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(From Least I Could Do! Used by permission.)

We have mentioned, long ago in a distant past that perhaps you may not remember, and perhaps you do, assuming I haven't made it up myself in my delerious Monday Morning Haze, that one of the downsides of Webcomics as they're generally implemented is the inability to revise.

Wow, does that sentence look ugly. Let me try it again.

As we've said before, Webcomics -- unlike most traditional publishing -- can't easily be revised as you go along. If you're writing a story or drawing a comic book, and you get three quarters into it and realize that you really should have had one less character and done things differently and maybe made the wisecracking sidekick a girl and perhaps set your tale in Hoboken instead of Mordor, you can always go back and do just that. In webcomics, however, you're essentially posting your rough draft as you go along, and that's it. It's released. Major revisions aren't in the cards, unless you do significant surgery.

This is especially true when you have a shift in style or tone. It's one of the things that leads to the Cerebus Syndrome attempt, and it's one of the leading causes of First and Ten: you get several months (or years) into your comic and you realize this isn't what you wanted to do at all -- less light gag-a-day, more deep storylines and character development.

Or... and this is actually really common... your style may simply change over time.

We've seen this a lot. If you look at the early days of almost any long running webcomic, the early days will have a much different, often rougher style. This makes sense. If a person draws a strip day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year they eventually find better ways to do things. Their renders get tighter. Their techniques get broader. They get more stuff in their toolbox.

Or, in the case of a strip like Least I Could Do, they just hire another artist.

So, you can have someone who is proud of his webcomic throughout -- he loves it, he thinks it's wonderful, he's excited every time he posts... and then one day he looks back to the beginning of his strip and he suddenly becomes horrified at what he sees. "Oh my God," he says. "I was such crap! If only I could go back and revise all that!"

And that's problematic, because people don't like change.

It's a truth in life. People like the past to stay the past. They want the strip to match up with their half-forgotten memories. If they need to go back and look at it, and it's not the same... well, they get uncomfortable. They want to see the old strips. They liked the old strips. And why would you ever change the old strips?

Some artists go ahead and do it anyway -- I know that David Willis has revised a bunch of his old stuff to bring a consistency of style, for example. Others just sort of shrug and laugh about it. After all, it's no big deal, right?

Until it is. And that brings us back to Least I Could Do.

There have been three different artists on Least I Could Do. The strip was started by Ryan Sohmer as the writer -- of course -- and a man name of Trevor Adams. Then Trevor Adams left and Chad Wm. (For William, I assume) Porter came in. Then Porter left and Lar de Souza came in, and here we are today.

Now, Sohmer has gone on the record that he wasn't proud of the writing in those early strips -- fair enough. It's not just art style that evolves over time, after all. But what's unspoken is... well....

Look, I'm a terrible artist. I'm the worst artist in the world. I'm Antidextrous -- I can't write (or especially draw) with either hand. I have no basis to cast aspersions on another person's art. And Trevor Adams is a significantly better artist than I am.

But being significantly better than me isn't anywhere near enough to be good. And Trevor Adams just wasn't very good.

I mean, it's not horrible art by any stretch. It's kind of a fun anarchic style. And there are those who like it quite a bit -- and, like many webcartoonists, Adams improved by leaps and bounds. By the time color came into the strip, he was solid and getting moreso. But when Trevor Adams left and Chad Porter came in, the strip improved by an order of magnitude, and it all came back to art.

But, this was part of the history of the strip. This was part of the past. Events in those early strips still have impact today. And people like the past.

The problem is, Sohmer and Blind Ferret wanted to do a print collection. And regardless of one's opinions of the art as art, as graphics files they were simply unprintable. We're talking low resolution gifs in black and white here. Sohmer's print collections are top notch in quality, on good paper and with great production values. Putting a 72 d.p.i. GIF in that... would not be a kindness to the strip, the consumers, or Ryan Sohmer.

It is, in one real sense, the same issue that the owners of the original Star Trek had to deal with when Blu-Ray came out.... and the same issue that George Lucas had to confront when DVD came out before that. In both cases, Star Wars and Star Trek: The Original Series, the writing was excellent but the state of special effects had advanced so much both projects looked cheesy, dated and fake.

Lucas chose a broad revisionist course. The Special Editions, he announced, would be what he had always envisioned Star Wars to be, now that special effects had improved to the point that "his vision" could be created. The problem is, he didn't simply revise the look of things, he revised the substance. He made editorial decisions. He added whole sections. He changed sequences to match what he thought was appropriate in the 90's, even when they conflicted with what he decided in the 70's.

It was a monumental success, but it also made a lot of people angry. Han did shoot first, damn it. Just because Lucas decided that Han as a bastard who became a lovable rogue didn't match up with his current vision of Han as a lovable rogue who just became more lovable didn't take away peoples' memories, and the change meant they focused less on the movie as an improvement and more on how it "desecrated" the movie.

Never mess with a geek's childhood, man. He will cut you.

Star Trek, on the other hand, tried very hard when they did all-new special effects to seat those effects into the original story, rather than revising the original story. Sure, the grey backdrops became digital matte paintings and the Gorn blinked -- but the Gorn did the same stuff he did before and the backdrops did nothing more than add more eye candy. Kirk stayed the same. Sure, they put in new music, but the new music was based on the original compositions, so the musical cues remained the same. It was far less an attempt to update the original series of Star Trek, and more an attempt to make the original series look acceptable in Blu-Ray.

And it was the right choice to make. To be honest, if I look at the originals of Star Wars and the Special Editions of Star Wars today, they both look pretty cheesy. We've come so far since the Special Editions came out that now they look just as bad and dated as they did before, which means all that's left is comparing the two cuts of the movie -- and the 70's version of Star Wars is a better cut than the 90's version. (Return of the Jedi's 90's version is, admittedly, a better cut than the 80's version, but that may have to do with Ewoks singing). And Family Guy's shot-by-shot parodies are fantastic, but I digress.

So, enter Lar de Souza, and LICD: Black and White. This is a new print collection of strips, all of which are being redrawn by current artist de Souza, in the current style of the strip, but working hard to reflect the characters as they were then. And the question is, did they go with Star Wars and George Lucas, or did they go with Star Trek and the remasters.

Sort of neither, sort of both.

The strips -- as you can see by the comparison above (you can't click to a larger version because that's the size of the original -- M. Sohmer was kind enough to let me reproduce it full size for these purposes) -- are radically different. They are not higher resolution retraces of Adams's version of the characters. They are not the old strips with increased details. They are Lar de Souza drawing these strips, using his interpretation of the characters, albeit with echoes of the original hairstyles and other things.

At the same time, the writing is (apparently) not changing. The same things are happening. The same choices are being made. Even where the characters don't ring necessarily true to who they become (Rayne, for example, failed sometimes. And didn't know everything. Or is that catty of me?) they're not changing them.

And, more to the point, the original Trevor Adams versions are staying up on the web. Right now, they haven't decided whether or not to put de Souza's art up alongside it, but I suspect this will be a print-only thing for at least a good long while. Which makes good economic sense... and even better sense in terms of keeping people happy by not radically changing the past.

It's an exciting way to do things, and I hope it is successful for them. I'm curious enough that I plan to buy a copy, and I suspect I'm not the only one.

Now, if I could just talk Wednesday into redrawing Unfettered By Talent for me...

(From xkcd. Click on the thumbnail for full sized digital footprints in the sand.)

Every so often -- every so often -- a pun doesn't make me groan. Every so often, a pun is an accent to a mood. A clever note on a feeling. And every so often, xkcd manages to touch on a universal behavior through an incredibly idiosyncratic method.

Comparatively speaking, very few people run servers -- and even fewer run servers with other users on them. The behavior that Munroe is describing is unique to a specific profession and a specific type of user. I occasionally administer boxes where I have folks running screen sessions, because that's part of what I do for a living. Most people -- even most readers of xkcd -- don't.

And yet, in one sense we've all been there. Or at least we all can see where this is coming from. If nothing else, keeping the last voicemail you received from someone who died, because you can't bear to erase it, even if you also can't bear to listen to it... that's something that's very human, very part of the grieving process. So long as you have that 1 next to the total messages, then you still have an active connection to someone the rest of the world can only remember.

Or take the last post someone makes to Livejournal or the like. That post, no matter what it's about, becomes a de facto memorial post -- comments fill up as people express condolences to the family... but just as often they send last message they ever can to the person who's died. This is their post, so when you send a comment you're sending it to that person, right? Right? That's how Livejournal works. So if this is your last chance to say how special they were, how much a part of your life they were... then thank God you have it. So you have someone who posts something... well, utterly banal like "Well, time to go grab lunch. I hope the tuna doesn't smell like ass today," and underneath it you have 600 comments from people saying how much they loved the poster, and how they miss them, and how they think of them every day... there's a disconnect there. The mundane touches the spiritual. The everyday touches the eternal. And it feels active. It feels real.

On the other hand, I have to wonder how much more a user's eternal screen session evokes this feeling -- because this was more than a message left or a post made. This was something ongoing. You see, screen sessions allow you to disconnect from a server while leaving a... well, ghost of that connection active, so that when you reconnect the screen looks exactly like it did when you left, and any projects you were doing are sitting right there, waiting for you to pick them up. This is the digital equivalent of a half-written poem, the paper still sitting on the desk, the pen still uncapped on top of it.

And then there's the alt-text, and that's universal too. In a sense, it's even a part of that same grieving process -- because hey, they'd love the joke, right?

Some folks will be upset that this one isn't funny -- or think that the pun at the end means it's trying to be funny -- but really, this strip's a lot closer to the angular momentum strip -- one of those brief moments that are a touch sappy and a touch wistful and still a touch geeky. Less about the funny, more about life, as seen through the eyes of a math, physics or computer geek. It's been part of xkcd from the beginning, and it's often done ham-handedly, but when it's done well it has tremendous effect, and today's was done well.

This one just nailed me. I'm not sure anyone would still care, but Randall Munroe gets himself a biscuit for this one.

A tasty, tasty biscuit.

(From Real Life Comics! Click on the thumbnail for full sized block-shattering fun!)

I realize I'm very new to being back at this -- way too new to be touching on a strip two days in a row. And yet, I think I can get away with it for two reasons:

1. Yesterday's 'critiques' weren't exactly... critiques (hey, I thought they were funny. That counts for something. Right? Right?).
2. I wanted to do it.

Anyway, there were two things I wanted to touch on here. The first is Liz herself.

No, I am not implying I am touching Liz. Yeesh, people. Clean that cesspit you call a mind up. I mean I'm touching on her characterization. I've really enjoyed the last few days of Real Life Comics, because it's allowed for Liz -- often the Mary Richards of RLC -- to be the one who's gone nuts, while Greg has been the voice of... I'm gonna go with reason. I know it's an odd thing to type, but let's call it like we see it, okay?

Excuse me? Oh, you're not sure what I mean by the 'Mary Richards?' I guess it's been a while since we've touched on the Websnark Lexicon, hasn't it? Right -- let me recoin the phrase for you.

One of the most groundbreaking television shows of the 70's -- and indeed, one of the most important television shows in the history of the medium -- was The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Mary Tyler Moore had spent the 60's as a traditional Sitcommish wife in The Dick Van Dyke show, but in the 70's she went 'on her own' as a single woman making her way in a city without the comforts of traditional sitcom marriage. She had a career (as a television producer, no less), friends and travails. And the writing was among the best television has ever had.

What was interesting, however, was the role the character "Mary Richards" played on the show. In effect, Mary Richards was the sane character. The only sane character, surrounded by nutjobs ranging from her boss Lou Grant straight past cheerfully evil Sue Ann Nivens straight through to egotistical moron Anchorman Ted Baxter. Where in earlier sitcoms she might have been the straight man, feeding setups while the comedians went nuts, on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" Mary Richards wasn't a straight man -- she was sane, reacting to the insanity around her with her own comedic timing. As a result, she became the anchor the show revolved around -- the character that viewers identified with and empathized with. She made everything around her not only work but feel realistic.

Liz normally has that role in Real Life Comics, so every so often having her switch off with Greg is a fun thing. Dean did a good job in these strips by fully switching the roles off. Greg is actually sane during Liz's descent into video game mania, and it works across the board.

The second thing I wanted to touch on -- and honestly the real reason I'm writing this -- is right in the first panel. Liz doesn't say the lack of Rock Band 2 is bad or even uncool. She says it is undude.

Undude. "This is very undude."

Wow do I like that. I know I abuse the word 'dude' both in my writing and in everyday speech as it is, but I had never considered what might something undude before. It's like a whole new world is opening up -- a whole new perspective is dawning. Perspective is no longer limited to "dude" or even "duuuuuuude." Now things can be undude.

And that, my friends, is worthy of mentioning Real Life Comics two days in a row.

(From Fans! Click on the thumbnail for full sized Action Hero Move!)

When T "T" Campbell and Jason Waltrip returned to the world of Fans after several years away, I was excited but -- I'll admit -- cautious. The end of the original run of Fans was such a complete... well, ending that it seemed perhaps ill-advised to try and recapture the magic. As much as I loved the original run, I had to wonder three things:

1. Where could a story like this go?
2. Could the Fans-based magic of flaws and consequences making our heroes endure Hell they couldn't entirely blame on outside forces persist?
3. Did Campbell and Waltrip continue to understand not just how science fiction and fantasy have changed but how fandom has changed, and push their comic into a similar evolution as a result?

I think it's safe to say I'm not wondering any more.

The first two questions are somewhat nebulous to answer, and they're really not the point of the essay you're reading right now. Suffice it to say, they hit upon the magic formula: having had the Science Fiction Club break up and key components join the government instead of fighting it, the conditions of the new series are different enough to allow for something new instead of just rehashes of the old -- and both the old and new heroes of our story continue to have flaws and issues that lead to mistakes and consequences, both from the old days and wholly new ones. And that is awesome.

But it's the third point I want to discuss in depth, especially since the current installment (as of this writing) touches on it conveniently.

In our world -- the mundane world outside our window -- the popular view of geeks, nerds, fans and fandom have changed. Geekdom has gone mainstream in a big way -- to the point where a television show like Chuck lets the main character have geek qualities, Star Trek, Iron Man and Transformers make unimaginable amounts of money at the box office, the biggest movie not only of the year but the third biggest grossing movie of all time is a 3-d computer animated film featuring hot blue alien chicks and allegory (seriously -- Avatar has grossed over a billion dollars worldwide in under three weeks), and lead characters can reasonably be expected to talk up comic book minutia and still come across as 'everyman' figures. Thanks to the iPhone and Android, our cell phones have pushed beyond flip-open Star Trek communicators headlong into Star Trek tricorders. We live in the world of Mythbusters as cultural figures and Olivia Munn as Playboy Cover Model, and when a big SF, comic book or fantasy adaptation hits the big screen, the Hollywood A-Listers behind it automatically say "hey, I've been a huge fan of [Geek Cultural Touchstone] my whole life. When this opportunity came along, I grabbed it."

How much more would all this be true in a world where magic and aliens weren't only real but were widely and publicly known? Where the Fans-verse version of the High-School-Popularity dramady Peggy and Aggie involves a hot chick concealing herself in zero prescription glasses and a fake Librarian look to be cool?

(Yeah, let's reduce an alternate Penny Levac to 'hot chick.' This is a good plan.)

Fans has nailed this new zeitgeist, while still reflecting our own world's evolution, with the 'new breed' of Fan they've introduced, and Action Reggie Mantle from today's strip (okay, his name is Marc, but still. He's totally Action Reggie Mantle) is the best of breed.

Action Reggie Mantle is a gamer. In fact, he's one of the top gamers on the pro circuit -- a G4ish breed of attitude and skill, camera friendly and yet the kind of guy you want to wipe the smug expression off of. Which makes his inevitable victory all the sweeter for him -- he knows you want to take him down. You just can't.

And now here he is, trying to be a hero outside of virtuality and XBox Live. Yearning for that sense of accomplishment. Yearning to prove to all the people who dismiss him as an overgrown kid playing games that he's real. He's for real. And along the way he wants to indulge himself. Indulge himself with hero worship, with women, with whatever he wants.

Action Reggie Mantle isn't a classic geek -- he's too close to the kind of hero geeks traditionally fantasized about being. He's Chris Hardwick with a blaster and skills, funny and quick and sarcastic but always a crowd pleaser. He has every reason in the world for his brash overconfidence, because he really is that good. And if that overconfidence was born of self esteem issues or a yearning for legitimacy... well, that fits geekiness as well.

It's nice that several of the other Fans -- including team leader (and old school leader) Rikk -- are cowed by this new breed of Fan. Sure, Rikk may have saved the world a bunch of times and may be the charismatic and inspirational leader the others all follow, but this new guy sure is confident, and did you see what he did to that statue? Man... I wish I could do that....

There will be consequences. There are always consequences in Fans, but I am comfortable that Campbell and Waltrip understand how to present a Fans for this new decade.

As a side note, I have to wonder if one of the threats Team Alpha's forced to confront will be old guard Fandom -- that breed of fan who loses interest in fantasy or science fiction but loves the Fandom Subculture, conventions and the like. Between those guys and the sort of geek who resents when something they love is embraced by the mainstream, it seems to me there would be a solid Team Omega out there, just ready to inform the world that these stuff isn't for them....

But, as always, I digress.

Have you found yourself incapable of understanding the delicate subtext that transforms a sequence of illustrations into a comic strip? Do you wish that someone with a degree and a beard could tell you what was going on in these strips? Have you suffered some form of head trauma that makes basic concepts difficult? Are you now or have you ever been pretentious?

Then my friends, today's post is for you. Rather than go into depth on underlying meaning and technique in a given comic strip, today we are going to look at a plethora of recent strips found 'online' or on the 'world wide web,' accessed by a 'computer' by someone 'with too much free time.' And, as an introduction to analysis for a new generation, these strips are going to be explained -- or 'interpreted,' in the parlance of the professional literary critic -- in such a way as to be accessible to those for whom comic strips are opaque but dense literary references are clear.

Please feel free to engage in your own interpretations of these strips. Literary criticism, in the end, is a subjective and discursive discipline, and there are no wrong answers. Except, of course, for those answers that are clearly wrong.

As always, if you cannot make out the fine details in the graphics, please click on the thumbnails and be delivered to the original in its native habitat. For more information on Webcomics and their Habitat, why not contact the Canadian Wildlife Service, in Ottawa?

Let us begin.

Least I Could Do:

The doctor lacks empathy and professional ethics due to narcissism. The doctor's brother enables these behaviors.

Real Life Comics:

Video Game enthusiasts often make impulsive and imprudent purchases, which can quickly spiral out of control.

PvP:

The cat's sociopathic disorder and atypical intelligence allows for both an inversion and dark subversion of a beloved classic American comic strip.

Girls with Slingshots:

The tall woman is a hopeless alcoholic capable of tragic self-delusion.

Shortpacked:

The lighter skinned male -- having suffered similar abuse in the past -- takes cathartic pleasure in the misfortunes and pain of his coworker.

Skin-Horse:

The helicopter is incapable of self-governing his use of profanity.

Superosity:

The genius living board is incapable of refusing the child-like human's irresponsible whims.

Diesel Sweeties

The woman is obsessed with mocking the man's masturbation. Also, she is a bitch.

I hope this brief foray into literary analysis has been educational and fun. Perhaps one or two of you may choose to become critics as well, after seeing these examples of the form. Tune in next time for more "Eric Interprets Webcomics Quickly!"