Penny Arcade Expo blew into town last Friday, causing a substantial uptick of enthusiasm at my office. A co-worker, who was once a professional gamer, scored some badges and is probably currently basking himself in fantastic awesomeness. My boss, who was once a pretty hardcore gamer but now is happy to play a few games now and then on the Wii with his wife, was fairly envious. He proposed that my co-worker do a lunchtime presentation so we can vicariously live through his experiences.

Heck, if I want to be brutally honest, so was I. Sadly, the cheapest badges on Craigslist at the time were $65, and I’d have a very hard time convincing my wife to drop that much money just to play video games all day.

It’s pretty humbling to realize that all this, the greatest video game expo in the world, started off with a webcomic about video games. It inadvertently launched thousands of dreams, where webcomic creators everywhere imagined an amazing world where their own webcomic about Mario being a delusional middle-aged man met similar glorious fortunes. I should point out, by the way, that I have nothing against video game webcomics. In fact, I enjoy a fair amount of them. There have been so many of them now, though, that it takes quite a bit of effort to stand out from the ground.

In honor of Penny Arcade Expo, I’m tackling video game webcomics all week. First up is Brentalfloss, by Brent Black, Dan Roth, and — as you may be able to tell from the sample panel posted below — Webcomic Overlook’s favorite webcomic creator, Andrew Dobson.

While I’ve complained about Mr. Dobson’s work in the past, his cartoony, somewhat anime-ish art style was always decent. So leave him alone on this one; he acquits himself quite well.

What I do have a problem with though is the humor, which is staler than stale. Seriously, if you gave me a dollar for all the webcomics who do a joke about how the sewers the Mario games would be gross and disgusting in real life, I’d probably have more money than the GDP of a small South Pacific nation. Or how about Link getting tricked into getting raped by an old woman? My, how edgy. And, when all else fails, do a joke about Peppy’s constant yammering or a dick joke.

One of things that makes Penny Arcade unique is how Gabe and Tycho rarely go for the obvious video game jokes. Even when they do, they structure they manage to be clever about laying out the gag. Brentalfloss, on the other hand, is all obvious video game jokes. On the plus side, I guess, Brentalfloss hasn’t made a gag yet about Ocarina of Time‘s Navi. Of course, the comic is only 15 strips long so far, and perhaps they just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

I will say, though, that their Youtube video of Starfox scored to “Space Oddity” was pretty darned cute. I guess what I’m trying to say is … stick to the puppets, guys.

Final Grade:

The Adventures of Bayou Billy

Abraham Lincoln. Whether or not you agree with his policies, Barack Obama made the right choice when he chose Abraham Lincoln as his role model. You can’t really say anything bad about a man who stuck by his principles so closely that he died for his country. Unless you’re some sort of Johnny Reb, you’d be hard-pressed to name anyone else who’d be regarded as the Greatest US President. The thing that doesn’t get mentioned often enough is that Mr. Lincoln was a wiry guy who, in his younger days, liked to wrestle on his free time. I’d like to think that the classic debates with Stephen Douglas were punctuated by an impromptu no-holds barred match.

Spider-Man. Peter Parker by day, crime-fighter by night. Friendly. Neighborhood. Friend of his Aunt May, Gwen Stacy, and the Human Torch. Enemy of Norman Osborn, The Shocker, and J. Jonah Jameson. Radioactive bug bites turn him into a superhero. Alien symbiotes turn him into a super emo. Recently, a deal with the devil effectively dissolved his marriage to wife Mary Jane, much to the confusion of everyone following along in the newspaper funnies section.

These two heroes, along with Captain America, are finally united in the Amazing Spider-Man: President’s Day Special. (Interestingly, this looks to be the Steve Rogers Captain America, who’s technically still dead. But then again, so is Lincoln, so who am I to talk?) In celebration of President’s Day, the comic is available free online at the Marvel Unlimited site. Yeah, it’s only a six page long story. The rest is a reprint of that over-hyped “Spider-Man meets President Obama” comic. From a comic standpoint, this is the equivalent of those cavity-fighter pamphlets you get at your dentist’s office. So why in the heck should I even give it a look?

Well it is written by the stellar Matt Fraction (author of The Immortal Iron Fist, Punisher War Journal, and winner of the 2007 “Favorite Newcomer Writer” Eagle Award). And, you know, the press was all gaga over that Spider-Man comic featuring Barack Obama. How come they’re not all over the story where Spidey teams up with the Great Emancipator? Are you telling me people weren’t at least morbidly curious by something entitled “Gettysburg Distress”? I mean, look at that cover! I don’t know about you, but I’m in the mood for some Lincoln badassery!

Unfortunately, this is not what happens. The comic never lives up to its glorious cover. In fact, Spidey and Abe never meet. At all. This turns into a really ham-handed effort to be goofy and somehow educational and moving at the same time.

We first see Spidey and Captain America fighting a goofy villain named Professor Abraham von Lincolnstein. Oh, and his army of “unthinking robot thieves.” While fighting these First Family-themed villains, Cap mentions off-handedly that the villainous professor doesn’t even sound like the real Abraham Lincoln. Spidey is perplexed. How would Cap know? He’s old, but he should be talking about his good times with General Eisenhower and Vice President Truman. This leads to a flashback where Cap, in the midst of a fight with the Red Skull, gets caught up in Marvel’s signature deus ex machina — the Cosmic Cube — and gets teleported back in time.

What follows in the world’s most embarrassing retelling of the Gettysburg Address. Let’s start with Cap’s line that introduces the sequence: “No one spoke. No one coughed. No one dared.” Ugh. This is not good writing, Fraction! Oddly enough, Cap pretty much derails his own starry-eyed hero worship by tossing out a piece of trivia: “His voice was high and reedy, due respect, like a Kentucky farmboy.” Yes, Matt: I read Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation, too.

OK, so by this point, I pretty much lost hope that we were going to see Abe, Spidey, and Cap take on, say, The Sentinels… which is a goddamn shame. At least I could hope for a decent retelling of the Gettysburg Address, my personal favorite public speech of all time. This does not happen.

I sure that there’s a great way to portray this speech in sequential art format. It would not involve spectators looking longingly at Lincoln as if he were heaven sent. It would not involve Lincoln finishing off his speech with a squinty-eyed, smiling expression as if he were reminded of a delicious key lime pie. And it would not involve Cap reminiscing how Abe looked directly at him. Look, Cap… if Honest Abe really did see you, he’d have the friggin’ Army of the Potomac on your ass, ‘cuz you stand out like a circus clown in what’s supposed to be a dedication ceremony.

To finish it off, just to hammer the point home that this is all just a big joke anyway, our heroes sit down to have some fruit pies (in an obvious parody of those Hostess Ads). What the hell, Fraction? If the President’s Day Special was going to be a big joke, why didn’t we just have Lincoln punching out Hitler or something? Why shoe-horn, without any context, the most concise summary of why the Civil War was fought in between jokes about Silver Age villains and cheesy ads that aren’t even all that funny, really? I know that this was a throwaway gig, Fraction, but I also doubt someone like Peter David would’ve phoned it in this badly.

Still, The Webcomic Overlook predicts that Amazing Spider-Man: President’s Day Special is the front-runner to win the 2009 Eisner Award for Best Digital Comic. You heard it here first!

Rating: James Buchanan

Ah, Japan. It’s the only country in the world that can turn anything into a teenage girl. Most people would find no inspiration beyond pure academic purposed in, say, the Nazi Luftwaffe. But you know some intrepid Japanese anime out that is saying to himself, “Yes, I CAN see dewy eyes and perky, barely covered lady lumps in that Messerschmitt Bf109.” Or, “God, I seriously don’t care how much we piss off China! I simply must make girls out of their air force!”

Judging from his name, I assume that Josué Pereira is not from The Land of the Rising Sun. Yet his webcomic, Nerf Now!!, is undoubtedly a love letter to Japan’s glorification of the adolescent woman.

Thus far, Nerf Now!! contains two distinct story arcs. Both deal with video games. The first rectifies an unfortunate oversight in Team Fortress 2: where the women at? Pereira tranforms the TF2 dynamic from testosterone-fueled macho posturing to testosterone-fueled macho posturing where you have to save the girl. When the art is distinct and inspired by J. C. Leyendecker, you don’t have to do much to modify the designs of the existing characters. The fun is trying to see which design elements work when you turn a couple of them into girls. This is, for some reason a popular past time on the internet. Pereira is hardly the only person wondering what TF2 characters would look like if they were softer and squishier.

Pereira is far more original with his second story. For the life of me, I don’t think anyone else has ever attempted to turns Zergs into teenage girls. Well, OK, I’m sure there’s some novel depictions of Kerrigan out there. Can any of them top the depiction of the Zerg Overlord as a four-eyed teenage girl with a balloon tied to her back?

When you think about it, Japan’s obsession isn’t so bizarre in the context of … OH GOD NOW I CAN’T GET THIS SONG OUT OF MY HEAD AAAGGGHHHH

Rating:

Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down….

What do you get when you have a webcomic that features … get this … both pirates AND zombies? Bet you didn’t guess “a surreal, stream of consciousness comic with subtle, absurdist humor.” But that’s what you get with Brian James’ very strange series, A Fine Example.

When I first started reading this webcomic, I did not have high hopes. The art — which uses chicken-scratch cross-hatching to indicate shading and alternates between pencil and ink — reminded me of the drawings our newspaper editor, who was in every art class and competed locally, used to draw in the wide margins of the “humor” page in our high school newspaper. (And if this is really him under an alias … I’m on to you, Ed.) It resembles post-Woodstock art, the type you would find in counter-culture dailies or underground comix printed under publishers with names like “Rip Off” and “Kitchen Sink.” Consequently, character illustrations in A Fine Example feel gritty, raw, and unpolished. However, James balances it out with sparse backgrounds that impart an air of both desolation and solace, not unlike a Bill Plympton cartoon. Later pages retain this underground comix aesthetic, albeit with more detail.

However, I find the jagged white edges around the characters in shaded panels to be very distracting. If I were Mssr. James, I’d work on the anti-aliasing.

A Fine Example is a story of a fellow with a fake eyepatch and two peg legs named Free Pirate Stiles. Stiles acts rather silly and clueless most of the time, but perhaps that’s a reaction to his environs. He lives in a surreal world where kids are drawn in pencil and zombies seem to be in charge of society. There’s no plot, really. It’s more a series of random events. Zombie attack, Stiles gets in touch with an old, decomposing friend, and pirates get together to have an outdoor party. That’s it. Nothing outstanding or particular coherent… but nothing terrible, either.

What impresses me most about A Fine Example is the writing. Sure, initially we get a lot of dorky gags of the “How did you lose your eye?/I didn’t!” variety. And James get a lot of mileage out of a cute comedy side character. However, A Fine Example eventually syncs into a pleasant, easy-going rhythm. And there’s something transformative about Mssr. James’ brand of art. Like Minus, everything seems to exist in a dreamlike state. Crazy moments — such as, I don’t know, the hanging of the uncanny GoGo Lack — somehow feel gentle, as if everything should be happening in slow motion all the time.

It’s like, so mellow.

Wow. This comic is turning me hippie.

Also, this may be the only webcomic I’ve read where it’s absolutely shocking when the author drops pop culture references. While reading this comic, I had Brian James pegged as a “sensitive art student.” You know, the type that brags that they never watch TV. Who would’ve guessed that he knew anything about Bret “The Hitman” Hart?

I can’t say A Fine Example is for everyone. I personally liked it. I found it to be a nice, pleasant head trip. It’s lighthearted, bizarrely humorous, and tranquil despite the strong presence of pirates and zombies. That would just harsh the vibe.

Rating:

Truckin’

The mad science of random ratings continues! Today’s Crabcake Confidential looks at a webcomic review request sent to me some months ago, “The World of Roodie Doodie,” a webcomic written and illustrated by a guy named Roodie Doodie. (But really, isn’t it quite cruel of his parents to name him Roodie if Doodie was already an odd sounding surname?)

“Roodie Doodie” is a gag strip done in vertical style. Its main subjects are spoofs of ninjas, superheroes, Dr. Who, Freddie vs. Jason, and other topics that were clearly catered for obsessive nerds. The antics are acted out by little guys that look like Nutter Butters.

Mmmm…. sweet, savory, peanut buttery Nutter Butters….

Where was I?

Oh, yes, “Roodie Doodie.” After a while, you begin to get the creepy realization that Roodie Doodie (the author) is from England. First of all, there’s a “.uk” address listed at the bottom. But mainly it’s because the characters, including the ones created in America, start talking like a bunch of bloody lorries. There’s nothing wrong with that, but my Yankee sense starts tingling when Roodie Doodie Batman calls Roodie Doodie Superman “Tight git” or, when Roodie Doodie Freddy screams “I’m dying for a slash!” Cor love a duck! (Incidentally, I imagine all the characters being voiced by Yahtzee Croshaw.) If anything, though, I view it as a wonderful way to expand my regionalist American perspective, and for that I thank Mssr. Doodie.

One poll on the site shows that the most popular feature is “Ninjastyle.” It’s the first feature, and I have to say I didn’t find the original phase to be very humorous, which can be summed up by “Two Ninjas engage in competition and the second one gets a ‘Wins‘ quote.” It was too much like an attempt at either exploiting an internet meme, or an attempt at starting one. After a while, though, Mssr. Doodie abandons this pattern and the comic becomes two gentlemen in black pyjamas who do nasty things to each other … a small but welcome improvement.

Personally, my favorite feature was “Jason vs. Freddy,” because you can’t go wrong with two timeless monsters of the 1980′s slasher movies acting like a couple of chuckle-headed mates. The next “Alien Loves Predator“? Perhaps.

“Roodie Doodie” covers ground that’s already been covered several times by other webcomics. But, in the end, it’s also light-hearted, harmless, and usually good for a small chuckle now and then. And hey … superheroes that look like they belong in Steve Oedekirk’s next Thumb project. That’s the mutt’s nuts.

Rating:

Bubble wand

When you start a website about webcomics, it’s inevitable that you’re going to get a bunch of requests from webcomic creators asking you to review their comic. There are some bloggers who openly mock such requests, calling the creators out for their pathetic self-promotion.

I take another stand. I sympathize with the webcomic creators. It’s tough to get new viewers when the internet boasts thousands of webcomics and millions more distractions. Heck, I struggle to get viewers to this blog, and I get a shiny, happy feeling when it gets linked on ComixTalk or other reputable webcomic sites. So when requests started trickling in, I was up to doing a few requests. Besides, everyone who sent a link asked nicely, and that counts for a lot.

There’s a small problem, though. How do I rate these reviews? What if I truly felt a webcomic was terrible and I gave it a low rating? Doesn’t that seem kinda low since the creator was nice enough to send a link to their comic along? And if I rated the comic too high, I would be forever wondering if I compromised the integrity of my review just to be nice. What kind of person would I be if I liked everything I reviewed? Probably Roger Ebert, but that’s beside the point.

So I came up with an innovative solution: the rating will be totally arbritary … like the name of this feature. Oh, it probably will have something to do with what I felt about the webcomic, but the meaning will be so vague and enshrouded in mystery that you could probably debate what I really meant. It’s all very zen and post-modern. Perhaps you can tell how I felt about a webcomic by the text of the review itself. This is the internet, though, where amateur reviewers tend to be crass about a movie or game that they liked … just because it’s funny to complain (supposedly). So when I start rambling like a grouchy old war vet, am I being truly vicious or am I just trying to be the next Yahtzee Croshaw?

It’s a core duality that powers my art. That’s, like, deep … I think. Hopefully, one day some college student will reference this post in their Senior thesis, “Metaphysical Methods for Reviewing Webcomics,” using words like “avuncular” and “egregious.”

So the inaugural “Crabcake Confidential” is about Beachnuts, a comedy webcomic by Mike Vincelli about surfer culture. “Beachnuts” is to surfing what “Penny Arcade” is to videogames, which is to say that it’s burns with a dangerously obsessive passion. I’m no surfer myself, so I essentially viewed this webcomic as an anthropological guide to the surfer lifestyle.

1. Surfers sure like to talk about surfing a lot. In fact, it gets to be like dialogue at Smurf Village … except everyone says “surf” instead of “smurf.” It’s not hard to visualize, people! There’s jokes about how guys would rather stare at waves than look at hot chicks, how stranded surfers don’t mind getting in a plane crash …. Wait. I take it back. This isn’t like Smurf Village at all. This is like Jeff Foxworthy’s “You Might Be a Redneck” jokes, but with more bare chests and fewer Chevy pick-ups.
2. Surfers must absolutely reek. A lot of the jokes here are about how something smells bad. Not that I necessarily disagree. I live near the water, and the aroma of dried seaweed and dead fish combine to form a smell an especially pungeant smell. The whole “Ocean Mist” air freshener scent? Lies! If marketers were true to the name, “Ocean Mist” should probably smell like rotten three-day old sushi. And this sort of relates to…
3. Surfers are f***ing disgusting. “Beachnuts” thrives on humor involving bodily fluids. And not the good bodily fluids. We’re talking about jokes about pee, droppings, and stuff that comes out of your nose. So if I learned anything from “Beachnuts,” I probably should stay 300 meters away from the nearest surfer lest I step in a suspicious patch of wet sand.

The artwork is reminiscent of the stuff you used to find late 1990′s flash cartoons and video games. Everybody is bulgy, and there’s a strangely familiar obsession with potbellies and curly body hair. You know, to drive home the whole “Surfers are f***ing disgusting” bulletpoint. (Why DID those early flash toons try to make their characters look as gross as possible? Was every artist a huge Ren & Stimpy fan?) Everybody sports wide canary-eating grins. For a webcomic about surfing, the characters seem really stiff, as if someone had rammed a metal rod down their spines. Shouldn’t surfing look dynamic? Why does everyone look like they’re colorforms?

“Beachnuts” should be one of those webcomics that’s looking to find a home in a specialty magazine, preferably with names like “Wave Action” or “Surf Girl.” To be honest, I don’t know if even surfers would find this strip humorous. To Vincelli’s credit, he seems to know his stuff. No poseur is he. There’s a good chance that surfers will read “Beachnuts” and laugh and nod and maybe snort Hawaiian Punch out their noses. Who knows.

As for this non-surfer, reading “Beachnuts” was like sitting at a beach hut and listening as Vincelli, seated at a nearby table, shared some anecdotes with a circle of friends over spam burgers. All the in-jokes sailed over my head except for the poo gags, which I didn’t find too funny, and I felt like an embarassed voyeur sitting at the corner table forlornly watching ESPN while sucking on a Sierra Mist.

Rating: Tila Tequila