM | Comments (15)

September 8, 2005

Wednesday White: Just in time for Canadian Thanksgiving

(From this season's Jack Chick tract, "The Missing Day". Click for dysfunctional family gathering.)

In recent years, Chick has relied entirely too heavily upon the lone voice of ostensible reason in a crowd of nonsensical sin. This is not to say that both of these haven't been devices from the get-go, but these days it's really getting phoned in. Maybe Bob Williams ate all the distinguishing characteristics, only to lose them when he went to convert Sparklypoo House away from witchcraft.

Uncle Mort's a bit of a confusing choice for the hero-preacher, though. He's supposedly rich, not a quality generally associated with Chickverse Christians who are still alive at the end of the tract. Worse, the family forgets all about this the second he starts telling the Thanksgiving story with a strongly evangelistic bent. It only gets brought up as a way to point out the matriarch's desire for his cash -- there's no way we can actually have Beloved Uncle Mort just be Beloved Uncle Mort here -- but it's an odd message. Even Scrooge went batshit charitable in the Chickverse. This guy's just, as they say, loaded. That's all. Which begs the question of why he's hanging around with these degenerates to begin with.

(This is the second tract in a row where we've gotten pointless extra detail, too. In the disjointed, otherwise unremarkable "What's Wrong With This?", a prankster kid and a grumpy old man clash to no useful end whatsoever. What? Was that supposed to be emblematic of the fundamental corruption of man? Bring back Little Bobby. Seriously.)

Chick's usually been quite good at comedy sin, too, but his heart just isn't in this hilarious family tableau. "My blood sugar's low" just doesn't rate with rallying the one-world heathen witch drunkard troops to chase down a passing Christian and "give him the business!" It's a nice touch to have all the parties cancelled "on account of fire," and it's good to have the jolly fat demons back again, but it's all been done. He's floundering. Even the drug references and homosexual demon are half-arsed. Maybe he really does need to stick to writing behind the scenes at this stage; he just doesn't seem happy anymore.

The most alarming thing about this Thanksgiving Chick tract: does this mean we're not going to get a Halloween tract this year? I guess there really is no following up to delightful Li'l Susy's tales of human sacrifice, which is something of a shame.

We haven't really heard from Li'l Susy this year at all, come to think of it. Pity. Maybe Ms. Henn killed and ate her. That wouldn't be so bad.

Posted by Wednesday White at 12:55 PM | Comments (45)

Eric Burns-White: On the other, other, *other* hand, maybe Max really *is* gay.

(From PvP. Click on the thumbnail for full sized miscalculation!)

And so we come full circle. Miranda, who in the end simply wants what she wants, without consideration of either consequence or other people, has been driven insane by the apparent disinterest of Max Powers. She has finally pulled out the big gun, kissing him full out. Max, who is cheerful, self absorbed, but generally an oddly decent fellow... has fired her as a result.

The question is... why?

Well, on the one hand, there's the possibility that he considers this harassment. Or worse, is worried he'll be opening himself up to a charge of sexual harassment, since he's her boss. But that seems unlikely, all told.

On the other hand, Max might truly be interested, but might feel that he can't very well be involved with one of his employees. When he pursued Jade, he was working for a competing magazine, after all. So, he might have been receptive to all of her advances until now, but because of their professional relationship he may have kept things professional. Now that Miranda's crossed the line, he can't very well pretend it didn't happen. Firing Miranda frees Max to date Miranda.

On the gripping hand... Max might actually, legitimately be in love with Jade. We know he was actively interested in her. We know he helped her feel better when she was feeling badly. And so he might see Miranda's direct interest as both professional suicide and the end of any chance he could have with Jade if she and Brent broke up. (And no, Max has never tried to break Brent and Jade up when they were actively going out, that I remember.)

On the other side of all three of these possibilities we have Miranda's reactions.

If it's the first scenario, Miranda's (eternally selfish) need to seduce any man who's in the area -- to prove she is indeed hotter than her sister -- has finally come back to bite her on the ass. One can't expect this will make her happy.

If it's the second scenario, Miranda might be happy -- especially if Max becomes something of a sugar daddy to her. Miranda, while not a bad person, wouldn't necessarily see anything wrong with accepting "generosity" from a suitor in lieu of working. Sex is a weapon, as she said once before. It's also a tool and a commodity, in Miranda's world. On the other hand... Miranda might be pissed. For Miranda, it's not about actually catching the men. It's about them pursuing her. She would want a fling with Max, definitely. (Especially when she learned that Jade once dated him.) That doesn't mean she wants a long term relationship. So in this scenario, it could go either way.

It it's the third scenario... then Jade has one-upped Miranda once again, even though Jade has no interest in Max. Miranda will go totally psycho Jan Brady. I mean, totally psycho Jan Brady.

Of the three scenarios, my money's on the second. I think Max probably does like her, can't lie to her about it, and can't in good conscience be her employer under those terms. I'm not sure which way Miranda will jump if that's the case -- certainly being the big boss's main squeeze (and therefore seeing herself as 'above' Jade and Brent -- who rejected her, after all) would appeal to our cheerful little red head. And that would lead to conflict, and that conflict would lead to many days of the Funny. On the other hand, finding herself having bitten off more than she could chew, finding that her prospective weekend fling has turned into a long term relationship (and her without a job right now) sets up a totally different conflict, especially if she can't bear the thought of admitting to Jade that she was just interested in seducing Max, not going out with him on any long term relationship.

That leads to conflict as well. And that too brings the Funny.

(The third possibility of this scenario is that Max has second thoughts after a passionate weekend, but feels locked in. And turns to his "old buddies" Cole and Brent for advice. The thought of a drunk Max bitching about Miranda gives me the giggles.)

No matter which of these ways -- or some other way I haven't even considered -- Kurtz goes, there's humor in them thair hills. I'm looking forward to this.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:34 AM | Comments (51)

September 7, 2005

Eric Burns-White: An admittedly personal note.

Gossamer Commons has been added to the new comics wiki. No, I didn't add it.

For the record, it had been cut from Wikipedia as non-notable. I supported that decision. I voted for its deletion.

But, I have to admit... it's very very nice to see the entry in the new encyclopedia.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:43 PM | Comments (14)

Eric Burns-White: And now, for the five people still reading, some talk about encyclopedias

Hey all!

So, Comixpedia's webcomics encyclopedia is go. It's in the extreme early stages, of course, but we're up to 110 entries imported from Wikipedia (under the auspices of the Free Documentation License) and some original work to boot. A good number of people have jumped in, and more are coming all the time.

And I'm a little amazed. It's still rough, sure -- but remember, we didn't start talking about this until September second. Here it is, one week later, and it exists and is growing, quickly.

There's still stuff to do. A name needs to be settled on. A logo needs to be prepared. The front page needs to be designed both for people who are looking to contribute and for people who are coming for information. We need to start putting the word out. We need to start recruiting more help.

And we need to reach out to the other Wikis out there. The Comic Genesis Wiki project, started to facilitate similar goals for the expansive Comic Genesis/Keenspace community is an obvious first step -- clearly, they should be able to draw off of our work and we the same for them. However, they're operating under Creative Commons, and we're under GNU FDL, and I'm not entirely sure how the two interact with one another. (If we alter and derive from their text, the new text needs to be released under the same Creative Commons license, for example. But we need to use the FDL to continue drawing off of Wikipedia.)

But these seem like resolvable issues, really. My suspicion is that the folks at CGWiki will want to pitch in, and I know we'll want to help support them. I think the same is likely to be true of things like the Achewood Wiki, which is under the FDL, so we can definitely cross information back and forth as needed. The amazing thing is, this is a project that really can cross all the different cliques and communities. This is something that could be of benefit to Penny Arcade fans, PvP fans, Scott McCloud fans, Keenspotters, Blank Labelites, Modern Talsians, Webcomicsnationalities, Drunk Ducakises, BuzzComixii.... you know. The whole nine yards. Everybody. It's like Babylon 5, only in convenient wiki form.

It's astounding to me, though. Every so often, I have to remember how new technology like this really is. When I was 18 years old, the internet was text-only and a project like this would be impossible. Not that there were webcomics at that time. Today, not only is this project possible... there's nothing stopping people from just up and doing it. "Hey, that is a good idea. Right! I've created it!" "Cool! I've imported the first five entries!" "Cool! Hey, here's some templates we can use!" "Cool! Hey, here's a list of categories we should flesh out...."

Astounding, really. We do in fact live in the twenty-first century, and there really are some dramatic changes.

Head on over, have a look, and pitch in. This belongs as much to you as anyone. And there's lots to do for everyone.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:26 AM | Comments (23)

Eric Burns-White: One of the more cathartic things I've written

One thing people have figured out -- and I've gotten some criticism for -- is that I don't tend to put cut-tags or the like in my essays here on Websnark. Wednesday does -- she's old school when it comes to the Internet, remembering the people on slow connections and dialup, the people who read this on an RSS feed and the like.

But I don't, typically. I don't because I read an essay from a Livejournal user called The Ferrett. The Ferrett said that the difference between an essay being read and an essay being skipped over by a majority of users was that single point that needed to be clicked. Without that click, you might well get the same hit count as you did before, but a huge number of people won't read your words.

I write what I write to be read. I'm confident in my readers. I'm confident that if what I say is important enough -- or good enough -- they won't unsubscribe or stop coming when they see a given snark is five thousand words long. I'm confident that they know what they're getting. And I'm confident that if it is more than they can take, they will leave and let me know. To date, I haven't been disappointed on any of these scores.

But today I'm using a cut tag. Because today's essay is highly political, and very critical of our elected government. And that's also not why people come to Websnark, and I'm aware of that. Folks know I'm a liberal because I never shut up about that fact. A good number want nothing to do with my politics.

So. I'm putting in that extra step. If you want to read what I have to say, realizing I'm far far far past the point of being 'fair to everyone involved,' then by all means click through and read it. If you're here for webcomics commentary or slice of life or whatever, and you just don't want to read yet another person talking about the Gulf Coast, then you don't have to. I won't be offended.

But I also can't be silent in this forum. Not any more. Not and still look at myself in the mirror. So even if no one actually reads this essay, I need to write it. I need to say it. I need to go on record as clearly as I humanly can.

Thanks, all. Click on the "more" link to see the essay. If you're on an RSS feed, click on the actual link to the entry to read it on Websnark.

Peace.

We as a nation are shocked and outraged. We are shocked and outraged at a government whose response to nigh-unprecedented disaster has been lackadaisical, whose response to the untold suffering of tens or hundreds of thousands, and the death of tens of thousands in estimate, has been slow and halting at best. A response whose lack of will and accountability has been criminal through all of this. I don't know a better word to use -- the levels of neglect and unconcern by leaders who have sworn an oath, who have specifically taken on the responsibilities to protect, comfort and aid us in our time of need go far beyond incompetence and into the willful abrogation of those responsibilities. There should be lawsuits of unprecedented scope against our national government in the months to come.

And it is increasingly obvious that no one in a position to care, does care.

Hilary Rodham Clinton -- a contentious figure in her own right -- went on the record some time ago about the current administration. "It's very hard to stop people who have no shame about what they're doing," she said. "It is very hard to stop people who have never been acquainted with the truth." And this is true, of course. And it is an increasingly apt description. And in the weeks and months to come, we will see a systemic distortion of events repeated over, and over, and over again, in all the familiar outlets, recasting these last few weeks. Administration officials and pundits will have their talking points and they will go on the familiar television programs and they will say a very clear message in very clear language over and over again: it wasn't our fault. We did everything right. It was an act of God, and the Democrats in State and Local Government didn't act when they had to. This is how they deal with catastrophic failures in response.

And it might well work for them. It has before. When you have absolutely no shame... when you absolutely feel no remorse... then you can continually play on peoples' natural tendency to think the best of you. And when they begin to think the best of you, they'll listen to whatever mean-ass things you say about those you want to blame.

Don't believe me? Remember, George W. Bush's Vietnam war record was shocking. Shocking. John Kerry's Vietnam war record involved volunteering multiple times for multiple missions and being shot multiple times. And on election day, Kerry's Vietnam record was a negative and George Bush's wasn't.

But the abject, catastrophic failures of our national government are simply not in doubt right now. They're simply not in doubt. We have seen Federal responses to natural disasters before. We have seen Nixon respond to Hurricane Camille. We have seen George Herbert Walker Bush respond to Andrew. Both Republicans, I would add -- but when there was a disaster, they mobilized immediately. When there was advance warning, the resources to save and secure life were prepared before it hit and moved in immediately afterward. When FEMA was a cabinet level department before the days of the Department of Homeland Security, they were empowered during times of disaster to order any resources they needed from any Federal department.

The difference now? We are at war against an enemy who specifically attacks us without warning.

That's right. We are in a war against terrorists who if they get a chance will attack us with horrible weapons without warning.

We had warning with Katrina. We had loud and clear warnings. The administration, following the obvious failure to respond to the crisis, said that there was no way to predict that the levees would fail. That right there was clear and unmitigated bullshit. I know this because I watched the News on Saturday and Sunday, and every last news program went through the scenarios of what would happen to New Orleans should the levees fail, and the fact that the levees weren't rated to this level of hurricane. When the levees did fail, there was no sense of surprise -- just the impeding sense of horror that the worst case scenario did come true.

I didn't much care that George Bush didn't cut his vacation short and return to Washington, by the by. I really didn't. The mechanisms of government follow the President. Sure, I thought that by keeping his schedule of leisure activities he came across as mind-numbingly callous to the suffering in his own nation, but I didn't figure that callousness would abate by his flying to Washington and sitting in the White House instead of his ranch, so whatever.

But when he flew down, to "take a first hand look," after being asked not to come by the Governor of Louisiana and the Mayor of New Orleans, who didn't want to take time away from efforts to save people's lives to provide Presidential Security in a city where law and order were washed away in a tide of poisonous and infected water, and he ignored them so he could get his photo opportunities and timed the arrival of Federal troops to coincide with his visit, I knew we had gone beyond callousness and into a disconnection from reality. When George Bush was there, no relief flights were allowed to put food and water into the hands of the suffering, out of concerns for security. When George Bush was there, rescues were put on hold out of concerns for security.

It is entirely possible that people died because George Bush had to begin salvaging his public image.

This has been a recurring theme, by the by. Laura Bush visited the Astrodome to get photographed handing out supplies to refugees. But while she was there, Red Cross operations were suspended. She got her photo op while people were told to wait before seeing a doctor. Nice pictures, Madam First Lady. Hope no one died while they were taken.

Do I sound bitter? I am. I'm astoundingly bitter. Because this is a government that has wholly defined itself by its response to national tragedy and international threat, and when we actually had a disaster, they weren't just ill-prepared, they clearly didn't care. Kayne West broke away from his script on NBC to declare that "George Bush doesn't care about black people," and that's clearly true. But it doesn't go far enough. I'm not wealthy by any stretch, but I live a comfortable life and I have a good number of toys. I'm solidly middle class. And I'm white and was raised Protestant. But if New Hampshire were the disaster area instead of Louisiana, George Bush -- and his government -- wouldn't have responded to save my life any more than he did their lives.

And the lie of Red State/Blue State has finally been abjectly exposed. Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were all solidly red, but when disaster struck the response was anemic. It's not that Bush only cares about his supporters. It's that Bush doesn't care... well, about anyone.

The Port of New Orleans is devastated. The economic repercussions have already been tremendous, and they're only going to get worse. And our enemies have seen what has happened and how terrible our response has been. They have seen how unprepared we were when we had days of notice. They have seen how sluggish our response was forty-eight hours after the levees failed. They now know that if they manage to get a nuclear weapon into the middle container of a container ship, set to go off at dock, they could take out another one of our ports and we wouldn't be ready to contain the disaster as well as we were able to response to 9/11.

I need to repeat that.

The mechanisms of response to a disaster are worse now than they were on 9/11! The billions of dollars spent, the terror alerts, the injunctions to get duct tape, the Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security... all of these things have been done in the name of improving our security and when the time came we were unable to leverage a prepared response to a two hundred mile long hurricane we had days of warning about.

There's a reason that Geraldo Rivera -- Geraldo fucking Rivera -- was sobbing on national television, begging our government to allow the refugees in the convention center to cross a bridge and get to where there's power and water. There's a reason the cable news networks -- which have given George Bush and his administration five solid years of bye during some of the darkest moments in American industry -- have finally started to say what the fuck is going on here!

We're dying here. Americans are dying here. We have a refugee population now that potentially exceeds the population of my home state of Maine. And the response our government has had to that disaster has been halting and slow and unconcerned.

"George Bush doesn't care about black people." Yeah, no shit. He doesn't care about white people either. In fact, the one population we know he cares about in all this is Haliburton. Fucking Haliburton. They have a half-billion dollar government contract out of the disaster.

So, we know Dick Cheney responded quickly, at least.

Over the next several months, the spin machine will begin. The blame machine will begin. And for all I know it'll work, and the Republicans will overwhelmingly take the midyear elections, and they will pass another ten pieces of legislation that strip us of our rights and centralize authority in the hands of the Federal Government "to better protect us in the event of another Katrina." But for right now, for today, the American people who voted for George Bush and the American people who didn't vote for George Bush are united in shock and horror and a sickness that reaches into their very souls. And some are bitter, like I am. And others are just numb, staring at the government that ran on the platform of keeping us safe, and wanting to know why this happened.

And no one can tell them, because there's no real answer to that question. It just wasn't a priority at the time.

God help us all.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:43 AM | Comments (94)

September 6, 2005

Eric Burns-White: I once found a cockroach in my expensive hot cocoa mix. I did not love it.

Finally (I think) on this oh-so-webcomicish day... there is Five Ways to Love a Cockroach, with words by Alexander Danner and images by Neal Von Flue.

I have said before that Danner's projects tend to be those rarities where Flash works well as a tool to improve the whole of the comic. Further, I have mentioned before that the union of Flash and Infinite Canvas -- both of which I have trouble with separately -- can form a whole that works beautifully. Well, here we have some proof of that. A "straight" expanded canvas work, with the trailing path of a cockroach tying the imagery together, and the navigation tools simple and smooth and staying out of your way, has built a beautiful piece where Neal Von Flue's illustration blends with the almost poetic imagery of Danner's words. The whole combines into something greater than its parts.

I've often felt that way about Danner's words, before. His sense of usage and image -- like I said, poetic -- is what the work rests upon, and he knows better than most how to pull it off. But Neal Von Flue's art is a perfect blend here. That doesn't surprise me -- Von Flue is... well, very very good, particularly in works that mix media, and we see that here.

This is almost a straight review. For those of you who read these snarks for insight on how to do these things right, then look carefully at each frame of the Flash. Look how they piece together. Look how the static imagery is tied together. (This is not ersatz animation. This honestly is a new way to look at static, sequential art.) Look how quickly the whole loads and the pleasure of actually viewing the resulting file.

And then, reread, focusing on the content, and discover how creeped out you feel at the end. I mean, brr.

Danner and Von Flue did it right. They collectively get a biscuit. A tasty, tasty biscuit.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:03 PM | Comments (10)

Eric Burns-White: It's apparently old home day here at Websnark

(From Something Positive. Click on the thumbnail for full sized Inability To Win.)

So. After a significant drought of actual webcomics snarks, I've done four in a day. And what are those four? A John Troutman strip, Something Positive, Sluggy Freelance and Narbonic.

Next, I'm anticipating Spatchcock, who's been away from the comments for a while, to make mention of the fact that yes indeed, I am still reading my favorite comic strips. In case anyone was wondering.

This one jumped at me because there's some interesting characterization going on, though, and it deserves a little analysis. Besides, it's not like I can make untarring archives run any faster, and I need to do something with my brain while I wait.

Here's the thing: I don't think there's a snowball's chance in Hell Peejee and Davan are going to end up together. I might be wrong, but I'm certain on this. The core truth of this strip is that Davan, Aubrey and Peejee don't end up having sex. Period. I'm holding to that.

However, if I ignore that for a moment, there's an interesting parallel between Aubrey moving in with Jason (and ultimately ending up his girlfriend and sex partner) and Davan moving in with Peejee. Both involved circumstances where the independence of a core cast member gets cut down by fate they have no control over. Both involve dedicated friends who sometimes inflict violence on one another being put into close quarters. Both involve lonely people discovering that they're less lonely now.

And we know Davan had a crush on Peejee once upon a time. And that he got over it, but more than one person has remarked on it.

It's not outside the realm of possibility that Peejee might find herself pondering their relationship. After all, Peejee is feeling rather epically lonely right now. (Which is evidenced by the fact that she's practically going to bankrupt herself to go to a convention to be with Jhim, who she remains very close to and who she has lusted after from afar all these many years.) We know that Peejee didn't recover from her last breakup/betrayal by scum as readily as she has in the past. And we know that Davan is the one man in her life who's always been there for her and has always been nice to her.

If it did happen, it would end very very badly. In part because Peejee is feeling something akin to rebound right now, and is also finding herself in the somewhat unusual position of having no immediate recourse for a relationship or even dating.

Further, Peejee is attracted to gay men, and it's been solidly established Davan jams gaydar. (I'd look up the strip, but hey -- there's only so much time I can devote to this today.) Frankly, Peejee is bottoming out, emotionally, and that's the point when you start considering things you would never consider.

I suspect Davan will set her straight, if it does come to that. And I further suspect the dichotomy of reactions between it coming up between the pair and what happened to Aubrey and Jason will inform the next round of character development. However, the subtextual echoes are too strong not to at least remark on, and even if my rational brain says we won't go down that path, the irrational brain's drunk and got a broken bottle, so we're going there.

And even if we never get closer to the pairing than we've already seen, the depth of recursiveness and characterization shows a lot going on under the surface. Which would no doubt piss off the people who hate Something Positive because "it's so mean and superficial." And that was reason enough to post this snark, wasn't it?

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:18 PM | Comments (19)

Eric Burns-White: The other thing is, it's significantly less absurd than Quiddich itself.

(From Sluggy Freelance! Click on the thumbnail for full sized hand jive!)

Want to know a secret?

Back when I had terrific plans to do the Bringing The Story Shortbread Awards in a timely fashion to follow the Bringing the Funnies, Sluggy Freelance was slated to get Bringing the Story for the year for 2004. So you can sort of call this that announcement.

And, it was well deserved. "That Which Redeems" 1 and 2 was among the best story comics I think I've ever read on the web. It was the textbook definition of a strip that underwent a Cerebus Syndrome and pulled it off unreservedly. There were moments of humor and hilarity, there were moments of pathos and pain, and it all blended together into a story of character growth, of exposure, of transformation... and of redemption and, more importantly, the need to redeem.

It's also well know that I am not a fan of "Oceans Unmoving." At all. I was glad to see it disappear. And I liked good bits of what followed "Oceans Unmoving," and I've thought a good amount of the funny this year's been... well, funny. But the story on the whole has left me a bit cold. Okay, a lot cold.

And... well, I've never much cared for the Torg Potters. But I accept that others like them, and there's nothing that says I need to like every storyline. But, not being a huge Harry Potter fan to begin with, seeing a parody of one of the books... well, my reaction is meh.

But I'm still reading. There are days that Sluggy sits in the "Why do I read this webcomic again" pile (remember that?), but I still have my chips on the table. I have faith in Pete Abrams. And I'm willing to read for a year where I'm not too impressed because I have faith the following year will blow me away.

All that being said, I want you to take another look at today's strip. Ignore the word balloons. Just look at the Free-for-all Handshake Combat. Given that barring animated gifs or Flash webcomics are a static medium, the rhythm of motion Abrams sets up here is note-perfect. The level of absurdity that becomes the execution of the strip, and the utterly matter of fact way they go about it -- it doesn't matter if it's absurd, it's required -- becomes not just an effective parody of Quiddich but a parody of the matter of fact ways schools go about "sport" in the first place. I mean, honestly, is this any sillier than Lacross? Soccer? Basketball? It's a game, only it's treated... well, like it's somehow... I don't know. Important.

So, yeah. I'm not grooving on Torg Potter's return, but I'm sticking with. Because Pete Abrams knows his craft, and they can't all be written to appeal to me.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:30 AM | Comments (18)

Eric Burns-White: I'm sure that wasn't the first time that joke was done. Right? Right? Right?

(From Sporkman! Click on the thumbnail for full sized dear God he didn't just say that, did he?)

In contrast to the last, John Troutman is one of those folks who's traditionally heavily snarked that I haven't been talking a lot about, recently. In part, that's because of the eight thousand strips he's currently writing and (often) drawing, most of them are on some kind of hiatus or delay. Flint Again! is apparently going well, though if he's got it on the web I haven't gotten the memo. Felicity Flint: Agent of Harm and Vigilante, Ho! are pretty much on hiatus until, and I believe this is the technical term, "they get around to it." Andiewear I'm following (cheerfully), and I've noted with a certain amount of appreciation that Andie continues to be defined as a woman who is A) of some girth and B) a bombshell, which isn't a combination you see in a lot of places.

And then, there's the return of Sporkman.

I love Sporkman. I really do. The Chibi-style Newspaperesque Sporkman is as fun as any four panel story-light strip I've seen in a while. And I'm glad we've moved out of the prequel and into the regular strip. I like the character of Sophie Flint, and I like that the odd disconnect one had to have between the Prequel Amanda and the Ultimate Fate of Amanda is resolved.

I had strips I meant to snark last week, but... well, as with all of August, last week 'wasn't good for me.' (Of the last couple of weeks, "I think I've broken my tiny fist" has been my favorite, but they've all been good.) In any case, I've been keeping my eyes open.

And so, of course, today there's a hideous pun. On an advertising fad that... well, kind of peaked last year.

It was inflicted on me. I now inflict it on you.

Mu hu hah hah hah.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:52 AM | Comments (9)

Eric Burns-White: I've always wondered -- do babes really go for cherry-red cars? I mean, you hear that, but....

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

I honestly don't have a set schedule for snarking Narbonic. I really don't. In fact, it's one of those things that I think I'm not going to snark for a while, because yeesh, haven't I done enough recently?

And then I actually read the next Narbonic strip, and then I need to snark it. Ah well, at least it's a webcomics snark. That will make you happy. Won't it? Won't it?

There's little profound to say here, mind. In fact, this snark exists to point out three essential points:

1. The hamsters are adorable.
2. Artie is incapable of being in a situation where he isn't the straight man, despite being a shapeshifting gerbil
3. This is hysterically funny.

That is all.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:45 AM | Comments (9)

September 5, 2005

Eric Burns-White: Also? There is a psionic midget. I'm just saying.

A couple of people have written to me about my recent City of Heroes comic book post. Not the post on the recent video game update, mind. The post talking about Troy Hickman's first issue of the comic book. The people who wrote to me noticed that I put a lot of blame at the rather... depressive tone of the first three issues at Mark Waid's feet, but failed to do the same with Troy Hickman -- instead, I seemed to put the bulk of concern on Cryptic itself.

This is true. And it's true for a couple of reasons. The Waid issues seemed to follow a trend from other Waid materials, and the tone was so radically different than the earlier City of Heroes comic that it seemed to be Waid's influence primarily. However, the continuity of depressing 'role models' among the Freedom Phalanx seemed to take the onus off of Waid. And as for Hickman?

Hickman gets it. I know this, because I've read Common Grounds.

Common Grounds was an anthology series. It didn't really feature a single hero or hero team, so much as it featured a recurring setting which told several... well, largely non-violent stories about the kinds of people who became superheroes and supervillains. The hook was a chain of coffee shops and donut stores that seem like a cross between Dunkin Donuts and Tim Hortons (the donuts and the like reminds me of Dunkin D's, but the culture surrounding the shops reminds me of the sense of Canadian pride and community that surrounds the Canadian chain). These coffee shops were neutral ground, where heroes and villains could come in, sit down, drink coffee, eat donuts, relax and shoot the shit with each other. Highly powered bouncers were on staff to prevent fights from breaking out.

It's a relatively high concept, and it's the kind of coffee shop that a city like Paragon City would actually need -- after all, there are hundreds of superheroes running around every neighborhood in the city, not to mention roving packs of villains. It's almost certain they would need a place to kick back, relax and have a cruller or three.

Now, long time readers know I'm not particularly happy with the state of comic book super heroes. In a world where the Justice League is stealing plot points from the Gruenwald Squadron Supreme, where ex-wives of super heroes are killing off wives of other super heroes to win their man back, where rape and hate are par for the course and where the entirety of the Giffen/DeMatteis is subverted into a plot by normal humans (and murderers) to make super heroes subjects of ridicule, it seems to me that the core idea that super heroes are supposed to be heroes, idols for millions, and adventure stories which adults and children alike can enjoy has been totally lost. Many people have highlighted the watershed events of the eighties -- Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, Miracleman, and even Crisis on Infinite Earths have led an increasingly post-modern and adult take in the nineties and the twenty-first century (including such clear successes as Marvels and Sandman) which, while yielding some great stories (as well as a ton of crap) also have meant that super heroes aren't simply 'not just for kids any more,' they're not for kids at all, these days. In particular -- the core concepts of the super hero... principles of justice, of honor, of truth, and of heroism for its own sake... are seen increasingly as either quaint or suspect. There must be something really going on.

Well, Common Grounds certainly counts as acting in this post modern tradition. The stories don't accept superheroes on face value. (It reminds me in a lot of ways of Astro City, but that's a different essay.) And yet, even cloaked in sophisticated storytelling... the stories all proceed from the core assumption that being a super hero is a positive thing.

Some of the stories are funny -- detailing a very human face among the heroes. Speaking as a fat guy who's struggling to get less fat, I found the Superheavyweights wonderful. Others are darker, but the dark stories never subvert the heroic principle. Sometimes, a person breaks under the strain. Not to spoil folks who haven't read it, but the story of a former hero who couldn't go on after someone died on his watch resonated hard -- because it was the kind of thing that would have been a given in the 70's, and it's the kind of thing that no modern hero thinks about in the twenty-first century. You have Superman and Batman who won't kill, but there are days they feel like they're it, and they're always seen as quaint because of it.

Hickman remembers the power of a hero who just wants to do the right thing.

There are two stories in the collection that contrast with the City of Heroes comic in question. One is a patriotic hero having to defend her values and choices to people who feel America has let them down, which compares to Statesman's general sense of fatigue. The difference was, even though American Pi -- who did in fact pull herself out of the gutter to become a heroine -- had her faith waver, she never let it go. Statesman one doesn't get the sense has that faith to begin with. And even as Sister Psyche goes through her laundry list of the ways she hates her life and powers, we compare that to Speeding Bullet, whose own life and powers is pretty old crappy. And yet through it all, the one thing that makes it work, the one thing that keeps him going is the fact that he helps people.

Troy Hickman gets it.

I could mention Charm and Strangeness and their discovery, and what it means to them and why it affects them as powerfully as it does. Or I could mention the bathroom talk, where even the villain mentions that hey -- he doesn't want to destroy the economy. Or the sheer joy that is Flamebelle's debut. But the point threatens to become redundant. While this story is firmly in the twenty-first century, it harkens back to Silver and Golden Age beliefs and attitudes without sacrificing the story that's being told. Grim and grittiness is acknowledged satirically if at all.

In a way, it strives to be as genre expanding -- as deconstructionist -- as Watchmen was in its time. But Watchmen, as Moore later acknowledged, did so destructively. Common Grounds, while not as groundbreaking a work, deconstructs the myth while also celebrating it.

This is why I don't blame Troy Hickman for the dour, bitter, cynical ultimate heroes of City of Heroes. Because Troy Hickman gets it. And the old man Statesman and Sister Psyche meet (and fail) in the comic? He gets it too.

So. I'm not a fan of the Freedom Phalanx, but as I've already promised in the comments of my last snark on the comic, I will read the rest of Hickman's run with an open mind. Because if Statesman and the rest aren't careful, he might sneak superheroic ideals into the comic when they least expect it.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:26 PM | Comments (19)

September 4, 2005

Wednesday White: Long Legs, Reedy Wings

I wish that I could keep them out of the bedroom.

It's not an option: until the season changes properly, the windows must stay open. There isn't air conditioning, and extended exposure to even moderate humid heat triggers illness. But the construction of the windows makes installing screens difficult at best, and we rent, so that hasn't really been an option.

I keep the lights low and the curtains pulled, but they always seem to sneak through. They're the size of chocolate coins -- the massive ones, the ones which appear to come from no known currency -- or sand dollars. Everything about them is scrawny and elongated. Their wings are almost shrivelled, and look as though they should serve no purpose. They bounce and hover idiotically, slowly. The moths take crystal meth; these take 'luudes.

'Luudes, man. Fuckin' 'luudes.

I don't have a name for them. Keith's told me, I'm sure, about half a dozen times, but I keep forgetting. I'm not sure I want them to have names; I just want them to go away. They have the same squirm and reach as spider gods or camel crickets. They go to bits strangely when they're squashed, and they used to be easy to smack down.

Lately, they've learned to dodge. Or perhaps I'm a snail; perhaps I'm caught in some warp, stuck at 0.8125em of normal time, and the fat moths aren't panicked after all. When the unidentifiables rattle in my hair, smack my glasses and vibrate against the wall, perhaps it's just some distortion.

I have Raid cans. They can't be helping matters in any sense, but there's only so much you can use as the outer slice in a book-bug-thing panini.

Autumn can come now. It's already September.

Posted by Wednesday White at 11:54 PM | Comments (20)

September 3, 2005

Eric Burns-White: The question is, will a new Webcomics Wiki-based encyclopedia be considered notable enough for Wikipedia inclusion?

Xerexes, over at Comixpedia, has taken up the challenge of a Webcomics-specific wiki based encyclopedia! You see? A good idea gets proposed one day, elaborated on with some truly fantastic comments and discussion, and acted upon the next!

My understanding from Xerexes is that all the folks who expressed a desire to be involved on many levels will get an opportunity to do so. And beyond those who want to pitch in with the myriad administrative details, pretty much anyone on Earth will get a chance to contribute material and depth to the encyclopedia.

Like we said in the comments of the last snark, we're not looking to replace Wikipedia. Or compete with them. However, Wikipedia doesn't currently fit the needs of the webcomics community (and there's no reason they should -- they're a general encyclopedia). And rather than try to force them to change into what we need or could better use, it makes sense to... you know, create the resource we need or could use ourselves.

Vive l'Internet.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:58 PM | Comments (37)

September 2, 2005

Eric Burns-White: A Revised Modest Webcomics Proposal

So it's about time to discuss Wikipedia again.

Here's the thing. I like Wikipedia. A lot. It's my first stop these days when I'm looking something up. Really, it's my first stop when looking anything up. I think it's a tremendous resource, and if I don't trust it 100%, I trust it at least as much as I do the Encyclopedia Britannica at this point. It might not have editorial review, but it has immediacy and quick reaction, and its information is generally solid.

However, it also has some personality disorders.

Primary among those is a war between its populist inclinations and its elitist inclinations. On the one hand, the very structure of Wikis means it's trivial to add new topics and produce in depth material on it. So long as someone out there is a Russian history geek, Wikipedia can have good articles on the Czars. This also means that the population that most heavily uses Wikipedia is also the population best served by Wikipedia. As a result, Star Wars, Star Trek, and the major comic book companies are all heavily (one might even say obnoxiously) well represented here. The entry on Power Girl is exhaustively complete, with her various continuities and histories and varying retcons explained, alongside several pictures that highlight the... well, chestiness of the character. (And the text actually goes in depth on said chestiness, including an anecdote of how her initial artist, Wally Wood, intentionally made her chest bigger every issue to see how long it would take until an editor noticed. Only the editor didn't notice before Wood left.) It's interesting to me, because I have an interest in super heroes, in DC Comics, and in the old Earth-2 heroes from the pre-Crisis days.

And, for that matter, in the chestiness of girls in spandex. But I digress.

However, the idea that any encyclopedia editor under the old model would green light an 1,100 word entry alongside three graphics on Power Girl is absurd. A specialist encyclopedia (like the old Who's Who or Marvel Handbook works) would benefit from it. The Britannica wouldn't mention her in the first place (and indeed hasn't), and if they did for some reason it would be twenty or thirty words long.

This is the astounding strength of Wikipedia. Minor worlds that only appear in Star Wars novels can get in depth writeups. For a writer like me, having a general resource like that is amazingly useful, and I for one revel in it.

Unfortunately, there is the other hand: the elitist side.

Wikipedia very much wants to be seen as the Encyclopedia on the Web. Many Wikipedia proponents (I won't pretend anyone is of one mind about anything at Wikipedia, so don't take this as a specific dogma) want Wikipedia to be seen not only as complete but significant. Their intent is not only to supplement traditional sources like the Britannica but supplant them. They believe in the Wikipedia model, and they want to see it pushed through.

One of the key strategies in doing this involves a collaborative editorial process. Now, obviously given Wikipedia's open nature, you need a certain number of people on "damage control," repairing vandalism and correcting mistakes when they creep in. Other flags that go up are for "inappropriate tone" (there is a specific style and tone one uses when writing encyclopedia entries. Things that don't 'sound encyclopedic' detract from the quality of the piece) and calls for elaboration on the material (they have a specific flag for 'stubs,' denoting entries that are at best short summaries of the subject matter). All of these are cool -- even contentious entries where people argue -- sometimes vehemently -- about what is correct and what isn't tend to yield some exceptional writing. (I'm reminded of the entry on Lyndon LaRouche, which spawned a weeks long debate between sharply divided viewpoints and ultimately yielded one of the best pages on Wikipedia and one of the best distillations of LaRouche I've seen on the internet).

However, one other criteron is "significance." And this is where the problem comes in, because significance is not quantifiable and it is not simple, and no singular formula for what is 'significant' ends up yielding good results. The populist and the elitist sides of the Wikipedia mind collide hard here, and there is no good answer for it.

You see, part of the mission of Wikipedia is to include entries on everything that is significant. However, what is significant to one reader is insignificant to another. For a person obsessed with pogs, several articles detailing different brands of pog, different rarities of pog and the evolution of pogs from milk caps to a major industry to a fringe game would not only seem significant but necessary. To someone who barely remembers pogs from the nineties, pogs seem utterly insignificant -- about as useful to Wikipedia as putting up separate articles on the different brands of hula hoops.

Only now, the hula hoop fans are pissed off.

One advantage that traditional encyclopedias have over Wikipedia is editorial -- when you recruit experts in a given field, you have a specific person or small group of people who have the final word on what is significant enough to warrant inclusion. There might be heated debates that form out of it, but those are typically informed debates.

One advantage that Wikipedia has over traditional encyclopedias, on the other hand, is ease of publication. The only constraints Wikipedia has are storage space and bandwidth, and text-only entries don't use a tremendous amount of either. So, you can include far more things. In the end, however, there is still a question of "what is significant enough to include?"

Which brings us to webcomics.

The original system of determining Webcomics significance was based entirely on popularity. Specifically, the Alexa ratings of a given webcomic were used -- anything below a certain cutoff got in, everything above it got cut. The flaws in this should be self-evident, but just in case, let me summarize: art significance has little to do with the numbers and everything to do with influence. A webcartoonist with only 500 daily readers who counts 300 other cartoonists among them has had a dramatic impact on webcartooning as a whole, even though his strip might not be popular.

I proposed, a while back, a dual requirement to replace it -- a strip, in my estimation, should be included only after it has A) consistently updated for at least one year, and B) only after its archive contains 100 strips. To my mind, it's hard to be "significant" to the field of webcomics without having both some time under your belt and a depth of archive. Obviously, there would need to be flexibility (certainly a webcomic that began updating weekly that spread through the internet at Memish speeds shouldn't have to wait before inclusion) but almost no comic with at least a hundred strips and a history of regular updating should be left out -- in part because those are the very strips that most need a reference and resource for new readers. There has been some debate on this, feeling it's far too lax. Another person felt that three years and 500 strips would be a good balance point for 'automatic inclusion.' Still others are highly afraid that "insignificant works" will find their way into Wikipedia as a result. The debate has sometimes been acrimonious. I still occasionally receive angry e-mails from Wikipedians who think I'm trying to... um... well, do something really bad. As well as more than one person accusing me of wanting to use Wikipedia for self promotion.

That last I find particularly funny. Someone -- not me -- put up a rather nice Wikipedia entry for Gossamer Commons. There was an immediate vote for deletion that came about because of it, and I was one of the ones who voted to delete -- we've been around significantly less than a year, and we had considerably less than 100 strips in our archive. And our Alexa ratings wouldn't warrant inclusion under the old system.

That being said, I know a good number of actual comics creators who read Gossamer Commons. We get a good number of crosslinks. And we have a steady readership in the thousands. So who am even I to say it's insignificant?

Both Websnark and I are in Wikipedia, full disclosure requires me to say. And it's a source of considerable, irrational pleasure that my entry is the straight "Eric Burns" entry, while the Fox News Apologist gets "Eric Burns (Journalist)." Though I did enjoy The Spirits of America.

Anyhow. I use Wikipedia constantly (including doing lookups of webcomics in it). But at this stage of the game, I don't contribute entries to it any more. I correct things I know to be wrong, particularly in individual webcomics entries, but I don't create new ones. It's not worth the hassle of arguing about significance to people who aren't interested in the evolution of the cartooning form or the significance of individual creators versus their popularity. As point of reference, I point to Casey and Andy, which I snarked in the last snark. This is one of several snarks I've done on Casey and Andy. Certainly, I feel it's significant enough to be extolled as an example, and that the evolution of its characters is worthy of discussion.

And, when I needed the spelling of Hunkinite, I went to Wikipedia to get it. And there wasn't an entry for Casey and Andy. "That can't be right," I thought to myself. "I should add them."

And then I decided against it.

There's plenty of evidence that Casey and Andy are "significant," at least to one population or anther. Beyond my multiple snarks and the intracomics references you see (I'm especially thinking of Irregular Webcomic here, but there are others), there's a GURPS Casey and Andy for sale at e23. Steve Jackson isn't in the habit of paying writers to build sourcebooks for things he doesn't feel he can sell. Further, I know a good number of cartoonists who read Casey and Andy. And their fanbase is vocal, to boot.

But, their Alexa ratings are way below the threshold of inclusion. So Alexa readers don't tend to read it, at the every least. So if I were to put a Casey and Andy page on Wikipedia, there would be an argument, and if I were to write one, I would put a lot of work into it, and I don't bother to put a lot of work into things that might get erased. So I just don't do it.

Here's the thing, though. I don't think Wikipedia is doing anything wrong.

Seriously. I think that given their mission and mandate, they're doing a lot of things right. Yeah, I think they should be far more lax as to what goes into it -- but then, I think restricting inclusion hamstrings one of the greatest advantages Wikipedia has. I'm glad Power Girl has an in-depth entry. I'm glad I can find a writeup on Onderon, even though it has no interest to me, because for a Star Wars or video game fan, Onderon might indeed be significant. I'm glad that Wikipedia can draw off the strengths of its readers.

And just because I happen to agree or disagree with given inclusion standards doesn't mean I'm right. I think Casey and Andy would be a slam-dunk for inclusion, but that doesn't make me right. I don't think Gossamer Commons is yet significant enough for inclusion, but the person who put the page up disagrees with me. Absent a strong, recruited jury process, the process of determining significance has to be spread out among the Wikipedia readership -- and a subsection of those readers actually pays attention to the votes for deletion, and a subsection of them actually votes. This is the way the system is going to work, and despite my quibbles the breadth of good information in Wikipedia implies it works pretty well.

But it seems to me that webcomics should be looking to make their own definitive reference work. We should have a Wiki of our own, that meets our purposes.

A Webcomics Wiki Encyclopedia could become a clearinghouse for solid information on webcomics. It could be a standardized location for cast lists, creator information and synopses. It could incorporate all the potential strengths that Wikipedia offers, without having to fight either the populist or elitist sides of things.

Heck, we could duplicate the text on the entries already in Wikipedia, getting a huge head start on some of the most popular comics. (All Wikipedia's entries are open source, under the GNU Free Documentation License. So long as we also licensed ours under that same license, we can use their entries wholesale if we wish.) However, we can actually serve the greater Webcomic community by allowing for anyone who's got a comic on the web to put information about it in place. We can encourage sites to put their Webcomikipeda (okay, we need a better name) link on their comics. We can even configure things to make adding subpages simple. Imagine Howard Tayler putting up a subpage for Teraporting, making it easy to search for the term. Or Kristofer Straub doing the same for the starslip drive. Or David Willis having a subpage detailing the history and development of S.E.M.M.E. A Webcomics Wikipedia would be an ideal place for adding extra depth for readers.

Do I think webcomics should leave Wikipedia? Christ, no. I think Wikipedia should continue to be the generalist resource it is. However, rather than we the webcomics types try to argue with people who don't have any interest in us on standards of 'significance,' we ought to be making a resource we can develop at our leisure. Further, though I proposed that the specific webcartoonists shouldn't be the ones to write their Wikipedia pages (it's hard to be properly objective about one's self), a webcomics-specific one handled as an extension of cast pages and the like could be an effective resource and an effective tool for new readers of all strips.

The one question is pragmatic. Who could or would host such a thing?

The usual suspects leap to mind. If Comixpedia could afford it, they have the right domain name for it. Otherwise, you immediately think of Keenspot or Webcomicsnation. Failing them, it might be an ideal fit for BuzzComix or the Webcomics list. Or even value added for Sequential Tart. But some community who's into webcomics who also has sufficient bandwidth and storage would be necessary.

(Websnark? Only after we migrate. The bandwidth requirements means I wouldn't want to do this while I host at Pair.)

It could work. It could be an astoundingly cool tool and reference. And it would shut malcontents like me up over at Wikipedia. Everybody wins!

(The Fox News Guy is currently above me by one on a Google Search, by the by. He's first, I'm second, a reference site to him is third, and Websnark is fourth. Clearly, I have a purpose in life, and it is to exceed Eric Burns (Journalist) in all measures. Preferably including book sales, because he really is quite a good author.)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:10 PM | Comments (74)

Eric Burns-White: It scares me that I took the time to check the spelling of the word "Hunkinite" before posting this.

(From Casey and Andy! Click on the thumbnail for full sized three week gap!)

Some time ago, in the course of snarking Casey and Andy, I mentioned that Jenn Brozek had become the strip's protagonist. My thesis was simple enough: Casey, Andy, Mary, Satan, Quantum Cop and all the rest were funny characters that funny things happened to, but Jenn was the strip's Mary Richards -- she was the (relatively) normal character who had insanity surround her. As a result, her reactions echoed the reactions of the reader. She might be Queen of the Hunkinites, but her reactions are those of a normal person. More or less.

And, as a result, the major plot arcs seem to center on her. Jenn gets kidnapped transdimensionally or temporally. Things happen. Other things result. Her air of normalcy lends itself to weird situations.

However, part of character development is growth. If Jenn remained aggressively normal, she'd become a one-note joke character, existing only to not be quite as weird as everyone else. Sooner or later, she has to take weirdness in stride.

Today's strip makes it official. Jenn getting kidnapped and going off on a several week jaunt which leads to her coming back in significantly different clothing doesn't make her bat an eye. She's ready to pick up her conversation.

Not to mention that even before she was kidnapped, she was casually burying a satchel in the yard.

Jenn may still be the protagonist of the strip, but she's not Mary Richards any more. She's gone full on Phyllis on us.

(Does anyone even remember Phyllis? I always liked her character.)

It might hearten Andy Weir that I'm using his strip as an excuse to indulge in Mad Science, as well. This is the first time I've used ecto's built in file uploading and thumbnailing abilities. We'll see how well it works. If it does? Then those fools at the Institute shall PAY! A-HAHAHAHAHA!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:47 AM | Comments (8)

September 1, 2005

Eric Burns-White: Cartooning for a good cause

This the the first time I'm using the Blogging client "Ecto" with Websnark. We're going to see how good a job it does, and if in fact it does a good job, then we'll see about getting its contract renewed.

The following is an e-mail I received from Brad Guigar, author of the deeply cool Greystone Inn. He's got a cool idea for helping out in the wake of the Katrina disaster, and asked for my assistance in getting out the word.

Some of you might remember the Webcomics Telethon for MDA that I organized through AltBrand Comics. You can se the site here: http://mda.altbrand.com/01mda.shtml

The site updated with new comics from participants throughout three days, so there was plenty of reasons for readers to keep tuning in to the Web site. Donations were accepted through PayPal and then donated on behalf of the Webcomics Telethon.

I'm thinking it might be time to dust off the Telethon and re-purpose it for the people devestated by Hurricane Katrina.

Blank Label Comics is going to host a Webcomics Telethon for Hurricane Katrina Victims the week of Sept. 12. I have registered www.webcomictelethon.com for this purpose. I'm going to wait to see how many participants I get before I specify how many days it will go. Depending on how many participants we get, we could make it a two- or even three-day gig.

ALL of the money collected, including donations and money generated from the ads on the site, will be donated to the Red Cross.

Interested parties should:

(1) E-mail me at bguigar@yahoo.com so I can start generating a head count.

(2) Prepare a special comic strip for the Telethon. We don't have much time, so please do it now, while you're thinking about it. It does not have to be about hurricanes or donating money unless you want it to be. Look through the AltBrand Telethon site... there was some fantastic comics generated out of that. Keep it under 600 pixels wide. Any depth.

(3) E-mail me your comic. Include in the e-mail your name, the title of your comic, and your Web site's URL.

(4) Spread the word.

Thanks!

--Brad

Brad is good people, and I think this is a great idea. After consulting with Greg, we've decided that Gossamer Commons will contribute a strip to the cause, and we hope lots of other people do too. I remember the Altbrand MDA telethons fondly, and am looking forward to contributing and hopefully doing some good for people.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:43 AM | Comments (10)

Eric Burns-White: Oh, thank Christ. It's September. Here's a video game post.

It was a long month, but now it's over. Granted, I have several 12+ hour days ahead of me, but those days will work out pretty well, I think. Servers are beginning to migrate, systems are beginning to come up, and life seems to -- potentially -- be okay.

And last night, Issue 5 of the City of Heroes game came out.

(This is not Issue 5 of the comic. That's coming out this month, to my knowledge, but it's not out yet. I've promised to have an open mind with that issue and by gum, I'll keep that promise. However, we're discussing the actual... you know, game, here.)

Issue 5 adds a whole new section of content (a nearby village that's being overrun by fairies, women who are clearly supposed to be witches of some sort but they're trying to avoid pissing off the neopagan community so they're called something else that I can't remember, ghosts and other beasties. I did some of the beta test of this and it's a fantastic new zone, chock full of content.

They also have new powersets -- specifically, sonic powers, archery and trick arrows. So, the obvious gap in City of Heroes has been filled: it is finally possible to role play out your own Green Arrow/Black Canary relationship in their game.

Seriously. Did they specifically sit down, say "man, I wish we could play Ollie and Dinah," and prioritize based on that?

Whatever. The new powersets are fantastic, so I'm just good naturedly joshing. Using sonics, I actually got to indulge in some nostalgia for a different game. A came some of you have heard of. A game called Villains and Vigilantes.

Villains and Vigilantes was among the first wave of Role Playing Games (what we today call "tabletop RPGs" to differentiate them from video games. "Tabletop" RPG veterans, of course, tend to just call them "role playing games," but that's another essay. V&V's first edition came out in... mm. I want to say 1979 or 1980. I know its revised edition came out in 1982, but by the time that came out I was already a V&V veteran. Anyway, it had all the hallmarks of early RPG design -- tables, special cases, every power working with every power differently (it included a grid with to-hit numbers based on all the powers and the ways they'd interact), and a random power generation system that could sometimes lead to bizarre -- or wildly unbalanced -- results.

It was incredible. I loved that freaking game so much. And my first ever super hero in any RPG came out of that system: Vibrex the Invincible.

Hey, look. I was twelve. Maybe you came up with really cool super hero names at twelve. I didn't. Get over it!

(And try to ignore the fact that the name sounds like a chrome plated marital aid.)

Vibrex had vibrational powers, the power of flight, and the ability to teleport, if I remember correctly. A bit of a mixed bag (though better than some). He was vaguely based on me (the game encouraged making characters based on your friends), and he fought alongside Thunderbolt (who had weather control powers and other some such, the Telekinetic Kid, Flambeau (we thought we were so clever), Cyborg-9, Ace, Rainbow and others....

Twelve year olds in power fantasies punching stock supervillains. But evocative ones.

So, I made up Vibrex, silly name and all. In honor of his illustrious beginnings (and to hopefully excuse the name somewhat) I made him a teenager -- not quite twelve, but not too far off. Sonic powers are close enough, and I could get his costume almost exactly. (Not that it's the coolest costume in the world. But then, that's part of the point.)

And, having seen the City of Heroes fanbase turn itself inside out freaking out about all the horrible nerfs and power reductions the developers were inflicting on us (by far the most contentious ever), I took out the character who was most affected by such (a scrapper with a broadsword and "super reflexes," which was a defensive powerset that was most directly affected by the nerfing, if the boards were to be believed) for a little while. Said character appeared in the midst of higher level enemies (yellow and orange, which in the old days meant "possible for a combat specialist to defeat, but it'd be a fight), hauled out the sword, and started whaling. And discovered that to compensate for the defensive losses, said sword now does a lot more damage. The character seems no more or less likely to die while slaughtering supervillains than before.

So, between that and City of Villains on the horizon, everything is aces in the superheroic world.

And it's September, and that means things will get better.

God damn it. Things will get better.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:14 AM | Comments (34)