In which horrible webcomics are torn apart
Congratulations, Noelle Adams, for making the second-worst comic I have ever seen. (Not the absolute worst, however. That honor goes to MSPaint Adventures, which I'm sure you'll agree is a much more visually and intellectually offensive comic.)
There is just so much wrong here that I don't know where to start. We could talk about how your one recurring female character is so flat and two-dimensional that, despite purportedly having been created by a woman, she comes off as having been created by a male hikikomori whose only information about what women look and act like comes from what he's seen on the Internet. Or we could talk about how, despite the fact that your comic has four visually distinct male characters (even though it's called "Girls 'n' Games"), I can't tell them apart because they are all the exact same person in different bodies. Perhaps it would be better if we discussed the fact that almost none of the "jokes" in your comic, which has run for over six years, have ever been funny, and of the few that were once funny, they went out of style in 2002. Or I could just point out the bleeding obvious: your comic, after six years, has no plot. None.
"But Allison," you may say, "you love Oglaf, and that has no plot to speak of!" True, but unlike this piece of crap, Oglaf has at least some semblance of a world built around the episodic humor. Granted, it's a world where bizarre occurances, often bizarre sexual occurances, are commonplace, but it's still a world. Also, Oglaf has characters distinguishable by more than hair color; I don't need a characters page to tell Ivan and Sandoval apart, because they are different people with different personalities. Finally, the humor in Oglaf is actually funny. To those of you who disagree with me on this, consider this brilliantly thought-out and irrefutable point: fuck you.
If anyone harbors doubts that this comic is horrible, behold:
Now, I'm not a hardcore feminist by any stretch of the imagination. Much as it may disillusion some of you, I have laughed at a "smack that bitch" joke or two. Hell, I'm still convinced that the Duc d'Orleans from Le Chevalier D'Eon uses that pimp stick of his for smackin' his H.'.O's. This comic offends me because a.) gamers are too afraid of women to actually harm them and b.) the domestic abuse is so horribly out of context. On the occasions I've found jokes involving domestic abuse funny, there's at least some setup that tells the listener "this is a joke, I'm not saying hitting women is good." Like maybe it's about prostitutes, or involves stereotypes about people who live south of the Mason-Dixon Line, or has the words "make me a sandwich" in it. Stuff like that. There is absolutely no leadup to the punchline here. The first two panes have nothing to do with the last one, and aren't funny by themselves; it's just a random conversation between two gamer geeks and a chick. All the last panel does is say "Teehee, I think domestic abuse is so funny it can make a boring, shitty comic funny all by itself!" And again, this is a woman saying that.
Brava, Noelle Adams, brava. You've taught me that it's not only male chauvinists that feminists need to be afraid of, because there are actual women who believe that hitting a woman in and of itself is a joke. You've taught me that it is possible to belong to a group yourself, spend your life interacting with members of that group, and still have no idea that not all members of that group act the same way. But most importantly, you've taught me not to be so hard on myself, because you are out there somewhere being a worse writer than me. And that's all I have to say on the subject. Good night.
There is just so much wrong here that I don't know where to start. We could talk about how your one recurring female character is so flat and two-dimensional that, despite purportedly having been created by a woman, she comes off as having been created by a male hikikomori whose only information about what women look and act like comes from what he's seen on the Internet. Or we could talk about how, despite the fact that your comic has four visually distinct male characters (even though it's called "Girls 'n' Games"), I can't tell them apart because they are all the exact same person in different bodies. Perhaps it would be better if we discussed the fact that almost none of the "jokes" in your comic, which has run for over six years, have ever been funny, and of the few that were once funny, they went out of style in 2002. Or I could just point out the bleeding obvious: your comic, after six years, has no plot. None.
"But Allison," you may say, "you love Oglaf, and that has no plot to speak of!" True, but unlike this piece of crap, Oglaf has at least some semblance of a world built around the episodic humor. Granted, it's a world where bizarre occurances, often bizarre sexual occurances, are commonplace, but it's still a world. Also, Oglaf has characters distinguishable by more than hair color; I don't need a characters page to tell Ivan and Sandoval apart, because they are different people with different personalities. Finally, the humor in Oglaf is actually funny. To those of you who disagree with me on this, consider this brilliantly thought-out and irrefutable point: fuck you.
If anyone harbors doubts that this comic is horrible, behold:
Now, I'm not a hardcore feminist by any stretch of the imagination. Much as it may disillusion some of you, I have laughed at a "smack that bitch" joke or two. Hell, I'm still convinced that the Duc d'Orleans from Le Chevalier D'Eon uses that pimp stick of his for smackin' his H.'.O's. This comic offends me because a.) gamers are too afraid of women to actually harm them and b.) the domestic abuse is so horribly out of context. On the occasions I've found jokes involving domestic abuse funny, there's at least some setup that tells the listener "this is a joke, I'm not saying hitting women is good." Like maybe it's about prostitutes, or involves stereotypes about people who live south of the Mason-Dixon Line, or has the words "make me a sandwich" in it. Stuff like that. There is absolutely no leadup to the punchline here. The first two panes have nothing to do with the last one, and aren't funny by themselves; it's just a random conversation between two gamer geeks and a chick. All the last panel does is say "Teehee, I think domestic abuse is so funny it can make a boring, shitty comic funny all by itself!" And again, this is a woman saying that.
Brava, Noelle Adams, brava. You've taught me that it's not only male chauvinists that feminists need to be afraid of, because there are actual women who believe that hitting a woman in and of itself is a joke. You've taught me that it is possible to belong to a group yourself, spend your life interacting with members of that group, and still have no idea that not all members of that group act the same way. But most importantly, you've taught me not to be so hard on myself, because you are out there somewhere being a worse writer than me. And that's all I have to say on the subject. Good night.