03-24-06

A Couple Quickies to Reduce the Backlog, But First...

...a quick digression (yay another digression!)  You know what I miss?  I miss polite discourse.  I miss when debaters predicted the oppositions arguments and shot them down in the body of their original statements.  These days, it often seems that "debate" on both sides of the aisle is comprised of unfounded accusations and memes combined with drunken shouts of "You don't know me!" and nobody learns anything but what a dick the other guy is.
          The thing that got me thinking about that is that Robert "Tangent" Howard is no longer visiting forums.  The reason for this is that he uses his host's default e-mail for his ID e-mail when signing up for forums to prevent spam, and his host has received a huge amount of hate mail.  Now see, here's the thing, I respect Howard and Websnark's Eric Burns a whole lot, because they are able to give very dispassionate reviews of webcomics (which are really a subjective thing), and they can both manage to couch even their less glowing reviews in courteous language.  And they both take a lot of shit.
          They take a lot of shit for their opinions.  They don't get hatemail because they're jerks.  They get hate mail because they didn't describe last months PvP as the greatest contribution to literary and visual art since the illustrated edition of the Divine Comedy.  They get hate mail because they didn't embrace some fanboi demand for the developing relationships in Deisel Sweeties or they didn't immediately accept the latest masturbatory artistic fad in the "webcomics critique community".
          That's just sad.  Seriously.  If spittle-emitting vituperative over someone else's "opinion" is your only means of communicating, I suggest you go back to writing semi-literate letters to the editor of TV Guide demanding the return of BJ and the Bear, and leave the critical discourse to the grown-ups.

No Surprises Here
Okay, so as it says in the title, these are quickies, and they're mostly posted so I can reduce the backlog in my waiting list without shorting you guys of the value of a full and thoughtful review.  As such, with one notable exception, they're all longstanding comics which have (I would hope) been subject to previous comment by better known (and just better) reviewers than me, and I feel I can safely just glance at my reasons for giving them the rating they receive under the assumtion that you've at least heard about them (assuming you haven't spent the last five years blowing hash in a cave with Osama).

El Dan
          I could write a complete review of El Goonish Shive (it means "The Goonish Shive").  Heck, I could write a Tangent about it, but I doubt I could do it justice.  EGS is probably the most underappreciated comic on the web.  Sure, Shive has run into a few scheduling problems, and that's costing him a star, but his art is good and his writing is fantastic.  Shive has an amazing feel for humor and drama, and an innate instinct for how deep he can go before he needs to pull back with a joke, or at least a giggle.  He should be writing movies (heck, someone should, they can't just keep remaking Sherwood Schwartz TV series).  Lucky for us, he writes his comic.
After Elf Life
          Last year, Eric Gustafson (neé Carson Fire), beset by the demands of life, finally decided that he could no longer do Elf Life justice.  He couldn't update regularly, and the project was taking more out of him than he was getting in return.  Add to that the fact that he was searching for a way to express his political and social opinions without being abused by his fans, and you have the birth of Winger.  I like Winger.  I don't always agree with all of Gustafson's politics, but I almost ever agree with Trudeau, and I've started liking Doonesbury again (because Trudeau at some point rediscovered he needs to be funny).  It's witty, it's well-drawn, and it usually works.  Gustafson also supports a lively debate in his Winger Blog, mostly related to the subject matter in that day's comic.  He has difficulties with updating, but they're not as egregious or as notable as the problems with Elf Life, so we'll give him a pass on that.
KISS Rule
          If you ever played an RPG of any kind, especially a pen and paper one, go read Order of the Stick.  Unlike Knights of the Dinner Table, it focuses on the characters in the game, not the players.  Unlike...oh, pick one...it really focuses on the fantasy and deep immersion aspects of the great old tabletop games, especially, Dungeons and Dragons, and not on the richly frustrating world of MMORPGs.  There's a little fourth wall breaking, and Burlew intentionally draws the characters as stick figures (both to allow his readers to see the characters as characters they played (with) and to avoid any copyright hassles fromt he aforementioned heavily-protected games).  But it works, it updates regularly, and it's just funny.

El Goonish Shive by Dan Shive
Updates: M/W/F
Caveats:  Polymorphism, Giant Squirrels.
Rating:

Winger by Eric Gustafson
Updates: Daily-ish
Caveats:  Conservative Politics, Inconsistent Updates.
Rating:

The Order of the Stick by Rich Burlew
Updates: M/W/F
Caveats:  Psychotic Halflings, Stick Figures.
Rating:

Erratum:  Howard pointed out that he always used his personal e-mail for forum accounts.  The problem arose from various forum posters and managers seeking out his host anyway.