“But there are so many video game webcomics out there!” some may cry. “Why would I be interested in checking out this one?”

Because it’s damn funny, that’s why! You silly kids and yer questions….

Katie Tiedrich’s site, AwkwardZombie.com, features a weekly webcomic that mostly focuses on Nintendo games, along with some World of Warcraft, Phoenix Wright, Borderlands, and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, among others. You’ll also get healthy doses of Tiedrich’s slice-of-(fantasy)-life pie.

Pie? Dang, I must be hungry.

AwkwardZombie.com does a fine job of pointing out those little fallacies and game-holes we all like to lovingly poke fun at, augmented by its caricature art style. (Usin’ big thinky-words done maked me look SMART, y’awll!) The most recent comic–as of this posting, at least–is having a laugh at The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. It especially sang to me since I’m playing through the game right now and have similar occasional frustrations. Click each picture here for fullsize goodness, as Spwug’s cramped formatting makes for some squashy-lookin’ pics.

This comic speaks truth! WHY can’t you control Zelda normally when playing her? WHY do you have to draw a shaky pre-set path for her to follow? WHY does the path always need to be altered to avoid new dangers as soon as she starts walking it? WHY IS A CHILD LIKE LINK ALLOWED TO DRIVE TRAINS ALONE ALL OVER NEW HYRULE??

I complain because I love. I do mean that. Spirit Tracks has been my crack for months now. It’s just got a few things that could be improved upon, like every other game in existence. Moving along…!

A big chunk of the comic’s earlier content came from Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Lots of people picked to live in a house! Insert further “Real World” spoofing here! But yes, comedy and mayhem do ensue when your roommates consist of Roy, Marth, and Link….

…As well as Mewtwo, and cameos by the rest of the gang, including Snake, Otacon, and Pikachu. Poor Otacon. No one ever really cares, huh? Well, except Naomi, and we all know how that went, don’t we?

What you’ve already seen is what you get with these comics, and that’s just dandy by me. There’s no ongoing story to try to catch up on, no deeper meaning to discern (unless it’s “do something dumb in your video game, and it will get mocked on the Internet”). It’s just fun, cracky comics, starring the big and small guns of video gaming! Simple and entertaining. After a hard day in the real world, who doesn’t want to come home to see that on their computer monitors? What are ya, emo or somethin’?

Warning to the anti-emo: the journals below the comics are sadly sometimes prone to the self-deprecating “Waah, waah, I can’t draw, I suck, yet I keep making comics that I want you to keep reading even though THEY SUCK” comments that irritate me so much. But I’m happy to add that those are mostly found in earlier comics. The journals have largely become less negative and more neutral or positive in more recent times. Of course, there are rare moments where self-deprecation actually = comic humour!

I’ll leave you with a The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess comic that made me grin. I love Tiedrich’s snarky Midna in her Twilight Princess comics! Then we’ll chase that with a few more, mostly Zelda-related, comics. The artist really seems to love her Zelda jokes, and it shows!

And if you’ve ever raised an eyebrow at all of attorney Phoenix Wright’s underage “assistants”, you’ll give a chuckle and a knowing nod to this comic.

Another “PREACH it, sistah!” moment from Twilight Princess (and also Ocarina of Time). I remember shooting an arrow at a Big Poe in Ocarina of Time just as the sun came up, only to see my missile rip right through the spot where the Poe had been floating one second earlier. ARRRGH!!

And one final comic from Ocarina of Time. Yes, Navi, I’m pretty sure that counts as “cruel and unusual punishment” under Hyrulean law.

That’s all for now. Till next time, hop on over to AwkwardZombie.com and catch up on its offerings!

A year later, the site is inhabited only by crickets. It sits there, unchanging, for many more years, or until the server deletes the page. The webcomic is only ever again mentioned in forum discussions where people ask, “Whatever happened to such-and-such comic?”

In the spring, a young geek’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of loss. Let’s look at a few of the fallen, and sometimes missing, friends that I would have loved to see get a proper ending. We’ll be doing this again later, by the way. I have a pretty long list of comics I used to read that stopped without ending, and they make for great nostalgia columns, eh? Plus, there are other unfortunate webcomics being abandoned all the time….

5ideways by K. Sandra Fuhr – This supernatural apocalyptic thriller started off with a strong story and intriguing characters in 2005, only to taper off with updates as Real Life continued to eat away at the artist’s free time. By 2008, the comic was officially on hiatus, and the site sat largely untouched until November 18, 2008, when a “5ideways will return soon” graphic was tossed up on the front page. “Soon” was a bit of a stretch, sadly, as there have been no updates since then. However, the extremely talented creator didn’t just up and abandon webcomics completely. If her name sounds familiar, that’s because you may already have read/be reading her other works: Boy Meets Boy (completed), Friendly Hostility (completed, and reviewed here), and Other People’s Business (ongoing, and blurbed about at the bottom of this page).

Absurd Notions/Why the Long Face, both by Kevin Pease – The first, running from 1999 to 2007, focused on the work and play misadventures of a group of young-adult friends with varied hobbies (though they all seemed to enjoy tabletop gaming) and the occasional bout of mad science. You know, what has since become a staple of webcomics. The second ran from 2003 to 2007 and focused on the creator’s musings about life in general. Both trickled to a halt around the same time (with Absurd Notions in the middle of a story). Sometime in 2008 or 2009, I asked Pease about further updates. He mentioned that he didn’t intend to drop his comics completely, but it looks like if that’s still true, we’ll be waiting a while longer for updates. A certain Spwug webcomic writer can keep hoping!

Chrono Trigger Rip-Off (at least they’re honest!) by Mark and Tom (and possibly someone else; it’s not too clear) – Sprite comics are reviled by art elitists for not using original art, but I LIKE sprite strips. LOVE them, even. I love sprite art and everything you can do with it. I love sprites being used for tributes and parodies of the games they come from. This webcomic did all that. Sprite comics are all over now, and the whole “Video game sprites cause mayhem while behaving in naughty ways that are totally out of character with how they behave in their canon” thing is done and overdone, and often done wrong. Chrono Trigger Rip-Off isn’t exactly a unique entity now, but back when I found it (likely pre-2001, but the archives only go back to January of that year), sprite comics were a fairly shiny new concept for me. I got a lot of good laughs out of this comic and enjoyed the fact that it even had a plot. And while there’s nothing unique about the strip by today’s standards, I still regret that it died out in 2004 with its story unfinished.

RPG World by Ian Jones-Quartey – You just can’t talk about unfinished business in webcomics without invoking the granddaddy of them all. RPG World went from a superstar of webcomics to a lesson in how NOT to end a story during its final battle. (The lesson is: DON’T STOP UPDATING DURING THE FINAL BATTLE.) Remember that? This webcomic started off strong in 2000. It updated regularly, the story kept getting better and better, Cherry’s butt kept getting bigger and bigger, the audience grew steadily–even friends who otherwise never read webcomics read RPG World. Every breath was bated as the story blazed into its climax. Beloved characters were killed. World-altering secrets were revealed. The final boss was confronted. The heroes geared up for the greatest fight in history. And then…nothing. In 2005, the comic ground to a halt. It tried to defibrillate itself with fillers and side stories on very sporadic occasions until June 2007. Finally, the artist admitted what the audience already knew; he had no intention of completing the story. He was too busy, he’d lost interest, didn’t like seeing his old art, etc., etc….

Recently, he put out the word that he felt bad for leaving the audience in the lurch and wanted to find a new artist to take his scripts and finish the story. I’d dearly love to see that, but since then, there’s been no word on finding a new artist. The site has been dead for so long that I don’t know if anyone who could help even saw his request for a new artist. But if you’re interested, please contact him at his site. I selfishly want to see RPG World finally completed! And if you want to know what eventually helped take Ian’s time away from the comic, watch this show called The Venture Bros. that he’s worked on for a few years. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it. I think it’s about siblings who become business entrepreneurs. Also, something about butterflies. Maybe they fund a living butterfly museum together or something. I don’t know. (And if you think I’m being serious here, let’s talk bridges.)

Well, that’s enough out of me for now. I still hope to someday see these old loves of mine completed, before being shoved back in the shoeboxes of the Internet. If there’s a webcomic you enjoyed that ended prematurely, let me know. I’m seeking more stalled comics for future installments!

Maybe you’re a gamer, but you find most gaming comics too vulgar or violent or absurd. I don’t share this problem, but I’m sure someone has it out there. So, if you’re looking for a less R-rated gaming comic, would you be interested in reading the archives of one that manages to be family-friendly while not dumbing down the content in the slightest? Then keep reading!

As many of you already know, CrispyGamer.com recently decided to shoot itself in both feet, then the head for good measure (or overkill; I’m not sure where the brains of that operation actually were located when all this was going on). Staff canned, CEO gone, and, most importantly to this article, comics unceremoniously terminated. One of those was Aaron Williams’ Backward Compatible.

I’m a huge fan of his work. You might be familiar with some of his other online-offering titles, such as Nodwick, Full Frontal Nerdity, and PS238. He also wrote for the acclaimed comic North 40, published by Wildstorm, and is also working with Marvel on an undisclosed project. This guy is a true professional artist in every sense of the words (and a real dang friendly dude!), and it shows in his work. The art in his comics is sharp and clean, and the lettering makes it clear that at least one person out there who publishes online stayed awake in English class.

Backward Compatible focused on the daily work lives of a small group of fictitious Crispy Gamer staff, based on actual people. The focus wasn’t on an ongoing story or characterization (which makes my job here much easier); it was all about episodic, topical gaming humour. That’s the meat of it, and it was tasty meat indeed. Take a look at a few prime examples of what made Backward Compatible so entertaining. Guys, I kid you not, I had over a dozen favourite strips saved to potentially post here for this review. Every single one was so funny, I couldn’t choose. I took the geek way out and rolled a die to determine the winners. The rest will be posted at the end of this page as links. I just couldn’t leave them out!

We all had these same thoughts about Fallout 3 (click to enlarge):

Let’s make fun of the Syphilis–I mean Syfy–Channel’s bad decisions–that NEVER gets old! No, I’m not being sarcastic there. Why, oh WHY do we have crap like Man-Thing airing as original Syfy programming, but The Lost Room is STILL in freakin’ limbo?! Here’s a novel idea, Syfy: if you want us to stop mocking you, STOP BEING STUPID. (Whew. Think I may have eaten a tangent for breakfast. No more citrus for me!)

A requisite World of Warcraft comic? Don’t mind if I do!

If this existed, I would play the heck out of it:

Are you keen to read more yet? Then hop on over to the very first strip and start reading! Backward Compatible only ran from January 2008 to January 2010, so you can expect to get through the entire archives in several hours or less. Not a bad way to spend an evening at home, eh? The current fate of the comic is unknown, but it’s likely that the archives will eventually be removed from CrispyGamer.com, so don’t wait! Act now to read the sheer comic genius that is Backward Compatible before time runs out! And if you need a little more convincing, here are the other comics that didn’t make it into this review:

Even the Pope was not amused by the “pre-downloading” concept of Left 4 Dead 2.

The second panel of this one says pretty much everything I’ve ever thought about those ridiculous Mac-which-is-actually-still-a-PC vs. PC ads.

What it would actually look like if illegal hunting was influenced by video games. Epic LULZ abound!

More Syfy mockery! That stuff is always in style.

Yeah, I could see why some people wouldn’t want to play a Zork MMO.

Why Gordon Freeman never speaks. (Where is our Half Life Episode 3, anyways?)

The…interesting…weaponry of Left 4 Dead 2.

You just keep telling yourself that, Mac. I own over a half-dozen Nintendo consoles, but no Apple products.

Snark Trek.

See now why I had so much trouble choosing? Go read more for yourself! Don’t worry. Unlike Crispy Gamer and Backward Compatible itself, I’ll still be here next week when you’re done.

But maybe you’d just like a little bit of quickie holiday cheer? Well, Santa Marlink is here to help! Here’s a few webcomics that are currently running holiday-themed strips and/or storylines:

Basic Instructions instructs us on how to be gracious with our gifts and non-murdering of others during the holidays (use the “Recent Instructions” column on the right to find gift-related comics).

The Draconia Chronicles gives its annual presentation of how the Tigers and Dragons (and certain sneaky Foxes) put aside their differences–more or less–and celebrate the holidays.

Kevin and Kell, presenting the Domain version of the movie A Christmas Story.

The New Adventures of Queen Victoria answers letters from Santa and tells the story of “How the Osama Stole Christmas!”

Penny Arcade gives us another classic tale: “How the Illithid Stole Lolthmas.”

Sluggy Freelance shows how “FUNderful” the holidays are(n’t) in a city where a constant state of cheer is required by law year-round, and eggnog is administered via injection. So merry!

West Corner of the Park hopes you have a punderful Christmas!

I know other comics usually do a little somethin’ special for Christmas Day, but I can’t predict the future. Yet.

And if holiday atrocities are more your thing, check out the culinary crimes against the season over at the “Cake Wrecks” blog!

Back to last-minute shopping for me (I should instate a rule that if you don’t tell me you’re giving me a present until AFTER December 5th, you don’t get one in return). Don’t let the holiday humbugs bite! (Too hard.)

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Sorry for the last of a post last week, I was following the standard holiday herd mentality and visiting family for Thanksgiving. I hope everyone reading this had a good Thanksgiving as well.

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While I was visiting said family, I was able to go see Mannheim Steamroller in concert again thanks to them having a show in Detroit on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I had managed to see them in my local area last year, but they chose not to come back this year (my bet it was the area’s traffic that did this). I had my mom join me for the concert and she enjoyed it as well.

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Gotten from an IRC chat that I spend time in, I give to you 25 Hilarious WiFi Network Names. Note that this may not be safe for work. It gave me the idea to set up an access point with the name “The Black Hole” and have it constantly dump all traffic sent to it.

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That’s all for this week’s post!

Yeah, I know Internet quizzes are too easy when it comes to rant topics. But this the first time I’ve found occasion to do it, so cut me some slack, eh?

This chunk o’ venting applies all across the board of creative arts. And it opens with a plea: creators of all kinds, STOP TAKING THOSE MARY SUE LITMUS TESTS.

Does it seem like an odd thing to write about? I’m sure it does, but I’ve run into this topic six freakin’ times in the past month, and my patience with stupidity only goes so far. Which is to say, not far at all. I’m annoyed with people who make these tests, as well as the people who actually take them in the slightest bit seriously. I mean it. I’m going to smack some heads if I see one more message from someone who’s upset that “the Internet” told them their character sucks unto Sue-ness on some ridiculous quiz just because she has four colours dyed in her hair.

If you’ve spent much time reading online, you’re almost certainly familiar with the Mary Sue/Gary Stu. They go far beyond simple “insert” characters, which are based upon a creator of the work they appear in, but aren’t necessarily Sues/Stus themselves if well-designed. Mary Sues/Gary Stus are characters who are too perfect for the world of the story they’re in, or are so stricken with bad luck despite being “perfect” that you’re supposed to just want to hug them (but often you end up only wanting them to walk off a cliff). They’re always the smart one with knowledge beyond the ken of their peers, the pretty one, and/or the hero. Every other character either wants to sex ‘em or kill ‘em, past the bounds of believability. No matter how badly they behave, other characters easily forgive them–unless those guys are the ones unnaturally obsessed with killing the character. The eyes of the story world’s other characters are always upon the Sue/Stu. The rules of the story’s reality get bent or flat-out broken in order to make a Sue/Stu look better, in both the “Sue/Stu is a shining star” way and the “Sue/Stu is deserving of ultimate sympathy” way. (Look, I’ma just call them all the traditional “Sues” from now on. If Johnny Cash can have “A Boy Named Sue”…then so can I, dammit.)

Unfortunately, as always happens with time and the Internet, the original definition gets warped. People forget how to really define the thing anymore. And suddenly, the definition is incorrectly made so broad that pretty much ANY character can be called a Sue. That’s where the Mary Sue Litmus Tests come in. If you take those quizzes, I estimate there’s a 90% chance your character will be branded a Sue by the test results. I’ll be adding my “research” (if you can call it that) here to prove my point, don’t worry.

For some reason, variations on the “Original Mary Sue Litmus Test” (if such a thing even exists anymore) plague the Internet like a bedbug infestation. For an even more unfathomable reason, budding artists take these tests for their original characters, and take the results seriously, to look at the number of feedback comments wailing “I worked so hard on making my character believable, but this test says she’s just a Sue!” Look, people–as a general rule, Internet quizzes are not written by learned experts. They’re made by bored teens in high school, by college nerds slacking off term papers, and by adult nerds after a long shift behind the cash register at work. I shouldn’t even have to say this, but I will anyways….If you take an Internet quiz–hell, even a random non-quiz website as a valid source of feedback for your creative designs, you’re not just asking for failure. You’re begging for it. Those quizzes and other non-scholarly sources will always steer you in the wrong direction.

What really screws up these tests’ Sue-definitions is that the quizzes use incorrect guidelines to determine Sue-ness. Instead of going by the believability of personality, “perfectness”, and how much the rules are bent for a character, these tests tend to focus on a character’s physical appearance, hobbies, and even their name. I plunked “Mary Sue Litmus Test” into Google and got…well…FAR more results than I wanted to see, given my obvious dislike of this quiz. No, I won’t link to them. I’m giving them too much attention just mentioning them here, really. I took the first six tests that didn’t try to spam me with pop-ups or demand my email address to get my results, and here’s my haul.

Pretty Much Everyone Is A Mary Sue according to these tests, as proven by not just using fictional characters, but also real people, yers truly included. Most of these tests, being near-clones of one another, use similar or identical scoring systems, rating your character from 0 to whatever on the Sue scale (I averaged my scores as best I could).

I took these six quizzes for three characters (two mine from two different canons, third from a video game), two real-life friends of mine, and myself. (And good gods, did that ever take forever. The things I do for you guys….) The results? Five out of those six characters/people were classed as “High Mary Sues.” The only exception was a personal character who’s a talking plant and was classed “Not a Sue”–most of the questions just don’t apply to flora. I tried to answer the questions a second time as if the plant was human, and got a “You’re a Sue!”-type score, though still lower than for us other five human(oid)s. Answers only vary so much when the character changes species. But still, I think your tests are a bit broken, guys. And I’m not the only one–the roleplayers on this LiveJournal community post voiced their own problems with how the quiz they tried was lacking (warning: link contains no-no words). Says LiveJournal user harlecerule: “Basically, the test says ‘Is your character interesting? Okay, they’re a Sue.’ without enough sections for flaws/provisos that turn a ‘Sue trait’ into ‘oh, okay’ to potentially lower the score.” Llamrei replies, “Yeah, that was kind of my impression. Basically their definition of someone who isn’t a Sue is someone who is not out of the ordinary in any way whatsoever.” Browse the 160 comments tot that post, and you’ll see the vast majority of characters tested were high Sues, regardless of how well-designed they were outside of their unique traits.

It gets better, though–the three fictional characters got a LOWER Sue score than the three real people. Yet we were all still High Mary Sues who are completely unbelievable as characters, according to this quiz. My ex-military friend who’s travelled extensively with the forces, learned all about armed combat, has several visible scars from injuries received during training, and earned numerous awards? Totally unbelievable Sue, even though his experience is pretty normal for military personnel. My friend who’s generally considered quite attractive, is multilingual, hotheaded, and very active in conservation groups? Totally unbelievable Sue, even though, again, she’s not that unusual a person in this evolving and competitive world. Me, with an unusual first and last name, frequently mistaken for being a teenager half my age, and left-handed? Totally unbelievable Sue. Apparently having any sort of unique name and DNA that’s been good to me makes me unbelievable as a character. Huh. Who knew. (Of course, I’m not writing up EVERYTHING that affected our Sue-scores…just referencing some of the more ridiculous questions on these quizzes.)

I think it’s the name questions that are some of the most ridiculous. “Does the character’s name mean something?” Unless you made up a name comprised of syllables you like the sound of, EVERYONE’S name means something in some old language. Even common names like John (Hebrew, “God’s grace”) and Margaret (Greek, “pearl”) mean something. Oh, and don’t think you’re off the hook if you just made up a name that has no meaning; unique names ALSO get you Sue points. Being named after anything in nature, such as an animal or meteorological phenomenon, nets you Sue points as well. This is where the test really screwed me, since my parents made up one of my names, and, being of Native American descent, one of my last names is an animal. Which reminds me, having a Native American character puts you in Sue territory in half the quizzes I took. I suppose I should be offended. Apparently, realistic characters don’t have names like Maria TallChief or Peter Blue Cloud. (Go ahead, Google them. I’ll wait.) Really, if you whittle the quizzes down to their bare elements, just having a name puts you in Sue territory, the way some of these tests are rigged. And gods forbid you actually put any imagination into your character’s names! Can’t have creativity when we’re creating, now, can we? That said, you’re toeing the line of Sue-ness when you name your prophesied hero “Destiny” or give names that describe characters’ traits even though no one could have predicted them at birth, like “Oak” for a strong man who’s built like a tree, or “Melody” for a character who loves singing. You can perhaps pull it off if the babies were named based upon some old fortune-teller’s vision of their future at birth, but it’s really a crapshoot.

That’s not even getting into the ways these quizzes repeatedly contradict themselves. Scars appear to be a sore point for whoever writes these things, because I saw two related questions repeated in nearly every test. “Does your character have any visible scarring from battle?” Sue points! “Does your character have no scars despite being in battle?” Sue points! The problem is that these quizzes TRY to be thorough, but they don’t ask enough questions to provide provisos, and also don’t ask the right questions. Just leaving it at “you get Sue points whether or not your character is scarred” is just sloppy writing. Why would you take a quiz about creating art that’s sloppily compiled? As another example, here’re two more contradicting questions that repeat in each of the tests. “Is your character much older than they appear?” Sue points! “Is your character much younger than they appear?” Sue points! It seems that everyone in the History Of Ever must look EXACTLY within their age range. Well, dang. I guess I’ll go punish my naughty genes now.

Additionally, these tests mistake self-insert characters (GOOD if well-written) for Sues (generally always BAD). “Does the character share your beliefs?” “Is the character’s name based off your own?” Dammit, people, how many times must I go into this? Self-inserts are NOT exclusively Sues! And when I was growing up, I was taught that you’re supposed to write what you know. Writing what you know typically does mean that you, the creator, may share a few traits with your characters. But not too much, or you can cross the line into BAD self-insert. Which is largely indistinguishable from a Sue, if a character has many of your good traits and is very skilled, but has few of your faults. I know it’s a very confusing fine line. Which brings me to the final section of this rant-and-a-half….

Basically, physical traits, names, and interests don’t make a character a Sue by default. You can have a Sue who isn’t gorgeous or doesn’t have godlike powers. Conversely, you can have a well-balanced, well-written character who IS beautiful and powerful. While many Sues DO have superior looks, hobbies, intelligence, and/or abilities, those traits do not a Sue make. What makes a Sue is the lack of balance in your character and story design. In order to have them be believable as a character, they must also be believable as a real, flesh-and-blood person. They must make mistakes and bad decisions. They can’t always have the answers. They must have flaws, and they must pay for exercising those flaws–and I mean personality flaws, like occasional cowardice or flying into rages over trivial matters. Being clumsy or missing a finger doesn’t make your character well-rounded. Those are just physical quirks.

If they have extreme power, there still must be limits on that power so they’re not ALWAYS the saviour of everyone around. For example: “Yes, I could destroy the enemy castle with my mind, but the backlash of the power would put me in a coma if it didn’t just kill me, and I’d be totally useless to you guys then.” Or “Yes, I could destroy the enemy castle with my mind, but I can’t control my powers, and it’s not worth the risk that I’d just end up killing all of us by accident instead of the enemies!”

Everyone can’t be in love with or befriend your character. Everyone is not your friend in real life, after all. Not everyone thinks you’re special, and so it must be for your characters. Everyone can’t be talking about your character when they’re not around, or following your character’s every move. Trust me, no one gives a crap about much of the stuff you (all of us) do here in the real world, and the same must hold true in your created worlds if you want balance. It’s just not that interesting for other people to sit around listening to your character explain how they were the sole saviour of the people trapped in the enemy castle by destroying it with their mind. Any rules that you create for your world must also apply to your character. I don’t care if you’ve got a Jedi with a lightsaber in medieval France. That Jedi is still going to need rules and limits on what he can and can’t do, or you’re going to have a very boring character. Your audience wants to see what makes your character sympathetic and human (regardless of actual species). If you don’t give them that, then you won’t have an audience.

So forget about those Internet quizzes, you who took them. Trust them, and you’ll end up with a pile of bland flour instead of an interesting character. Focus on making your creations well-rounded and balanced. Examine the world around you to see how people really behave, and make sure it comes through in your works. Don’t be afraid to get creative! You’ll know you’ve done a good job when you notice your audience steadily increasing and the feedback is overwhelmingly positive. (Exceptions to this include Stephenie Meyer, who is essentially paid to write Sues. But that’s another rant for another time.)

And don’t waste your breath trying to tell me how X character is obviously a Sue because they’re pretty/descended from angels/a great singer, rather than because they never do anything wrong and all the main characters have a crush on them. You need to re-read this article from the beginning if you STILL think crap which isn’t related to character personality development makes a Sue.

Yeah, I think that’s enough from me for now. I’ll be seein’ you all next time…whether you like it or not!

Right now, my motivations for doing the strip, not to mention my energy levels, are nearly at zero.

The reason is simple: I failed with Bruno. My ultimate goal was to make a living at this. But it didn’t work out that way. Yes, I kept telling myself that it doesn’t matter that I’m not making a living as a cartoonist, I enjoy doing this as a hobby. Which is not entirely untrue, either. But deep down, what I really wanted was to join the illustrious ranks of webcartoonists who are making a living by publishing their comics online. That ain’t gonna happen. I’m just not that good… either at cartooning, or self-promotion, or both.

Furthermore, my readership has been dropping steadily over the past few years, though I’ve nobody to blame but myself for that, due to all the “breaks” I’ve had to take. As well, feedback on the strip has been at an all-time low. I rarely get any e-mail from readers these days, and the Bruno the Bandit forum is all but dead. I can’t help but wonder if you the readers aren’t getting fed up with the strip. If so, I’m not sure I blame you. I can’t help but wonder if my lack of enthusiasm for working on the strip hasn’t affected its quality of late. Rather than plod along and churn out comics I’m not proud of, I figure I should take a break and recharge the ol’ batteries.

Is this the end of Bruno the Bandit? No. But from now on, when I create new comics, it’s because I feel like doing so, not because I feel compelled to put them out on a weekly schedule.

I’m a huge fan of the comic. Being a long-time reader means I’m pretty familiar with the ebbs of flows of the comic over the years. Which means, I have to agree with much of McDonald’s blog about why Bruno so far hasn’t been successful as a business, having seen things like the frequent hiatuses. And that’s where I’m going with this post.

When you get down to it, there’s a lot that can go wrong when it comes to webcomics. That’s hardly news. We’ve probably all seen creators who started out strong and raked in the donations, only to hit a writer’s block that killed the comic and alienated the fanbase. Or, say, creators who got in over their heads when it came to merchandising, spending so much time stressing over pre-orders and getting things shipped out that their core work, the comic itself, suffered. The two biggest wildcards in making a business out of webcomics are, of course, the creating artist(s) and the audience. An artist may have the best story idea in history, but if you can’t ensnare and hold your target audience with it, you’re screwed. Likewise, the best comic in history won’t stay on top if the artist repeatedly flakes out on updates, delivers empty promises to the fans, or just drives them away with bad behaviour outside the comic.

If you’re seeking to make webcomics a business, you have to be open to listening to your fans’ suggestions. As part of the audience, I’m-a gonna list some of the things that destroy my enthusiasm for any given webcomic and lead me to spend my money elsewhere. I won’t be naming names (though I might be linking links). As always, it’s just my opinion; your mileage probably widely varies.

Flaky updates and empty promises. – Look, it’s okay to have a comic that updates sporadically, but be clear about this point on your site. Don’t say “Updates every Monday!” if it’s more like every Tuesday or every other Wednesday, Thursday, Friday…or whenever you remember you’re supposed to be working on it. Don’t change the update schedule every few weeks. Don’t say “comic will be up tonight” if there’s a chance outside of power outage or family emergency that you can’t deliver. If you have a schedule, stick to it. If you can’t, change the schedule to something that you CAN stick to, even if it means your updates go from three times weekly to once monthly. Hell, even “Updates sporadically” is a legitimate schedule since it tells us not to expect an update every time we check the site. Flaking out on your promises makes you look like a sloppy businessman. If my mechanic doesn’t have my car ready at the appointed time because he never got around to looking at it, I’ll be Googling for a new repairman. Same for webcomics. If you can’t deliver what you promise, I’m not trusting you with my donations or merchandise orders. You’re unreliable.

Semi-relevant to the above: Don’t use your “issues” to be flaky if you want to succeed as a business. – You’re not a freak if you suffer from chronic depression or adult ADHD or any myriad of other mental, physical, and emotional ailments. And I’ll smack anyone who says you are. But if you want to be a strong business, you can’t repeatedly use your issues as an excuse for backing out on your promised delivery of goods. In the “real world,” you get fired if you continually call in sick, no matter how much your boss sympathizes with you. Online, the audience is to some extent your boss, if you’re working for profit. If you constantly disappear for three months and then say each time, “Sorry, my *insert ailment here* wouldn’t let me draw,” the sympathy we all feel for you at first gradually turns into frustration. Millions of people work every day, doing their best to compensate for and conquer their ailments. In order to succeed, you have to work even when you don’t feel like it. I realize this is a touchy subject, but far too often, I’ve seen a webcomic artist vanish for an extended period, only to blog, “I was too depressed to make any updates, but please keep donating!” Your ailments are an explanation, never an excuse. I say this as someone who’s worked hard to defeat my own issues.

This next one invokes Will Wheaton’s Law: “Don’t be a [rhymes with 'stick'].” – You guys might wanna watch your behaviour even when you’re not on your personal site. Whether you like it or not, people’s eyes are on you anywhere you go online, once you gain any sort of following. About four years ago, my favourite webcomic was this unique and well-drawn story about a boy summoned to save another world, only it turns out the boy has so many mental issues and voices in his head that he needs saving almost more than the world he’s supposed to protect. I was in love with this story and its world; I recommended the comic to everyone I knew. Then I noticed that I was on several unrelated forums with the comic’s creator. Then I noticed what a liar, hypocrite, and all-around trolling jerk said creator was, when he didn’t think any of his fans were around to notice. He would deliberately start trouble on these forums, get smacked down by the moderators, then go back to his comic’s forum and cry to his fans about how racist and closed-minded everyone else was, and how poor widdle him got in trouble for being a decent person surrounded by trolls. I lost respect for that person then, and the comic was soon replaced by another in my “favourite” status. Prior to that, I’d been chomping at the bit for the comic to be released in book form. Now the comic’s finally seen the release of its first book, and I don’t care anymore. My interest is gone; that comic isn’t getting my money. I still read it out of habit, but my love for the comic has waned (though that’s also partly because the story’s pacing is awful–almost nothing has happened to advance the plot in the past few years). Some people can separate the artist from the attitude, but I’m afraid my blind eye is only a little bit nearsighted. I’ve had similar issues with a now-idle sprite comic whose artist constantly insulted his own audience, and the writer for a comic in which two people on opposite sides of the world see each other’s lives when asleep. Long rant short: if I catch you being a jerk, you can forget seeing my cash.

Don’t air your dirty laundry to your fans. – For the past year and more, the creator of another comic I follow has been repeatedly begging for more donations, complaining of the financial crisis he, his wife, and their year-old son are in, already having lost one of his family’s properties and dealing with only sporadic employment on top of the bills for the baby. His most current blog posts have been mentions that the comic is only drawing in a fraction of the donations he needs to fund his expenses….Only, he recently blogged that he had the chance to buy the car he’s always wanted. (Note it’s not NEEDS; it’s WANTS.) And even used, this particular model doesn’t come cheaply. My research results averaged from $5,000 to $10,000. You’re probably having a similar reaction to the one I had: “How is it that someone who can barely afford to feed his family can buy a car he doesn’t even need?” I don’t have a problem with people in financial crisis making little splurges. Sometimes that’s all that keeps you sane. But THIS? Is not a little splurge. Many of us have things we’ve wanted to buy for years, but being an adult and providing for your family must come first, particularly if the money situation is as dire as you claim. I acknowledge maybe there’s some unwritten backstory that justifies him buying a car instead of saving for bills, but the situation is presented on his blog as I shared it here. It gets worse, though; the most recent blog post has him complaining that he’ll never be able to buy this car, and putting the blame for it on an unspecified party. His equally underemployed wife, who shares a blog column, posts at the same time that she’s upset that she’s being misunderstood and ignored. Neither one says who they’re talking about, but the timing? Hmmm….If they’re not talking about each other, a little blurb clarifying this would go such a long way. As it stands, right now I’m not donating to someone who appears to value a car over family financial needs, not even if his next post says the three of them are living in a cardboard box.

Now, what’s probably the most important sum-up point of my lengthy rantings–and this part comes from my previous experience with running Web-based enterprises: If you don’t run your webcomic like a business, you won’t succeed as a business. – Just putting up a donation link and three updates every week usually won’t float you. You gotta pimp yourself out more than a five-dollar hooker. A successful business has to advertise, network, merchandise, reinvest…all those things most people hate doing. Most webcomics can’t sustain themselves by selling just books, either–these books tend to be expensive small-run prints with little to no profit. Begging for donations usually doesn’t work either, except to recoup some expenses. Most fans want something more substantial in exchange for their money, like T-shirts, mugs, and plushies, just for starters. Just look at Penny Arcade. Those guys are the classic model for how to run a webcomic business correctly. They stick to their schedule. They offer varied merchandise in their stores. (And they know when to delegate responsibilities like merchandising and advertising so they’re not overwhelmed with projects and can focus on the comic.) They don’t usually talk about their issues, and when Gabe does, it’s not in a whinging way; it’s more educational. They keep their business and personal personas largely separate online (chances are, you’ve been on a forum with one of them in the past and never even knew it), or at least try to be neutral about talking of personal matters on their site blogs. I’m not saying that doing everything Penny Arcade does guarantees you success; after all, their comic has a more mainstream appeal than many others out there in the Interwebs. But learning how to be a businessman won’t hurt you, either.

As usual, this “little” rant got away from me, but it’s all done…for now. I must now go reinforce my pillow fort against angry artists, so ciao!

*That doesn’t mean I’ll never write reviews for comics I don’t like. But for my past reviews, I’ve just gone through my regular reading list of comics–and I don’t tend to keep reading things that have stayed past their welcome with me. That said, I actually do have a review in mind for a webcomic that I gave up on, but as it’s only a few months old, I’m giving it half a year to improve before I make with the frowny-faces. Fair’s fair.

Originally, I planned to just leave off reviewing these ceWebrities of webcomic fame and only mention them in terms of comic news and what-have-you. Still, though, I couldn’t escape the desire to blow these guys’ horns. In order to satisfy myself without beating too many deceased equines, I’ve settled on a compromise: the mini-review.

This time, I’m singing the praises of Phil and Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius (with colourist Cheyenne Wright), a success story in print as well as online. Girl Genius has in the past been nominated for the Web Cartoonists’ Choice Awards, the Eisner Award, the Hugo Awards, and the Eagle Awards; it’s won a Hugo and numerous WCCA categories. The Foglios themselves are no strangers to art fans. Phil Foglio is probably most famous for providing his uniquely-styled illustrations to the MythAdventures series of books by Robert Lynn Asprin, as well as creating former Dragon Magazine comic series What’s New with Phil & Dixie (which you should really check out on the Foglio’s website, along with Girl Genius and the equally-entertaining Buck Godot!) See? There’s some serious talent behind this print-comic-turned-webcomic-turned-print-comic! That alone should be enough to persuade anyone who’s heard of Girl Genius but never checked it out to take a look.

But we all like pretty pictures, right? And I did say that Phil’s art style is unique…extremely unique. If you’ve seen his work before, you’ll instantly recognize it again. Combine Phil’s art with the colouring talent of Cheyenne Wright, and you’ve got a lovely little vision of sequential art to massage your eyeballs. Let’s take a look at the art of Girl Genius, in which the Foglios’ love of Victorian-era dress and culture and steampunk are allowed to roam freely. (Kaja invented the term “gaslamp fantasy” to describe the comic’s less punky, but no less steamy, setting. I don’t mean “steamy” in the saucy way, either. I mean it in the “Water plus heat equals steam. The world can be saved by steam!” way.) Girl Genius takes place in a version of Europe where mad scientists known as “Sparks” run rampant with their minions and twisted creations. When the heroes of your comic are mostly inventors with tenuous grips on sanity at best, problem solving tends to take on new and amusing levels of meaning. Let’s pull out that art and allow me to illustrate (hehe) with a recent storyline:

The disembodied voice in the second panel talking about tours is the voice of the mostly-insane castle/fortress/mad laboratory the characters are currently trying to repair…so that its homicidal behaviour is directed against, well, pretty much anyone OTHER than the guys doing the repair job.

But the life of a Spark is not all fun and games and dissecting of brains. When you muck about with the very forces that hold our world together, you’re bound to run into a bit of backlash. One of the Sparks, a prince named Tarvek, ends up with the contagious lethal disease Hogfarb’s Resplendent Immolation, which apparently turns its victims all sorts of pretty, pretty colours before death (which may involve spontaneous combustion, or may just lead to a literal meltdown of the body). And also makes them delirious. But really, who notices the difference when the infected is a mad scientist?

And how do you treat a terminal illness? Well, if you’re ALSO a Spark, the solution is easy: you hook yourself up to the sufferer to stabilize him (which also gives you his symptoms), move his brain into a nice safe jar or something for storage, then kill him, drain his blood, decontaminate it, and then bring him back to life, at which point he’ll be good as new! Simple, huh? I wonder why doctors never use this treatment in our world….

Hijinks ensue, of course, and our heroine Agatha Heterodyne ends up catching the disease herself. Which rather complicates matters, as she was the one who was going to be treating both Tarvek and rival noble Gilgamesh Wulfenbach (who did the hooking up of himself to Tarvek in order to stabilize–and rationalise–him). Oh, you wacky Sparks! But this also brings out the “romance” part of the comic’s tagline, “Adventure, Romance, MAD SCIENCE!” Our two rich boys are both gunning for Agatha’s affections, which means putting her health before theirs:

If you’ve fallen behind (or, gods forbid, never started) reading, how can you not want to read this comic after all that? Have you no sense of adventure? Have you no love of romance? Have you no obsession with MAD SCIENCE!?

Well, now, even without doing character bios and exposition of the overarching plot and whatnot, this Girl Genius “mini-review” was still a bit longer than you’d expect a “mini” to be. But that just shows you how enthusiastic I am about the work of the Foglios and Wright!

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Sorry about the lack of a post last week, I was quite busy helping the Tech Crew of Nekocon’s Main Events room. It was very tiring, but I’m happy to say that most things went off without a hitch.

I almost missed making this post as well; between almost getting swept away by the nor’easter that came out of the remnants of Ida (ok, not really, but I did see quite a bit of flooding), and keeping myself busy with some coding I had been meaning to do (when my power wasn’t out due to the former), I’ve been busy these past few days.

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Still running the release candidate of Windows 7; I’m hoping to be able to hold off changing over the release version until I get my new system built sometime early next year. Speaking of my new system, I decided that I’m going to try to go for one of the new six-core i7 processors instead of the current quad-core versions. Yeah, I currently don’t know what I’d do with all of them (with HyperThreading, it makes a total of 12 virtual cores), but I’m sure I’ll find something.

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I’m a fan of the TV series Numb3rs, and while the producers try to do their research, they don’t always get things right. Take, for instance, last week’s episode: The FBI is trying to find a couple of hackers and one of the characters suggests that they keep an eye out on Internet Relay Chat (IRC) for them. Now IRC is real, but some of the things mentioned about it in the episode aren’t completely true. The episode makes it seem like there’s only one IRC server on the internet (there are hundreds of different IRC networks, if not thousands), that it’s totally anonymous (not true on most networks), nothing is tracked (again, not true, some channels on IRC have bot programs whose purpose is to track stats of the channel), and that all users speak leet (yet again, not true; a lot of users just chat normally in their language of choice). Just remember that this is a TV show and sometimes (or most of the time) the facts are stretched to keep things interesting. Not to say that there aren’t IRC networks out there where this stuff isn’t true, but it is usually not the norm.

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That’s it for this week’s post!

….Okay, so the cost of a convention admission badge is considerably more than what you’d pay to ship a poster and a T-shirt to your home. Also, in order to attend a convention, you have to actually leave said home. But I’m here, fresh from Nekocon 2009, to show you the pros of allowing cons into your life! (So, how much are you hating me right now?)

With your keepsake convention membership badge, you’ll receive nigh-unlimited access to your favourite artists, courtesy of the Artists’ Alley! Hang around their tables breathing on them while you drop $20 on a T-shirt and calendar! Just imagine, you’ll finally be able to give that fifteen-minute presentation to the creators of The Draconia Chronicles about how their story’s world would be infinitely improved by a crossover with Harry Potter and a repeat appearance by Christopher Walken as a Twilight vampire. Don’t forget to bring your laptop with PowerPoint slideshow!

The best part about that picture is that I totally did not expect to find a Walken/Harry Potter pic when I Googled “Christopher Walken Sparkle.” Thanks, Totally Looks Like.com! Hopefully-humourous text is my addition.

But that’s not all–act now, and you’ll also receive PANELS. That’s right, long discussions and autograph sessions hosted by your beloved artists in which you discuss their works and ask them uncomfortable questions about their sex lives for one to two hours! You can’t get THAT experience from sitting at home reading webcomics!

No, guys, I will never stop channeling Billy Mays. Sorry.

But seriously, folks, if you want to show support for the artists you love and wish to know, you can do a lot worse than to come hang out at a fan convention. Nekocon is an anime-themed convention, but you can find artists of all types, at all types of cons. This weekend, I hobnobbed with and/or observed these rising stars of webcomics in their unnatural element:

–Danny Valentini and (Spwug’s own) Donnie Sturges of The Draconia Chronicles

–Jamie Sturges of Why So

–Chris Malone of Blue and Blond (Chris, if you’re reading this, I never did find out who the screamer in room 417 was to congratulate them.)

–Dave Lister of Paradox Lost

–Aja Moore of vantage/vantage (Currently on a semi-hiatus until the artist finds more reliable webhosting. She also has done other works as well–check out the rest of her DeviantArt page and website!)

Michael Terracciano of Dominic Deegan was sadly not at Nekocon this year, for which we all weep, but he’s yet another webcomic artist who does the con circuit. Speaking of the con circuit, thanks to these conventions, you’ll be able to meet the entire range, from “small business” comic artists to big-name ones whose works are published both online and in newspapers around the world.

C’mon…give conventions a try. Even if you leave traumatized by that Sailor Jupiter with the goatee and hairy legs, you’ll still have your webcomic swag and the beginnings of a bee-YOO-tee-fool friendship with the artists you love! (Sometimes a bit too much. Remember–if you have to ASK an artist to sign your underclothes, chances are, they don’t actually want to.)

The preceding article comes to you courtesy of the zombie plague, which the writer is still afflicted with. Spwug assumes no responsibility for opinions presented here, or undead uprisings that occur as a result of viewing this page.