A long, long time ago (e.g., two months ago), I promised to do a piece on “Why review webcomics at all?” I turned out to be a more massive project than I realized, and The Webcomic Overlook Central, it turns out, does not employ enough scribes, researchers, and eunuchs to tackle the question in one piece. So, as a way to make this go down easy, I’m breaking the main question into a smaller question.

Mainly this: “Captain Nihilist, shouldn’t you only review webcomics that don’t get much exposure?”

Perfectly reflecting this way of thinking is a comment from Koltreg over at Nerding Blog Jamboree (h/t Art Patient). In the wake of the Jeph Jacques “State of the Webcomics Union” piece, he posted the following:

As for the jab at webcomics bloggers, well … as ironic as it may be, I agree that there’s no real value in writing webcomics reviews other than my ego, as Scott Smith pointed out. Reviews seem to offer little to nothing of value to most readers, except for the one thing Jacques seems to forget: reviews can send readers to new webcomics they might not otherwise discover. The problem is that to my knowledge there are no major webcomic blogs with wide readerships. There are just blogs like mine that are read by small pools of people. Approximately ten people, in my case. If I gave up though, I’d do the opposite of what I need to do – practice my critical-analytical thinking and writing skills.. I am a better writer I was before and as long as you are supportive, there is nothing wrong with writing about webcomics.

Now, according to Koltreg, the most important part of reviews is to send readers to underexposed webcomics.

This is actually a very noble aim. I mean, does the world need another person gushing about how much he loves Penny Arcade? Do we need yet another person saying why xkcd is the greatest webcomic of the century? Isn’t ragging on Ctrl+Alt+Delete just getting a wee bit tired? Wouldn’t you rather hear something new?

I applaud all bloggers who live by this code. I’ve encountered quite a few, in fact, have expressed the same sentiment as Koltreg.

This site, though, will go ahead reviewing the “major” webcomics. And here are my reasons.
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