When I first started this site, one of the most exciting new artists to appear on the webcomics scene was Awkward Zombie‘s Katie Tiedrich. Even if you didn’t like video game comics, you had to admire her fun character designs, her sense of comic timing, and her unique character personalities. Marth and Roy, for example, were less the characters from Fire Emblem and more Teidrich’s own creations who just happened to look like somewhat familiar video game characters.

It made several of us wonder: how would Katie Teidrich be able to handle original characters? We sort of get a taste of that with Aikonia, a fantasy webcomic illustrated by Ms. Teidrich but is written and developed by a team from MADSOFT Games, LLC (who are working up to a game release based on the world established in the comic).

It pains me greatly to say this: Ms. Teidrich’s style is all wrong for this comic. Aikonia is set in a dark, joyless world where the authority figures are corrupt two-timing villains, people are sacrificed in pentagrams, and there’s a graveyard where students who have been killed by magic have been buried. It’s like Harry Potter without Bertie Bott’s Beans, talking portraits, mail delivery owls, Quidditch, or anything else that might make witchcraft and wizardry seem like a fun career path for a young mage to pursue.

As a result, Teidrich never really gets a chance to draw what she’s good at. All the characters are permanently scowling, which makes them even more difficult to tell apart since everyone is draped in the same black robes. You learn to relish the few comedic beats, such as the all too brief scene where Ariel, a possessed girl who becomes the focal point of the story, begins to vamp it up. It’s not funny, but at least someone in the story is showing some personality beyond grimly ascetic. It’s almost like you’re reading Gormenghast as illustrated by Jim Davis.

Outside of that, Aikonia is fairly predictable fantasy fare. It’s about a council of mages trying to unleash an ancient magic to gain more power. Things don’t go as planned, people start suspecting that illicit doings are afoot, etc. Fantasy is one of those genres that thrives on rehashing the same familiar story beats while keeping the good-vs.-evil dichotomy as black and white as possible. The trick is that you have to make the readers care about where all of this is going … and, sadly, the characters in Aikonia are so flat that having that world ruled by the far livelier Ariel would actually be a welcome improvement.

Rating: 2 stars (out of 5).

So… do I even need to tell you if you want to check out The Goddamn Panty Brigade? I mean … that title. In the best case scenario, it could be about a regular misfit military unit who wear regular clothes, only some jerk drill sergeant stuck them with the most embarrassing name possible to toughen ‘em up. Or it can be about an all-lady Vietnam commando unit clad only in lacy underthings. Or maybe it’s a whimsical fairy tale about sentient panties. Still, would you be willing to admit to your friends, family, or the public as a whole that you’re the guy (or girl) who reads a webcomic called The Goddamn Panty Brigade?

So who are The Goddamn Panty Bridage? Well, as it turns out … they’re Josie and the Pussycats.

Believe it or not, this is at least the second incarnation of The Goddamn Panty Brigade. The comic got a write-up at the Bad Webcomics Wiki when it was apparently some sort of unholy fusion of FLCL and Tank Girl … and, to his credit, creator Andeh Pinkard took the criticism to heart. The old webcomic got scrapped. The Goddamn Panty Brigade got a hard reboot. It’s now a story about a bunch of girls trying to become idols. In the Clay Aiken sense, not the Kali, Consort of Lord Shiva, sense.

Their band name is The Goddamn Panty Brigade, which is only slightly worse a band name than Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, Hooray For Earth, Cunninlynguists, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Foo Fighters, and Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band. They rise through the idol ranks (at least we’re told that happens … we never see them perform) and they make it all the way to the finals. Things look bad at first, with the girls suddenly getting stage fright, but thanks to the power of beer the girls come out on top thanks to their lewdness. (Which, again, we’re told and not shown.)

They soon learn from Davina Thrills, a representative of Sugardeath Records, that the idol life is “a no holds barred music and magic brawl.” Several student body factions they have to defeat with the power of rock. Wait a minute … this is yet another webcomic “inspired” by Scott Pilgrim, isn’t it? The girls agree to battle these factions, and they do so wearing no pants.

Well… say anything you want, but you can’t blame this webcomic for false advertising.

The four girls who make up The Goddamn Panty Brigade have names, but to be honest they’re incredibly interchangeable because non of the have any traits beyond being incredibly shrill. The shallowness and brashness is meant to be funny. It is not.

And it never makes you actually like any the characters. I’m not exaggerating when I say that the Teen Girl Squad has more personality. There’s a point in the story where two of the girls get zapped away by a Scott-Pilgrim-esque video game effect, and they’re replaced by two bystanders thanks to the intentionally ill-defined rules of battle. But … why should I care about the two girls who disappeared in the first place? The only character in the main cast who shows any shred of personality is the one with the heart-embroidered eyepatch (the cast page says she is tastefully named “Garnet Gutterslut”), and that’s mainly because she yells louder than the other girls.

Rating: 2 stars (out of 5).

On June 4, 1942, American and Japanese forces met at a small spot in the Pacific Ocean close to Midway Island. The Japanese were planning on a sneak attack, even going so far as invading Alaska’s Aleutian Islands as a diversion, but codebreakers on the US side figured out Japan’s plan to take over the little island to extend their defense perimeter.

The two carrier fleets exchanged blows for three days, clashing in the air and on the seas. Torpedo bombers from both sides tried to break enemy perimeters to sink the other side’s ships. The tide turned, though, when Admiral Chester W. Nimitz whipped out his Gibson Les Paul and broke out a guitar solo so devastating that four Japanese carriers spontaneously exploded from the sheer awesomeness.

The battle was lost, and subsequently the remaining Japanese fleet retreated. Historians compare this moment to Gettysburg, when Winfield Scott Hancock of the Union Crew owned George “Charge” Pickett in a devastating rap battle.

OK, so that never happened. Historians have always glossed over the impact of guitars, drums, and keyboards in warfare. Never fear, though, fans of military history/pop music mashups. Tina Pratt’s The Paul Reveres exists, where the American Revolution if fought through music… and for some weird reason, I have a feeling that there’s standing bet on the internet somewhere to see who can make the most adorable interpretation of the War of Independence.

Way back when I reviewed The Dreamer, I mentioned that the Revolutionary War was “the sexiest war ever fought.” How else to describe a war where everyone wore frilly shirts, crisp military uniforms, and fancy wigs? What you probably didn’t know was that it was also the most kawaii. I guess that’s to be expected in our post-Scott Pilgrim world. In The Paul Reveres, the characters all look like super-deformed anime characters with big dewy eyes, blush-prone complexions, and lips that can go from really huge to tiny, pouty fish lips.

Googling The Paul Reveres returns this description: “A webcomic about the American Revolution imagined as the ultimate battle of the bands with punk rock and awesome hair.” I’ve got to admit, it’s the sort of description that gets the imagination going. How is Ms. Pratt going to handle this? Is the Revolutionary War going to be contextualized in a modern setting, like that funny WWII chatlog that’s been floating around the internet for some time? That would be pretty sweet!

Or, I don’t know, a battle of the bands set in high school, only with the bands dressed up in Colonial garb like The Who did way back in the late 60′s?

Oooh! Better yet … maybe it’s about a little horsey named Paul Revere, riding across the land, kicking up sand, with the Sheriff’s posse on his tail because he’s in demand.

Well… while I can’t say that the world of The Paul Reveres is unimaginative, it is a little confusing.

Our main character is Paul, frontman for the band called The Paul Reveres. It consists of a womanizer, an obese drummer, and a flaming homosexual. Being that they’re the comic relief characters, that’s pretty much the depth of their character traits. The obese drummer stores pies in his drum, and the freckled dude dry humps Paul every chance he gets.

You might imagine that Paul has much in common with the silversmith and part-time dentist who rode to the street to warn everyone of the the incoming British forces. Well… he does have the same name, and he does do the ride. Beyond that, though, he doesn’t strike me as the heroic type. In fact, he something of a weepy crybaby.

It’s not unheard to make a hero a little whiny, since it fits in with the first stage of the Campbellian hero’s journey. The unwilling, frightened protagonist is satisfied with his everyday life when, suddenly, he gets reluctantly sucked into a call to adventure. Some grouchiness is to be expected. Usually, though, there’s some sort of sign that our hero has qualities that make him destined for greatness. Paul is too comically cowardly, too soft, and too whiny. So when he, all of the sudden, takes initiative and steals the stage from the British punk bands, it doesn’t seem like a natural extension of his character at hall. He is equally unbelievable as both a military war hero or the leader of a rock band.

Not that it matters, because the reasons that Paul is fighting for is pretty confusing. A lot of it has to do with the universe that Ms. Pratt created. It’s nominally comedic, but making absolutely no sense at all. The world of The Paul Reveres is basically colonial America, only instead of muskets, everyone has guitars. Conflicts are solved through impromptu concerts, with small bands from the American and British sides duking it out on stage. It’s a cute concept, but it doesn’t really work. Are these concerts stage to sway public opinion of whose music is superior? What does this have to do with independence? And yes, despite replacing guns with guitars and featuring officers with mohawks, shaved heads, and multiple piercings, the British are still shown to have a military presence in Massachusetts.

It only gets more confusing and nonsensical as the story goes on. At one point in the story, Paul and his comrades take a small boat past a small fleet of British ships. We’re told on one page that the British have the best navy in the world. Alright, that makes sense why the group is shivering in fear as they pass by. But on the next page we’re told that the Somerset is a floating concert hall.

Wait. So what are they afraid of? That the British are going to challenge them to an impromptu rock duel? The Paul Reveres shows that there aren’t any real life-or-death consequences in these “conflicts.” You rock out. The crowd cheers for the winner, sometimes with their underwear. The losers go home pretty much unscathed.

So is Paul worried about losing the love and adoration of rock fans? Maybe he’s mad that he’s not getting as much tail as Benedict Arnold, his rival who looks like a white-haired Sonic the Hedgehog. (Oh, why must Benedict Arnold’s good name be drug through the mud like this?) That’s not very heroic. In fact, it sounds kinda vain. Even IF the whole rock-and-roll scenario is more about swaying the minds of people rather than armed military combat, Paul still has little to be afraid of. It’s in the dead of night, and no one’s around except Paul’s group and the British officers. Who’s around to have their minds swayed by a guitar duel?

I guess that since this is set in the American Revolutionary War, we’re supposed to assume he’s fighting from independence. Independence from what, though? British punk music? Or is it for the same reason that the Founding Fathers fought for independence… you know, to be free from the refusal of Assent To Laws, namely taxation without representation and trial without jury. I suppose we’re given some scenes about about military quarter and search and seizure of weapon stockpiles… but how serious can you take those allegations when the British army and the American militia are outfitted with guitars?

It makes the Yankee reactions seem totally dickish. Which would make sense if The Paul Reveres were arguing on the side of the British… except that they’re also depicted as rude louts as well. They’re all jerks.

Maybe the moral of the story is that the French should’ve taken over while the two sides were bitching like drama queens?

At this point, you’re probably saying to yourself, “Let go of it, El Santo. This is just a comedy comic. It doesn’t need to make sense.” But that’s the point. What bothers me is that I’m thinking of these things in the first place. Scott Pilgrim and his katana battles against the evil exes may have been silly, but at least the rules and the goal (becoming Ramona Flowers’ boyfriend) made some sort of sense.

Besides, the comedic aspect is nothing to write home about. Outside the core “the American Revolution … fought with guitars!” gag, the rest of the gags are the predictable litany of textbook anime gags. There’s a dog that bites hands, and characters flail around like they’re in Azumanga Daioh. The onomatopoeia gets cute by verbalizing things like “MONIES!“, “GIRL TRIP!“, and “POUNCED!” Paul even fulfills the standard anime trope of being a socially stunted male character who cannot talk around women. I guess if you’re the sort of person who loves to use the “:3″ emoticon, then this may be the kind of humor for you. It’s personally not my cup of tea, I guess. Even then, though, the comic repeats the same gags so often that it becomes incredibly odious.

On the plus side, King George III does dress like David Bowie… and while Bowie gags aren’t exactly a novelty these days, the sheer oddness of seeing Ziggy Stardust in the American Revolution got a genuine expression of wry amusement out of me. Hey, maybe if King George really was David Bowie, we wouldn’t have been so fired up to stick it to those bloody Brits and their unreasonably high prices on friggin’ tea.

Rating: 2 Stars (out of 5)

(The following review comes from guest reviewer David Herbert. Thank you, David!)

You can tell a lot about a writer’s strengths and weaknesses when you take a look at their forays into different types of storytelling. In today’s case, we’re going to look at a comic strip writer’s attempt at writing an ongoing story with a layered plot.

Many of you will know of Ryan Sohmer from his webcomic Least I Could Do, or maybe The Gutters, which was reviewed on this site a while back. Looking For Group is different in that it attempts to have a complex story modelled after the epic fantasy genre, along the lines of Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time or A Song of Fire and Ice, while also parodying the branch of fiction.

How is it? Well, notice that I used the word attempt when referencing the story.

In the first page we are introduced to Cale’Anon, our hero who is the typical pure do-gooder type of protagonist, and Richard, who is the anti-thesis of this character and serves as the source of most of the comedy. The introduction is done well, establishing the characters and their motivations. Cale wants to help the world because it’s the right thing to do, Richard wants to destroy it because he’d find it funny. As the pages go on, we get more of an exploration of their relationship until Richard kills Cale and they need to find a healer. This leads to us being introduced to the other two main characters, Benn’Joon and Krunch Bloodrage, as well as the plot to find the Sword of Truth.

The comic is divided up into 28 page chapters (32 for the first one) which are collected into four chapter volumes. Volume one does a good job of being both light-hearted and yet a gripping story, with chapter three being the best by far as it allows Cale to grow out of his naivety. The second volume then realises the joke is done and that for LFG to continue, it has to become more serious. It does this well, introducing us to a war between the northern tribes of Legarion, the home world, and Legara, an empire in the land who act as the antagonists, while also exploring the characters more and giving them some depth. The ending is shocking and well done, although the final page may leave a bad taste in your mouth since it’s Richard being Richard.

“But David,” you may be asking, “It sounded like this wasn’t a good webcomic”… and you’re right, I only have praise for these first two volumes. Sadly, chapter nine is when the whole thing starts spiralling into the ground.

In the aftermath of chapter eight, Cale and friends must find out what happened to Krunch, following the army to interrogate soldiers in regards to his whereabouts. It does well to continue the story, until we meet Maikos. We then spend six pages doing what could have been done in one or two. Richard has to leave the group to save Maikos’ village from the enemy, since Richard is the lord of said village. Cale has some bad ass moments and we get some awesome lead up to an epic battle between Legara soldiers and Richard’s undead soldiers.

Is the battle as awesome as it sounds? We don’t know. The comic cuts back to Cale for a page and when we return, Richard’s army has won and is set to pack up and leave. Why don’t we get a battle? Because Ryan Sohmer spent the whole chapter filling up the book. And it gets worse from there.

While I am a big fan of this comic, it seems that as time goes on Sohmer’s writing is getting lazier and lazier, unnecessarily stretching out scenes in order to get to the 28 pages he needs to make the whole chapter. And it’s not just the filler, the characters have gotten lazy as well.

In chapter ten, the dwarves, who are evil in the universe except for main character Pella, are sieging the gnomes, who are barely holding off the attacks. Their leader refuses to leave, but it’s discovered that if a particular tower falls, they will. Pella kills the guards and the gnomes flee to safety. However, this is treated as the ultimate evil by Cale, who declares Pella untrustworthy and reasons they could have cleared the dwarves out with strategical assaults until they were all dead.

Okay, but it was made very clear the dwarves were very close to succeeding in winning the siege and Pella hates the idea of them dying, as the dwarves are the descendants of her family (She’s from the distant past). But Pella just makes a weak argument and that’s it, we’re supposed to think she’s wrong and Cale’s right. She even calls out Cale’s willingness to overlook Richard’s murders and he justifies it in that Richard hides the evidence.

Yes people, as long as you hide the evidence, you’re a good person, which makes me wonder how Cale even found out about Pella’s actions since he was asleep the whole time.

Sadly, it doesn’t end there. The next page, Benny comes to him and they start making out. She is then demoted to love interest. Does it sound like I’m being too vague and not giving enough detail? Well that’s all we’re given. She just out of nowhere falls in love with Cale and stops participating in the fights.

Of course, this shouldn’t surprise me. Sohmer did make his career on sexist jokes, but Benny and Pella were different as they were strong characters who could hold their own in a fight. Hell, Benny is introduced kicking ass in a bar room brawl. And now they’ve gone from main cast to side characters. To put it into perspective, go back to The Gutters review and scroll down until you see the Zatanna page. A strong and powerful woman in her own right, yet all she is to Sohmer and DeSouza is T&A.

The worst part of the comic is that we do get glimpses of interesting plots that could have filled in the pages Sohmer needs, but he ignores them. In issue twelve, Richard’s head gets severed from his body and the body is revealed to have its own free will. How is this resolved? They capture the body off panel and then have a filler page where they put the head on Richard’s ass and then chop it off with a sword. There’s also the end, where Cale and Richard go through a portal and discover a world where they are haunted by images from their past. It lasts all of five pages before volume three ends.

Okay, now everything I’ve bitched about comes from volume three, but the comic has volume four finished and is going through #5 now, so it obviously must have realised its faults and corrected them by now, right? No.

While there was an interesting look into Cale’s past before the comic at the start of chapter thirteen, most of the volume is set about preparing for Legara’s invasion of their new home city, which Cale rules as king. We spend two chapters in a cave dealing with giant worms and imps within them, before Legara shows up. Chapter sixteen is almost nothing but filler.

But that isn’t the worst part. In chapter fifteen, Richard is knocked out and Cale looks under his hood to see if he’s okay. Richard shoves him away, telling Cale he saw nothing, when Cale reveals a big plot twist: Richard isn’t dead. This doesn’t even begin to make sense. The guy gets a hole through his torso, repeatedly shot by arrows and had his head cut off… and yet is still alive? Okay, I’ll admit I’m not an expert on the fantasy genre, I just enjoy it, but there’s Suspension of Disbelief and then there’s impossible even by the rules you’ve set up.

Does it look like this comic is going to shape up any time soon? Sadly no. Chapter seventeen has begun the fight against Legara, but we’re breezing through it so quickly that it feels like Sohmer has another filler arc planned to stretch out his thin plot. And the comedy moments with Richard are now feeling pointless and aren’t even funny anymore. They just detract from the larger story.

Art wise, Lar DeSouza does a good job of bringing the world of Legarion to life and the addition of Ed Ryzowski as colourist adds some beautiful depth, although it can be a little jarring for those of us used to DeSouza’s pallet. But as All Star Batman and Robin has taught us, great art cannot save a poor story.

While the comic does have elements of an entertaining story, and if you’re tolerant as I am, you may hold out hope that it will pick up and become as good as it once was, I wouldn’t recommend it to any one as it is now.

Rating: 2 Stars (out of 5)

With regards to The Webcomic Overlook, the question I get asked the most is, “El Santo, if think you’re such an authority on webcomics, why don’t you write one yourself?”

My answer is: BECAUSE. DAMMIT.

The second most asked question is, “When are you going to review Least I Could Do?”

This is an incredibly loaded request. It’s a comic that gets tons of love from people that generally I respect. It is also, paradoxically, one of the most reviled webcomics of all time. I’ve got to admit that these conflicting standpoints would make for a hell of a review.

However, being someone of the latter disposition, I have a hard time reading more than ten LICD strips in a row. I know, I know… I’m the same guy that read Jack and Ctrl+Alt+Del. How could I be possibly fazed by LICD? Well, the first two are at least enjoyable to watch go off the rails in a “Can this comic get any worse?” sort of way. From what I’ve seen of LICD, it’s the same thing day in and day out, and I have a hard time imagining that it would ever keep my attention.

I’m not discounting a review of LICD outright. However, sadistic readers of The Webcomic Overlook, I offer you a taste. This next review is written by LICD writer Ryan Sohmer, and periodically illustrated by Lar deSouza. By my estimates, it is at least 53% created by the LICD crew. The webcomic is a little thing called The Gutters.

I understand that plenty of Webcomic Overlook readers are comic fans but are not necessarily superhero fans. If so, then you are not the gutter audience. Rest assured that The Gutters is not for you. The Gutters is aimed at the continuity-obsessed, nitpicky, basement-dwelling neckbeards who can name all of the seven Corps in the Green Lantern comics without looking it up on Wikipedia.

In other words, me.

So you super cool non-superhero-comic reading dudes can check out of this review right now.

The Gutters is a comic industry parody and editorial. Sometimes they’re spoofs about recent comic book plotlines, like the one where Superman renounced his American citizenship or when Wonder Woman donned her new pants-enabled outfit. Sometimes it can get very insider, like the digs at Dan Didio and Joe Quesada. It is a webcomic designed to be consumed by the most obsessive nerds on earth.

Illustrations are handled by several different artists, many of whom The Webcomic Overlook has given high marks to. Hell, Eisner nominees Karl Kerschl and Shannon Wheeler have drawn a strip each, for example. This makes it very difficult for me to judge The Gutters objectively. In fact, there are a lot of times where the artist does the legwork to significantly elevate the quality of an individual strip. I admit smiling a little with Annie Wu’s depiction of a dancing Prof X. And, what can I say, Guy Allen’s retro style was perfect on a strip about the Invaders, WWII era comic heroes from Timely (the precursor to Marvel Comics). If anything, The Gutters does the Lord’s work by exposing a lot of lesser known artists to a wide audience, which I estimate is somewhere between 50K and 100K readers.

At the same time, The Gutters is one of the most unfunny comic book parody series that I have ever read. And yes, I have read Marvel’s What The–?! If the main purpose if the webcomic was for different artists to draw pictures of superheroes, then why isn’t this just a collective illustration gallery or something? It probably would’ve worked better.

Most of the blame can be placed on the writing. And by “the writing,” I mean “Ryan Sohmer.” It’s possibly less funny than what he’s got to work with in Least I Could Do, simply because he has a bigger page to fill. Sohmer tends to stretch the jokes until he’s beating them to death like that dead horse in that one metaphor. For example, there’s a strip where Deadpool thinks Fantomex is Storm Shadow. There’s another strip where Jim Lee tells us how DC Comics is managed by monkeys. The first is actually kinda clever, and the second … can pretty much be used as the punchline for any joke.

Both of these concepts are one panel gags at best. Yet they’re stretched out long past the point of being funny. Deadpool keeps poking at Fantomex (which isn’t really that much of a gag, since Marvel would probably do that gag anyway if they still had the rights to the Hasbro properties), and monkey-flinging gag has four full panels of dialogue that could be pretty much anything in the world and yet have the same punchline. (The Seven Soldiers? DC is run by poo-flinging monkeys. Superman walking the Earth? DC is run by poo-flinging monkeys. See? The uninspired punchline works for EVERYTHING!) Yes, there are times when extending the joke as long as possible can lead to humorous results. You lose a lot of the spontaneity, though, when dragging the punchline becomes the default go-to gag for the entire webcomic. Then it comes off as somewhat insecure, as if the writer has so little confidence in the joke that he has to keep piling on the “funny”.

Not that the single panel ones are gold, either. Take, for instance, one comic about BOOM! Studios mining every Disney property imaginable. The punchline is that they’re now adapting Steamboat Willie, which is cuh-razy. I dont necessarily agree with the sentiment: at the time the comic was created, BOOM! had 11 Disney adaptations — a small drop in the huge ocean of Disney properties — and pretty much all of them were critically well received. But say that you do agree with Sohmer. Maybe BOOM! is a bunch of cold-blooded opportunists, and they deserved all the hardships coming to them after the Marvel acquisition by Disney. Let’s get to the punchline, which is Mickey turning to the viewer and sneering, “It’s twenty-two pages of me on a boat!”

Oh my God.

Comedy. GOLD.

There’s a lot of times that I felt that Sohmer totally botched the punchline because he’s just not really that much of a comic nerd himself. Like, he knows the basic outlines of the latest comic drama bombs, but doesn’t know enough to make a really great insider joke. Take, for example, the comic dealing with The Rise and Fall of Arsenal. This infamously terrible comic has been pooh-poohed by many comic fans online, including a great post by Brian Hibbs of The Savage Critics where he calls it “The worst comic I have ever read.” So what’s The Gutter’s take on the comic? That comic fans are rejoicing that “one reader discovers who Arsenal is.” SHENANIGANS! NO ONE cares if anyone else finds out about Arsenal! NO ONE! And I’m the guy who plunked down the $1.75 for New Titans #99, the issue that Speedy took on the Arsenal identity!

(Yeah, I got it because I liked the new outfit. Sue me. It was the 90′s, and I was young and foolish.)

And then there’s the one where Sohmer makes fun of Stan Lee’s NHL Guardians project by thinking up of some silly iterations of NHL-based heroes. The Maple Leaf: he blows! The Islander: he harasses tourists! Why aren’t these funny? Well, beyond an incredibly lame attempt at being offensive (don’t ask what Sohmer came up for the Calgary Flames), it turns out that Stan Lee’s actual superhero creations were far goofier than anything that Sohmer could’ve dreamed up. Bloody hell, The Maple Leaf actually shoots maple syrup from his fingers. It’s kinda embarassing that Sohmer got out Stan-Lee’d by Stan Lee, and frankly, I’m not sure who I feel more pity for. All I know is that Stan Lee’s creations were kinda funny, while Sohmer’s creations were not.

I could go on and on. How one strip is reduced to Yoda smacking down The Flash with an “Offends me, your speed force does. Bitch.” Because Yoda said a swear! Or how the punchline for another strip is that Superman said a swear. Oh no he didn’t! Maybe I’m looking at this wrong and Sohmer knows his audience better than I thought. After all, the humor is, at best, puerile and adolescent, and comics are theoretically consumed primarily by adolescents. Maybe The Gutters pushes all the right buttons.

But I’d like to imagine that today’s adolescents are more sophisticated than this lame crap gives them credit for.

Unsurprisingly, some of the most odious strips are collaborations between Ryan Sohmer and Least I Could Do running mate Lars DeSouza. I mean, a Chuck Norris joke in 2011? F***ing really? There is something undeniably smug and self-satisfied with deSouza’s artwork, and it never comes off as ironically so. All the characters have to sort of “these guys aren’t as funny as they think they are” vibe to them.

Now, which guys am I talking about? The characters in the strip, or Sohmer/deSouza? Ah, but that is the mystery. I guess that’s something to look forward to if I decide to review Least I Could Do … you know, after I take a handful of those scary meds where they run the disclaimer about the risk of suicidal tendencies.

Rating: 2 Stars (out of 5)

Have you and your friends ever tried to do round-robin storytelling? You gather around in a circle … or, if your friends are online, a message board maybe. Someone starts off things by tossing out the first sentence.

You start the ball rolling. Once upon a time, a woman got stranded on a desert island.

And then it’s the next person’s turn, who adds: On that island was a hat.

The next storyteller is a bit saucy and chimes in. And the hat is alive and he bleeds rainbows.

It’s a silly story. You all have a good time, especially when the story gets really out of hand. The webcomic called L.A.W.L.S. seems to practice the same storytelling ethic. It’s written by by Denis Caron (a.k.a. Joenis Norac). The acronym, incidentally, stands for “Large Air Whales Like Silence.”*

Ecoutez bien! For I shall try to recount to you the introductory plotline of L.A.W.L.S. You might want to have a bottle of aspirin on hand. (Pro-tip: you should have some sort of pain medication on hand when reading The Webcomic Overlook, anyway.)

Our hero’s name is Joseph, and he’s a scenester in a post-apocalyptic landscape. He hunts air whales. Why, you ask? Vengeance over them destroying his house, primarily, but mainly because whales are assholes. We know this because this phrase is repeated so numerously you start to wonder if it was going to be printed out on a bulk T-shirt order or something. (Credit to Mr. Caron. That hasn’t happened … yet.)

Joseph gets attacked by that rabbit from Sluggy Freelance on page one. There’s a tangent about a blue peanut-shaped creature that Joseph steps on which will be appearing in this comic in great frequency later. Joseph kills the rabbit and has a conversation with a foul-mouthed talking crow who wears a hat. The crow taunts Joseph and riles up some long buried memories about pogs, which causes Joseph to flip out, beat up the crow with a pipe, steal his hat, and do a dance.

This doesn’t sit well with Cadence, a punk rock girl who for some reason has the hots for Joseph despite that fact that he as no redeeming qualities whatsoever. (That’s not an editorial. Joseph’s uselessness is explicitly mentioned several times in the comic.) Cadence has this thing for animals, so she’s a little upset over Joseph beating up the bird. She’s accompanied by a mangy, crooked-toothed creature named Rudy, who’s sort of an ugly rabbit thing that talks like a Monty Python character. Rudy, despite having one of the most cloying lines in webcomics, will prove to be a more appealing character than our hero. Anyway, the hat plops onto the head of the rabbit (the one who died earlier, not the ugly one) and makes it do a dance.

Cadence, meanwhile, encounters two goldfish bowls placed on pedestals. In the middle of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. OK. Ingmar Bergman this is not. The fish in the bowls are always arguing and trying to kill each other. It also turns out they are gay. And it is God himself keeping them apart.

I know what you’re saying. “But El Santo!” you cry. “What about the hat? I need closure on that anecdote!” Well, it turns out that the hat is alive and he bleeds rainbows and can pull things out of Hammerspace. On a completely unrelately note, I cannot believe “hammerspace” is still being used as a punchline in 2010.

L.A.W.L.S. relies heavily on previously released material, something you and I like to call Scott Pilgrim. Heck, in a bizarre webcomic cross promotion, Joseph even wears a T-shirt bearing the wordmark of fellow Scott Pilgrim “homage,” Scout Crossing (which I reviewed here). You’ve got egregious video game references, anime chi-fueled fight sequences, and characters being members of a band (because, you know, while the first two are nerdy, the last one, on paper at least, makes the characters cool again). Man, Bryan Lee O’Malley is probably rolling in his gr- … bed right about now.

The other, less obvious comparison (and this might be a stretch … don’t hold me to it because I’ll deny it damn you!) is Perfect Hair Forever. For those of you who weren’t around for the mid-2000′s Adult Swim line-up, PHF was a non-sensical anime parody done by the same guys who did Aqua Teen Hunger Force and 12. oz Mouse. PHF featured similar random humor, like a singing hot dog (“Do the la la la la la la la!”) and a blatantly fanservice character named Brenda who walked around in a thong and a really, really short skirt.

In my opinion, PHF was only intermittently funny. However, that’s more than I can say for this webcomic. When your comic is called L.A.W.L.S., you are entering into a social contract with your reader… one that promises laughter. Not just any kind of laughter, mind you. LAUGH OUT LOUD laughter. Perhaps even going so far as to make you roll on the floor or making your ass fall off. Sadly, I must report that not only did I not laugh, I actually tried to claw my own eyes off at some point.

There are several things that sink this comic, turning it from a silly, joyful romp into absurdity into a dreadful mélange of tedium. First of all, there are the artistic limitations. It doesn’t take you long to notice that most of the characters are typically drawn in either a side or frontal profile. This is fine if your comic is coming from a purely “this is so bad it’s funny” standpoint. The drawback, though, is that Mr. Caron attempts to also do action sequences, which tend to look horrendously awkward and unnaturally stiff.

The artistic limitations also extend to the facial expressions, which hardly very depite moments of (supposedly) tense emotion. There’s one expression that irritates me especially. it’ when the mouth is drawn elongatedly at the edges. I’m sure it’s supposed to signify either smugness or exasperation, but most of the time I can’t help but think that the characters look a little like frogs. Curiously, the whales are more expressive… though maybe this just means that Caron is more adept at drawing mouths of the gaping variety.

Then there are the “witty” one-liners, which try way too hard to be cute. Maybe I’m being a little severe? I’ll let you decide. Here’s a choice sampling of the wordplay:

“Rudy! How many times have I told you? You can’t eat gays for dinner!”

“Enough of these fancy words! This will just end … in a very badish way!”

“I’ll risk the rapies to be with you.”

You know, sometimes I wonder if this comic was written intentionally bad like Powerup Comics, and I’m being trolled hard.

Finally, the humor strikes me as being really out of date. It goes beyond just the pog references … which you really shouldn’t attempt to do unless you’re also The Simpsons and you’re making an even more out-of-date reference with ALF. I mean how most of these “random” gags seem like something we’ve seen multiple times before … and done better.

Take for instance, the random appearances of Hitler as a punchline. We live in a world where Hipster Hitler exists, and that comic is something of a commentary about using Hitler as a gag in the first place. There’s also a gag introduced this year about furry vampires, and how, if you’re bitten by a furry, you become one. Hilarious! By the way, Pride & Prejudice & Zombies was released in April 2009.

While I’m not the biggest fan of “random” humor, I think this sort of storytelling might actually work. I mean, I really liked Ramon Perez’s Kukuburi, which is set in a world where literally anything can happen. L.A.W.L.S. even has Mr. Perez beat in the cute punk girl department, providing the reader with, not one, but two punk girls for your viewing pleasure!

I can respect the fact that L.A.W.L.S. seems committed to providing a comic that is actually random, rather than the standard “monkey cheese” random. But, as Ctrl+Alt+Del‘s Chef Brian proves, being random is not necessarily very funny. While there may be large air whales in L.A.W.L.S., there aren’t many LOLs.

…

Oh come ON! How else was I gonna end this review?

Rating: 2 Stars (out of 5)

P.S. Incidentally, reading the comic gets really annoying for reasons that I don’t think can’t be directly blamed on the comic itself. The banner ad at the top sometimes displays a vertical ad despite having real estate zoned for a horizontal ad. So, from time to time, there will be a long ad suggesting that a “Booty Quest” awaits your future.

* – Apparently not “science,” which I contend would have been a cooler title.

It took me maybe ten pages to become annoyed with the free-spirited, adorable antics of the title character in Blade Bunny. I started panickedly looking around and mopping imaginary sweat beads from my forehead. After the first chapter or two, I began to wonder what in the world I’d gotten myself in to. Every press of the “forward” button became an exercise in endurance, as I knew that the next page would treat us with yet another tiresome appearance of Bunny.

Incidentally, this is not to be confused with Blade Kitten, the manga-like webcomic about a fighting girl with animal ears who also had a video game made out of it. This is a different manga-like webcomic about a fighting girl with animal ears, only it doesn’t have a video game.

That’s a huge difference, people!

But let’s back up a bit. Blade Bunny is a comic written by Drowemos. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s the guy behind the gender-bending fantasy comic Exiern, which was notable for having original artwork that would barely pass muster in the fourth grade (eventually he did hook up with a decent artist) and for its inescapable advertising on Project Wonderful.

I never did a formal review. However, I did mention in passing that I agreed with John Solomon’s review on the Your Webcomic Is Bad and You Should Feel Bad site. Drowemos got wind of it, and he responded, via a firm yet reasonable email, why he felt that several of Solomon’s points were overreaching (specifically his practice of paying his artists). While I still think that what I’ve seen of Exiern as a comic is fairly amateurish, I though he raised some good points on his side. After all, it is perhaps unfair to criticize business practices when this blog is built on criticizing content. So, with his persmission, I republished his email. I don’t have anything against the guy, and I do appreciate that he drops by this site from time to time.

(This is, incidentally, one of the reasons I started gravitating toward longer and longer reviews. One tossed off line is way too easy to pick apart.)

I decided to give him another chance with his more recent comic, Blade Bunny. Drowemos bypasses his early artwork issues he had in Exiern, by hooking up with a decent artist from the beginning. The art is credited to Erwin Pasetya (Tyo Kuuma). It turns out Pasetya was originally tapped to be the artist for Exiern after the original guy struggled with the work load. However, when the original guy came back, Drowemos came up with Blade Bunny as a new project for Pasetya to work on. Pasetya’s style is pretty much the thing you’d expect in manga. Initial impressions were that while it’s fairly eyecatching, it’s also not that distinct from any random selection at the Borders manga aisle.

“Well,” I thought, “maybe without that early handicap, the comic will be much easier to like.”

Our heroine, Bunny, dresses up in a skin-tight leotard. She wears a pair of bunny ears and a puffy cotton tail. This was probably sexy and scandalous, like, 40 years ago, but nowadays it’s kinda demure. Bunny is also an assassin of some sort, which is why a bunch of thugs hire her to off a rival leader. She’s full of magic tricks, too: at one point she drowns a metallic demon by inducing a flash flood. Her abilities catch the eye of some powerful people, who want to recruit her to save the world or something.

Bunny is also a walking ball of adorable one-liners. And by “adorable” I mean “adorable for a three-year-old, kinda creepy from someone who looks at least fifteen.” Here is a sample:

“My choppy sticks are broken.”

“I did it really coolly.”

“That looks outish.”

“You guys look totally freaky upside down. Well Ao you look freaky right side up too but upside down its more ha ha freaky than ‘Oh my God it’s going to eat me’ freaky.”

I guess I should commend the Blade Bunny guys for crafting a kick-butt superheroine who is also clearly mentally challenged.

Bunny, I imagine, is shaped from the rich tradition of wacky, slightly crazy, yet irrepressibly cute anime girls. You know the type: they’re slight of frame despite consuming comically large amounts of food, yet they manage to effortlessly defeat much larger enemies. These include Haruko from FLCL, Lina Inverse from Slayers… probably that one chick with the flame bikini top from Gurren Lagann. (EDITOR’S NOTE: I have never seen this anime.) Blade Bunny is closest to Excel Excel from Excel Saga, a fellow motormouth who spent entire episodes coasting on her voice actresses’ incredible talents at spouting ridiculous lines (which, to be fair, are not too different form the ones you find in Blade Bunny) and generally looking kawaii.

Here’s the difference, though: Excel Saga‘s director, Shinichi Watanabe, was in on the joke. He intentionally made Excel super-irritating because, in half the episodes she’s in, she gets killed off. And that’s sandwiched in between gags about three losers in the apartment next door, the ghost of a dead migrant worker who accidentally finds himself in bed with God, and the cool spy adventures of the director. Excel functions more as a Looney Tunes character than someone you can hang your narrative off of.

Bunny doesn’t get quite that excuse. I suppose that, from the befuddled reactions of all the supposedly straight-laced characters, she’s supposed to be somewhat of a comedy character. (A mistake, I think: one of the best sight gags in Excel Saga is how her boss, Il Palazzo, stoically no-sells Excel’s jokes.) There are several things that work against this, though, and one is the limited range of Pasetya’s artwork. There are precious few visual cues in Blade Bunny that are comedic. Her words tell me she’s “silly” and “irrepressibly youthful,” but the faces either say “boredom” or “world weariness”. This is because all the characters carry the same expression most of the time… so when Bunny’s acts all goofy and stuff, it’s not too many shades of different from when someone pulls a badass expression or when her mentor gets serious. The huge disconnect between the “wacky” dialogue and the limited facial expressions is easily the number one reason that I was muttering, “When is this comic going to end?!?!” barely one chapter in.

To be fair, Pasetya himself seems to be a little aware of the problem. Later panels show some improvements, where comedy moments are punctuated by the tried and true method of going superdeformed. It’s still not really all that particularly funny, and it’s sort of a shortcut, but at least he’s trying.

Compounding that problem is that Bunny is that she’s not that interesting of a character. Her only character trait is being obnoxious all the time, and, as I mentioned, that’s undermined by the artistic limitations. Is it enough that the character is a one-dimensional female dynamo?

If so, than she shares the same rarefied air as the Mattie Franklin Spider-Woman (not be confused with all other Spider-Women) and the very Mary-Suish Superwoman (not to be confused with Supergirl). All are mainly defined by how much stronger than their opponents and by the single character trait of “perky.” All have also rather shoddily constructed backgrounds. Spider-Woman and Superwoman are cautionary tales, though: they’re also completely forgotten by fans, despite successful implementations of other female superheroines with similar powers.

And before you complain about that sounding sexist, it applies to male superheroes too. We root for Superman because, while he’s an incredibly powerful dude who can defeat most enemies just by looking at them, we know that deep down inside he’s a humble guy with simple Smallville origins. We root for Spider-Man because, while he may be recklessly juvenile by spouting one liners while fighting the bad guys, we also know he’s driven by a sense of responsibility and struggling with home life. They are more than just “perky” or “obnoxious.” If you don’t have any reason to care about the heroes, if you don’t give the reader any reason to at least understand where they’re coming from … you get Rob Liefeld’s Youngblood. Perhaps cool in the short run, but are you really going to stick around for five issues of these clowns? They’re all style, no substance.

Which brings me to my final irk: if you’re going to do an action comic where you’ve got no vested interest in the main character, then the fight scenes better be good. And… they’re not. Most of Blade Bunny consists of characters smacking each other around. I mentioned earlier that, at first blush, Pasetya’s artwork is attractive. It falls apart, though, when you get to the fight scenes. A good fight scene will give you a sense of rhythm and pacing, an feel for the force of impact, a sense of weight and gravity, a personal investment in the emotional stakes, and a good idea that the combatants are going through some mental process to map out the fight. If you’re lucky, you get some decent character development and plot progression out of it. In a way, it’s the basic framework I followed when putting together my list of The Five Greatest Webcomic Fights last week.

To me, Blade Bunny is just a jumble of images that were picked out because the admittedly intricately detailed characters were making cool poses. There’s no build-up or anything to earn those poses; they just are. Which is fine for pin-ups and DeviantArt; just not very useful when you’re trying to tell a story. I guess it matches the character of Blade Bunny, though, in that the sequences are so much about establishing an image of being totally awesome that they bypass anything substantial.

So there you go: Blade Bunny has one unlikable character, flat and uninteresting fight scenes, and a nonexistent plot. (Which I didn’t go over in this review. Because it’s nonexistent.) On the plus side, it didn’t kill Krome Studios. So at least it’s got that going for it.

Rating: 2 Stars (out of 5)

Oh, Japan. Such a powerful pop culture force these days, yet also so misunderstood. If only there was a cultural guide that wasn’t as stuffy as the International Traveler’s Resource Guide! Fortunately, Seiryoin Ryusui of Japan and Kai Chamberlain of Canada are ready to bridge the cultural divide across the Pacific Ocean with Teriyaki Girls.

It is, not surprisingly, some sort of online manga.

Teriyaki Girls centers around two girls — one Japanese, one Canadian. Like the creators. Hmmm. There’s also two other foreigners in the main cast who appear rather frequently: one, a freckled girl who loves sushi and the men who make it; the other, a womanizer/wigger. Along the way, they — and the readers — laugh, love, and learn the culture of modern day Japan.

Sadly, Teriyaki Girls features one of the most boring casts I’ve ever encountered. You know how most of your days are pretty mundane? Maybe you say hi to your friends. Maybe you go out and have a meal. It’s fairly routine, and when most people write memoirs, they tend to cut out all that boring stuff, since all of it is assumed. Not so with Teriyaki Girls. The comic is one mundane thing after another. This would be somewhat tolerable if the characters had any personality at all. They do not. Slabs of drywall are more charismatic.

Of course, this may be because the point of Teriyaki Girls is not to entertain, but to educate. I liken it to those workplace training videos on things like Ethics or Workplace Diversity or Office Safety that are almost always badly acted, cheesily filmed, and terribly lighted. But at least you learned not to route your laptop cord through the aisle so no one would trip over it, right? Sadly, Teriyaki Girls offers no such useful insights. While I do not doubt the sincerity of the writers, almost all of the tips boil down to “Asian people view relationships differently from Western people!” The tips can range from thuddingly obvious (“While many Japanese are very shy when communicating with foreigners, most foreigners are usually not shy. However, in a serious love situation, foreigners and Japanese can be equally shy.”) to transparently bitter (“Some gaijin living in Japan are never satisfied with their popularity. Eventhough they already have many girlfriends, they always want more. They are womanizers.”) to useless and somewhat condescending (“Sushi, a Japanese traditional meal, is loved by people the world over. Most Japanese often name Sushi as their favorite food.”).

And, well, some are slightly offensive. If I were to do a comic targeted at Asian audiences and informing readers that “When talking with an American woman, don’t talk about yourself too much, because American women are only interested in talking about themselves,” I would rightly get called out on it. The only guy who could possibly get away with it would be the Red Letter Media guy, and he’s sorta half-winking with the serial-killer gimmick and all. I don’t know how Asian women would read “Japan is an island country and only has a small population of foreigners. Many young Japanese women yearn strongly for foreign men”… but something tells me it’s kinda insulting.

And, hey, unless you’re Japanese, stop wearing that miniskirt, you slut!

Rating: 2 stars (out of 5).

When all’s said and done, webcomics are a damn cushy media to be reviewing. While the total audience isn’t small, it is somewhat fragmented with readers spread out over different genres and formats. At the same time, there are few centralized communication channels. Reviewing webcomics are not too different than reviewing books, only without gray ladies like the New York Times to give everyone an air of legitimacy. On the plus side, the low-pressure environment means that webcomic reviewers are, for the most part, free to state most controversial opinions and not have to worry about backlash.

Compare that to, say, video game reviews. Pretty much everything that can be said about video game reviews is encapulated in the story of its patron martyr, Jeff Gerstmann. For Webcomic Overlook readers unfamiliar with the controversy, here’s the Reader’s Digest version: in 2007, Mr. Gerstmann was the Editorial Director of the Gamespot website. Eidos Interactive had bought up a bunch of adspace on the site to promote it’s new Kane & Lynch game. Gerstmann gave the game a negative review, and shortly afterwards, he was fired. Rumors quickly circulated that his termination was directly tied to Eidos pressuring Gamespot to fire the guy, and those rumors only escalated when several Gamespot staff members quit in protest.

There’s a lot of stuff digest here. There’s the confirmation, in many people’s minds, that video game reviews are basically just big ads for the video game companies, and you can lose your account like an advertising agency would if things don’t go right. So how do you, the reader, know that the review you’re reading is not merely of a multi-million dollar marketing strategy to trick you into dumping money on a worthless game?

Then there’s the issue with the rating. Did you know the controversial review actually scored a “Fair”? That’s a middle of the road 6.0-6.5, according to Gamespot. I video game reviews, this is called a bad score. Video game reviews live and die on Metacritic, which is supposed to aggregate all reviews everywhere. If a game doesn’t score at least in the high 80′s, it’s considered a bad score. And we can’t have one guy’s opinion ruining the average, right?

Worst of all, video game companies aren’t the only thing putting pressure on video game reviewers. There’s the gamers. Gamers are competitive by nature. So when a game they love is given a low score, they bay and cry and accuse the reviewer of being ignorant about video games. How dare they bring the Metacritic score down! Woe to those who commit the heinous crime of daring to say that they didn’t enjoy Fall Out or Grand Theft Auto.

So there you have it: the messy double-edged sword of video game reviewing. Give a game a good grade, then you’re in the pockets of the game companies. Give the game a bad game, then you’re an ignorant moron who should never touch a keyboard again. Yet people want to put up with video game reviews because a new game is upwards of $50, and no one has the sort of disposable income to throw away on a game that’s no good at all.

This is the sort of cutthroat world that Erin Stout, the heroine of video game webcomic Critical Miss, finds herself in. Yes, Virginia, this is another video game webcomic review! Critical Miss is hosted on the Escapist website, and it’s written by Jonathan Grey Carter and illustrated by Cory Rydell.

Earlier this year, several webcomics competed for the right to get published by Escapist Magazine (“Yahtzee Croshaw, Yahtzee Croshaw…. and Yahtzee Croshaw!”) The winner was decided by a judges panel that included webcomic luminaries Ryan North, Brian Clevinger, and Shamus Young. Between those three, they’ve written Dinosaur Comics, Machine of Death, 8-Bit Theater, Atomic Robo, Stolen Pixels, and DM of the Rings. As you can guess, Critical Miss emerged the winner. I’ll let Shamus Young explain the victory:

I’ve always been a fan of the “charged attack” school of web-comicry. (It’s the approach I strive to use most often.) Instead of going for a single surprise punchline, you tell a series of mild half-jokes. It’s like a warm up act to get the audience ready for the final panel. It’s like a warm up act to get the audience ready for the final panel. … This is one of very few comics in the entire contest that got me to burst into real, sustained laughter. (And note how much funnier this joke is because our lead is a female. You two-guys-on-a-couch writers are handicapping yourselves.)

…

Lots of contestants did the “gamers talking about games”. A few did the “game developers talking about games”. Here is a game journalist.

The series has a unique premise, a unique voice, a unique protagonist, and a joke about instant beardification.

Erin Stout stood out as a character for me. In a sea of “this person is a gamer” introductions I think she made a solid first impression.

First of all, I’ve covered many of the new generation gaming comics on this site, and most have rightfully shelved the whole two-guys-on-a-couch theme as a stale, decades-old relic. Second of all, how does the phrase “instant beardification” not induce epic eye rolls? Humor: so super-subjective it hurts sometimes.

Erin Stout is a professional video game reviewer. Her editor, Sharon, doesn’t even bother to hide the fact that they’re basically writing reviews to shameless promote the latest releases from the gaming publishers. As lifeless, factory-produced positive reviews are churned out en masse, the honest, hard-working reviewers have to fight for the bottom-of-the-barrel games like Kane & Lynch 2 and Virtua Shit Eater. (What, no reviews for Daisy Fuentes Pilates?) As a result, Erin is bitter and jaded, to the point where she no longer seems to groom her gigantic sideburns.

The title Critical Miss is loaded with meaning. It’s a wordplay on “critical mass,” a reference to the video game term (“critical hit”) about making that one strike that saps a lot of hit points (or not making that strike, as the title seems to be implying), and the snarky — or should I say, “critical” — nature of Erin’s employment… and oh, she’s a girl! A GAMER girl! Anyway, the incredible triple-entendre is fantastic in both its simplicity and elegance.

That title, incidentally, is the wittiest the comic will ever get.

The downside to reviewing a video game webcomic is that ultimately you’re going to run into that tired old defense of “you’re not a gamer so don’t criticize something you don’t know, stfu n00b.” Seriously, it never fails. It doesn’t matter if you play video games or not… you’re always going to get this sort of response because no human being on God’s green Earth can play every single video game on the market. Thus, it’s inevitable some jokes will go over a lot of folks’ heads.

However, I will tackle in depth one strip about a game I am intimately aware of: Sid Meier’s Civilization franchise. The gag starts with Erin chastising people who were upset about Kurt Cobain in Rock Band, and how those same people would flip their lids if they saw a non-pacifist Gandhi in Civilization 5. The controversy in a nutshell: Cobain fans insist that he would never have played other bands’ songs in real life, and letting an avatar resembling his character play songs other than Nirvana songs was an insult to his personal ethics … especially when there are avatars in existence that are keyed to their bands’ songs only. So, long story short, Carter and Rydell portray Gandhi as a vicious warlord.

So, first of all, why would gamers specifically have issues with Gandhi in Civ 5? I mean, the infamous pacifist has been in the game since the first game debuted in 1991, and we were making “badass Gandhi” jokes back then, too. So why Civ 5, specifically? I’m probably assuming much, but wouldn’t the staunchest Kurt Cobain defenders have grown up in the 90′s, which means that they’d have been pretty familiar with Civ’s 1-4 if that was their thing?

Second of all, the gag is played as something of a fresh observation. What, you mean the same gag that everyone has made since, I don’t know, Gandhi started his hunger strike? Weird Al Yankovic already made this joke in the movie UHF. Hell, I am almost certain the people who run the Civilization ad campaign have already made this joke: I seem to remember some magazine ads for Civ 3 playing off the “violent Gandhi” theme. A “series of mild half-jokes” is hardly worth it if all of them are old, tired, and hardly funny.

I understand how incredibly nitpicky this sounds. Here’s my tortured, belabored point: Critical Miss combines a tragically misinformed understanding of video games with really, really terrible jokes. And you sorta need a good understanding of video games and good jokes to do a good video game comic.

As a result, the final punchline of a typical Critical Miss strip hardly ever feels earned. What’s the joke behind this strip lampooning a re-release of Star Wars in 3D? Is it basically how every 3D joke goes, in that things are being thrown at you? Or is it that nonsequitur boxing glove in the second to last panel? (Which, incidentally, would have been a lot funnier if either Han or Greedo were drawn better, parhaps with Greedo’s face looking ridiculously deformed. As it is, it looks like a lifeless trace of the original stills.) In any case, that last unnecessary panel feels like salt in the wound. The Critical Miss guys are, more or less, telling us how awesome their gag is. Erin’s completely stoked and flippin’ the double bird. Meanwhile, everyone else is crying or looking on in shock or throwing up. What a totally rad reaction for an extremely lame joke!

Now, I’m not going to say that Critical Miss is never funny. Don’t be silly. Even the worst webcomics have a few good strips. And with Critical Miss, there were, like, two good strips. Total. While I’ve never played Shaun White’s skateboarding game, I did appreciate the takedown of how its surface message of anti-authoritarianism just did not jive with the game’s fulltime product shilling. And the Blade Runner/Duck Hunt mash-up? Not too shabby.

Most of the time, though, the jokes are atrociously lazy. Having a hard time coming up with a punchline? Nothing that random, wacky violence can’t cure! Or, hell, instant beardification! Because purple monkey dishwasher!

Want to do a joke about how Assassin’s Creed could be more imaginative at the whole time-travel thing? Let’s do a sequence showing assassin astronauts! This is, by the way, the standard Critical Miss set-up: Erin says some random things that are video game related, and then we get a few panels of those random things happening. I think I liked it better when it was called Family Guy.

And, hey, did I mention that the star of the comic is a GIRL? And not just any girl … a GAMER girl! Which means she’s like one of the guys, only with boobs! She’s crass, which means she farts and cusses. But she also talks frankly about sex and feminine hygiene to make all the guys around her uncomfortable. That’s some moxie, amirite fellas? Erin Stout is totally not some sort of wish-fulfillment Mary Sue for gamer guys who are too afraid to approach women unless their speak the girl version of their dorky gamer language! And, man, the jokes really are much funnier because our lead is a female!

Rather than being anything new and fresh about video game webcomics, Critical Miss becomes Exhibit A in everything that’s wrong with them. Toss in some Jack Thompson jokes, a bad attempt at starting a new video game holiday and/or religion, and an unintentionally left turn toward the maudlin, and I think Ctrl+Alt+Del just might have a successor. I’m tempted to say that Critical Miss may have already crossed Buckley’s infamous “Don’t Fuck With Us” line with a painfully pretentious Martin Niemöller-inspired strip, but I couldn’t tell if Carter and Rydell were being serious or not.

Rating: 2 Stars (out of 5)

South Park once did a two-parter called “Pandemic” and “Pandemic 2: The Startling.” It was partially a parody of horror movies, partially a parody of Cloverfield. While I don’t remember much about the episodes, I have a vivid memory of the central joke: live action footage of guinea pigs. The city of South Park gets invaded by supposedly giant, fearsome monsters who are, in reality, adorable critters with twitchy noses, oftentimes wearing silly costumes — like the Guinea Pirate (a guinea pig in a pirate hat) and Guinea-saurus Rex (a guinea pig in a dinosaur outfit).

I remember when these episodes were released, fans were complaining that this was a pretty flimsy premise to base a two-parter on. Now, imagine that same episode, only in webcomic form… and the guinea pigs are limited to wearing only one costume. What you’d get is something very close to Scott Ferguson’s Motokool.

Your enjoyment of the comic is highly dependent on your own personal opinion on how hilarious you find giant furry monsters who resemble guinea pigs. They also wear monocles. Quick question: do you find monocled monsters, who, incidentally, sometimes sport grey mustaches, the sort of thing you find adorable? How about if they also scream, “MOUSTACHE!” Is it delightful, quirky, and yet oh so random? Do you also have a mustache tattoo on your index finger because you want to show the world how wry your sense of humor is? Because, let me tell you, the only time that’s ever cool when it’s on University of Michigan Offensive Tackle Taylor Lewan, and that’s because the whole “cool jock” and “nerdy hipster” dichotomy is ever so intriguing.

Even if you do enjoy manga-influenced illustrations of monsters with one-piece eyewear and thick, luscious facial hair — and really, it is kinda amusing if it’s the first time to see such an absurdity — be prepared to take your affection to the breaking point. Watch, dear reader, as this one joke is stretched past the breaking point over the span of a year! Sometimes, like the Simpsons rake gag, you can stretch a joke out for so long that it becomes tiring, then goes back to being funny again.

This is not one of those times.

Sadly, the monocled monsters are the only thing that Motokool has going for it. Not counting the mostly inarticulate creatures, there are only three characters in Motokool with speaking roles, and they’re all barely one-dimensional. There’s a disaffected teen hero named Jarvis who stoops quite elegantly in his bomber jacket while other people do awesome things and generally chafes under authority; his strapping grandfather, who continues the national propaganda machine attempting to convince the world that Scottish old dudes are totally cut; and a fey villain named Templeton, who has a history with grandpa. While a noble attempt to expand the Motokool repertoire beyond a single thin joke, Templeton is neither intriguing nor effortlessly absurd, despite having a nemotionally responsive mask that looks like an sheet of paper pinned by a a knife protruding form his face. He needs to go back to the Japanese anime from whence he came.

For sure, the story also include a lot of punching and singing while punching, but there’s only so much singing, punching, and monocled monsters one can take. Especially since the action sequences look pretty damn awkward half the time. Pass.

Final Grade: 2 stars (out of 5).