|
Dawgstar posted:I was very impressed that Concerned's creator stuck to their guns and never did anything else Half Life-related. I feel like Episode 1 was out when it was ongoing so there was more material (but of course not much more and even then not exactly a deep well). Concerned was great and the phrase "can't wait to see that magical hovercraft!" gets stuck in my head sometimes. I have an archive of it and one of these days I'm going to put in the coding work to turn it into a "plain" CBZ and a "with commentary" CBZ so I can reread it on my tablet. SlothfulCobra posted:I remember a webcomic that I think was called "Bhag" and it was sort of like one of your D&D party setups, I think one main character was a dwarf, another was an elf, there were probably more. I think the elf had some kind of magical bag of tricks. I vaguely remember it having a unique take on fantasy that I liked. I think when I first found it, it had already decided to do a reboot of itself (which seems like a pretty good way to burn yourself out as a creator), and I think by this point whatever website it was on has been lost to the void. Bhag: Sack of Justice, yeah. The elf had a magical bag of tricks and was also completely insane. The only bit I remember is that at one point he declared himself "the queen of treif" and ran around pulling shrimp and lobsters out of it. It dropped off my radar when the author planned to reboot it. There are like four pages surviving on the Internet Archive, and that seems to be it.
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2022 13:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 11:17 |
|
|
Kennel posted:That's great, time to ruin my rose-tinted memories. I just went through the first link and it looks like it's actually 175 comics in total right to the end so I don't know exactly what's missing
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2022 14:26
|
|
|
Gravitas Shortfall posted:I just went through the first link and it looks like it's actually 175 comics in total right to the end so I don't know exactly what's missing I just read through it, having mostly missed it at the time - it felt as if there was some pages missing around #41 when Anders and Maria seem to just be in hospital with various injuries without explanation? But the comic skips back and forth through time a fair bit so I don't know if that may have been intended, or if I just missed something Also, goddamn, that ending is a punch
|
|
#
?
Jun 1, 2022 15:34
|
|
|
At some point Penny Arcade redesigned their website on mobile so that each comic is chopped into three and displayed vertically. Naturaly this causes issues as none of these comics were designed with this in mind, speech bubbles overlap borders and get cut off all over the place. New strips don't even take the new format into accout. Like just keep panels self contained, syndicated strips solved this decades ago. Theres a 'view landscape' button that gives a more sensible horizontal scroll that wirks fine, but you have to toggle it on each page. The solution to this problem is probably 'stop reflexively visiting penny arcade.com' but i thought its interesting that while theres webcomics that have been hamstrung by unavoidable changes in technology one of the big names has voluntarily and unessasarily hamstrung themselves because phone screen scroll down
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2022 12:50
|
|
|
'They reinvented the wheel in the dumbest way possible' perfectly fits all my experiences with Penny Arcade's art.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2022 13:36
|
|
|
girl dick energy posted:'They reinvented the wheel in the dumbest way possible' perfectly fits all my experiences with Penny Arcade's art. lol
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2022 13:46
|
|
|
Mr Phillby posted:At some point Penny Arcade redesigned their website on mobile so that each comic is chopped into three and displayed vertically. This makes me think of the time Penny Arcade made fun of Scott McCloud because McCloud had the audacity to say that webcomics offered new potential in panel layouts because you can scroll down a page online.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2022 15:23
|
|
|
Nuns with Guns posted:This makes me think of the time Penny Arcade made fun of Scott McCloud because McCloud had the audacity to say that webcomics offered new potential in panel layouts because you can scroll down a page online. Looking up that comic, apparently they were also upset at the... monetary implications? "How dare you say we can make money!"
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2022 16:28
|
|
|
The penny arcade guys have a lot of bad opinions, and their sense for business is so disastrously bad that it's a miracle a psycho MBA latched on to them and saved them from themselves.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2022 16:35
|
|
|
Mr Phillby posted:At some point Penny Arcade redesigned their website on mobile so that each comic is chopped into three and displayed vertically. huge lol
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2022 17:33
|
|
|
Wittgen posted:The penny arcade guys have a lot of bad opinions, and their sense for business is so disastrously bad that it's a miracle a psycho MBA latched on to them and saved them from themselves.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2022 17:42
|
|
|
Kinda. They had signed some things that were a hair away from giving away all rights in perpetuity in exchange for a pack of bubblegum. Robert Khoo pointed this out and then became the architect of their financial success. It was an intensely fortuitous partnership. It's so hard to square the penny arcade guys with their accomplishments. Child's Play is huge and does some good work. PAX is huge. Acquisitions Incorporated was a real pioneer in the actual play podcast space. As artists, they are wildly self indulgent. Currently they're out of touch dad bros. At least one is a huge rear end in a top hat. But they have had a real midas touch over the years.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2022 17:52
|
|
|
Kinda like if Ray Kroc just really liked and respected the McDonald brothers' original burgers and wanted to preserve and do right by them. There's a thousand stories of something like that going horribly wrong for the original creators, or at least leaving them in the dust as the thing grows beyond them.girl dick energy posted:'They reinvented the wheel in the dumbest way possible' perfectly fits all my experiences with Penny Arcade's art. Some artists when they end up doing their one big thing that they succeed at and they do for a long while really stagnate and decay as they feel less need to be creative or develop or experiment. It's not always bad, but it can be disappointing as they settle into their rut. An alternative that you don't often see is when the artist does feel the need to keep developing and experimenting, but their own sense of aesthetics goes rotten, or at least drifts so far out of the mainstream or what their particular audience was expecting that just every development makes things worse. Some times there's a good reason like maybe the artist is jumping mediums or trying out a new genre, but sometimes they just decide to draw terrible looking faces melting into goo for no apparent reason.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2022 19:18
|
|
|
Wittgen posted:Kinda. They had signed some things that were a hair away from giving away all rights in perpetuity in exchange for a pack of bubblegum. Robert Khoo pointed this out and then became the architect of their financial success. It was an intensely fortuitous partnership. the man was smart not to kill the goose that laid the golden egg
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2022 19:25
|
|
|
The best description I have heard of the PA guys is that they were anti-establishment guys that suddenly became the establishment and handled it without a hint of introspection and self awareness.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2022 20:47
|
|
|
girl dick energy posted:'They reinvented the wheel in the dumbest way possible' perfectly fits all my experiences with Penny Arcade's art. I mean, I don't disagree with 'it looks gross as hell, and not in a good way.' I'd just like to hear it in more depth.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2022 22:32
|
|
|
Drakyn posted:I unironically would like to know more, or at least get a link to it - most of what I've seen of people criticizing the arc of penny arcade's art isn't super in-depth and I'm curious for more details. I seem to recall that Gabriel gradually became more and more enamored of Ren 'N Stimpy's John K.'s style but I honestly can't find mention of it save dimly recalled interviews I read ages ago.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2022 22:48
|
|
|
It's very very funny that wannabe-intellectual, uh, Tycho I guess, expresses that Scott McCloud is clearly just spouting nonsense, 'a good guy' but 'all the people who take him seriously are cultists.' Like, I don't agree with everything McCloud has written but goddamn, Tycho's condescending way above his weight class.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 01:05
|
|
|
Unlucky7 posted:The best description I have heard of the PA guys is that they were anti-establishment guys that suddenly became the establishment and handled it without a hint of introspection and self awareness. That seems to be a trend with older successful Gen X-ers
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 02:11
|
|
|
Joe Slowboat posted:It's very very funny that wannabe-intellectual, uh, Tycho I guess, expresses that Scott McCloud is clearly just spouting nonsense, 'a good guy' but 'all the people who take him seriously are cultists.' I haven't checked in like a decade has he read a book that doesn't have dragons on the cover yet
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 10:19
|
|
|
A Wizard of Goatse posted:I haven't checked in like a decade has he read a book that doesn't have dragons on the cover yet That's pretty hilarious because you are probably right but just last month they made a comic about the artist guy (Gabe/Mike) reading a bunch of books by some author I'm not familiar with and all his book covers are almost the same, and the writer guy (Tycho/Jerry) in the "news post" making fun of him for it. https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2022/05/09/books-and-their-covers Likely not the fault of the author of those books as that stuff gets outsourced, maybe they are good I have no idea, but basically all the covers are a planet with a space ship flying past, as seen in the link above. I'm willing to bet if the writer guy took a long look in the mirror, he would see 75% of the books he has read had a dragon or a wizard or something like that on it. I'm not judging, read what you like (or what you don't really like anymore but just out of long habit like PA or whatever else), this was just too funny and on point for me not to follow up on that.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 13:27
|
|
|
As of tomorrow, Randy Milholland of Something Positive is the new artist for Popeye.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 14:46
|
|
|
the best thing you can say about tycho is that his old-manitis has defaulted him into the correct opinion on a number of unfortunate subjectsquote:The carving of the Internet into a series of corporate theme parks sure has been a treat. And if you don't like it, eat poo poo - you gotta help your mom pay her phone bill online. We're ruled by incurious polyps who have figured out that appealing to our visceral affiliations has a higher ROI than doing poo poo. They don't have the intellectual machinery to govern the physical world, let alone the sophistications of its burgeoning electronic wilderness. Forestalling a second loving Gilded Age is their job and they failed at it a decade ago.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 14:56
|
|
|
Good for him!
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 15:27
|
|
|
Good LORD the pretentions of this loving thread when talking about a comic it doesn't like.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 16:40
|
|
|
habeasdorkus posted:Good LORD the pretentions of this loving thread when talking about a comic it doesn't like. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 16:48
|
|
|
habeasdorkus posted:Good LORD the pretentions of this loving thread when talking about a comic it doesn't like.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 17:02
|
|
|
habeasdorkus posted:Good LORD the pretentions of this loving thread when talking about a comic it doesn't like. Now let me share my opinions on Questionable Content... I haven't read the comic version of Popeye, is everyone a snarking rear end in a top hat there too?
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 17:06
|
|
|
Twenty Four posted:
This is an understatement. There's a reason why a lot of fiction book covers are generic and don't actually represent the book's content. Usually the artist will get a small blurb from the publisher of what they want, but will not be in contact with the author or even know what the book is about in any detail. The author usually has no say at all and it's up to the publisher and marketing to decide what they think will make the book sell. There is the occasional exception where authors can offer some feedback or even have some amount of control in very rare cases but even a lot of successful and well known authors have to deal with this. It's just a norm for the industry. Plenty of authors out there loathe the covers their publishers picked out for them so I don't think it's worth reading much into book covers in general.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 17:55
|
|
|
TwoPair posted:I haven't read the comic version of Popeye, is everyone a snarking rear end in a top hat there too? Click on the link for a preview of the Sunday strip, if you're that curious.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 18:06
|
|
|
Here's kind of a weird question. Does anyone else remember a web comic where the general idea was it's stories from a 2000AD-style lovely future city and was mostly done in black and white? I specifically remember that one of the stories was of a man being abducted and having his head trapped in a box where the only thing he could see was like a mirror facing him, and through stimulus of deprivation and loss of time having meaning meant he slowly got disturbed by the sight of his own reflection looking at him and started hating it and wanting to hurt his own reflection. The entire thing was done by an underground niche bloodsport league where they put people's heads in boxes, let them fall into madness, and then put two people's heads face-to-face so they'll maul each other for a match and that reveal was the end of the story, with the guy being put up against another victim in a match. I think it was specifically called Fight Bite or Bite Fight or something like that but I don't recall the greater comic's name.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 18:09
|
|
|
TwoPair posted:Now let me share my opinions on Questionable Content... Personally i associate popeye with a certain style of expressive cartoonishness so i didn't see this coming at all. For actual popeye strip readers they ve apparently been a popular guest artist since 2020 and the inevitable choice to take over. So ultimately: Wittgen posted:Good for him!
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 18:45
|
|
|
I wasn't aware that they were still making Popeye comics past 1950, so I'm surprised there.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 19:24
|
|
|
SlothfulCobra posted:I wasn't aware that they were still making Popeye comics past 1950, so I'm surprised there. The guy who's retiring from the Sunday strips for Milholland is 95 and has been working on them since about 1950.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 19:45
|
|
|
JuniperCake posted:This is an understatement. There's a reason why a lot of fiction book covers are generic and don't actually represent the book's content. Usually the artist will get a small blurb from the publisher of what they want, but will not be in contact with the author or even know what the book is about in any detail. The author usually has no say at all and it's up to the publisher and marketing to decide what they think will make the book sell. Yeah, one of the reasons Michael Whelan is so well-regarded as a cover artist is that, unusually, he actually makes a point of reading the book before painting the cover. But most cover artists aren't Michael Whelan.
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2022 20:19
|
|
|
Precambrian posted:I'm curious if anyone has any good accounts of "lost webcomics." I can remember a few. There was Amazoness!, a webcomic so old (I wanna say around 2007) that not only have no strips been preserved but even the author's name has been forgotten. It was a slice-of-life comedy about a tribe of Amazons, with the main character being the daughter of the queen. Probably real low quality compared to popular comics nowadays, but notable for its gay and trans representation, particularly given the time. Shadowgirls, by David Rodriguez and Dave Reynolds, which was Gilmore Girls set in the Cthulhu Mythos. The first half of the comic was released in print form before it died, but the second never got a book release and has also disappeared from the web. I remember the authors saying at the time that it was just a temporary hiatus, and they would absolutely definitely come back with the resolution to the major ongoing mystery of who the girl's father was, which of course they never actually did. Crazy Sunshine, by Jkun. The website still seems to be up (https://crazysunshine.com/), but it doesn't actually have the comics anymore (or at least, I can't find them), only art and blog posts. Wayback Machine doesn't have the comics, either. I recall it being about an angel and demon who were kicked out of heaven and hell and became roommates on Earth. There are probably lots more that I'm forgetting -- I know I used to browse Drunk Duck, back before it became The Duck Webcomics, and I'm guessing that there are tons of small strips posted there which have quietly rotted away.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2022 00:28
|
|
|
Holy gently caress Shadowgirls, I forgot I read that a long-rear end time ago. Blast from the past.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2022 00:42
|
|
|
I too remember Shadowgirls. I dimly recall I disliked that it kind of got away from the premise of a single mom and her daughter's day to day life mixed with supernatural shenanigans to focus on the latter.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2022 01:06
|
|
|
Hostile V posted:Here's kind of a weird question. Does anyone else remember a web comic where the general idea was it's stories from a 2000AD-style lovely future city and was mostly done in black and white? I specifically remember that one of the stories was of a man being abducted and having his head trapped in a box where the only thing he could see was like a mirror facing him, and through stimulus of deprivation and loss of time having meaning meant he slowly got disturbed by the sight of his own reflection looking at him and started hating it and wanting to hurt his own reflection. The entire thing was done by an underground niche bloodsport league where they put people's heads in boxes, let them fall into madness, and then put two people's heads face-to-face so they'll maul each other for a match and that reveal was the end of the story, with the guy being put up against another victim in a match. I think it was specifically called Fight Bite or Bite Fight or something like that but I don't recall the greater comic's name. idk but that sounds like it rules
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2022 20:56
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 11:17 |
|
|
hello webcomic thread, I feel like I've posted here before but maybe not. I used to follow a lot of webcomics back in the day(hell, I found SA by being part of the Bob and George community and getting goatse'd in their IRC channel by a goon posting it in there, and the mods going "those goddamn loving goons!!!"). but haven't really followed many lately, or at least a lot of the ones I do follow don't generally fit the webcomic format I don't think, but rather are digitally serialized comic/manga instead(like Helck). if it's ok, I'd post some of the digital comics I follow that I like. one that I enjoy a lot is a single-page furry comic called Modern Mogal. the humor, artwork, and what small storylines it has are solid, a lot of the gags generally get at least a smile out of me. the artist is VERY horny for thicc monstergirls though, so if you've got a disinclination for furries, it might not be for you.   this is one of my favorite wordless early ones: 
|
|
#
?
Jun 11, 2022 18:47
|
|
