Craig Babin is not a huge asshole.

As it turns out Craig saw my review. He ended up taking it much better than any webcomic artist I've ever seen.

He even admitted to a few shortcomings. He admits he needs to improve, and that with time, he hopes to.

So, for what it's worth, Craig Babin has earned some of my respect. I still think his comic is bad, but Craig Babin is not the huge asshole I once believed.

Review: Return on Insanity

Most comics (no matter how bad) have some sort of genre. No matter how shitty the dialogue and art in a comic may be, they are trying to do something. Return on Insanity seems to act as the exception to the rule. It changes genres more than your average politician chances stances. It supposedly started in the realm of journal comics only to change into a pseudo-drama into a situational "comedy". I have no idea what Tyler believes this comic of his to be, and to be honest I'm sure your average reader is in the same boat. So basically no one knows what this comic is really supposed to be about. Except me. I know exactly what Return on Insanity is, a huge pile of shit.

There is really no other place to start with this strip then looking at the first comic. Already we start with the "this is a webcomic EL OH EL" type stuff. Deplorable. Of course the second comic is going to be better! Oh wait, it isn't. I'm pretty sure someone else drew the first strip because Tyler Omichinski has no artistic talent what so ever. Which is odd for someone who claims to have been in graphic design. Oh sure graphic designers shouldn't be sculpting human figures, but damn they should be able to color things correctly. Or draw cars, or planes, or chairs, or shower heads. Graphic designers should also be good at designing logos. This is something Tyler fails at. He is a failure at Graphic design and a failure at being a cartoonist.

Being bad at his job and hobby isn't enough. Tyler is like some sort of manchild and this comic is his little escapist fantasy. He's a manchild in the fact that he finds farts and monkeys hilarious. He's living in an escapist fantasy where everyone roots for him, and where he can never fail. Why do webcomics have to do this? The main character has to be the author who lives in a world where they are never wrong. No one wants to read these stoires, very few do actually read them, yet webcomic artists keep churning out this monotonous shit out about how awesome they are. Anyone who finds this strip even remotely funny needs to be taken out into the street forced to wear a sign that reads "I AM RETARDED" and get verbaly abused by drunken frat boys for 6 hours (more if needed).

There are no characters in this comic. Anything that resembles characters is merely an illusion. These aren't even stereotypes. They are nothing more than a bunch of drawings connected to some words. The only thing real in the comic is the fucking title a Return on Insanity which is also the name of the retarded fake company the Tyler has decided to run. (despite having had jack shit to do with it's creation)

This review is a bit shorter than others, but there isn't much to work with in Return on Insanity it's a fairly new comic that just sucks. It's run by Tyler who's an egotistical bastard, slightly racist, and misogynist. The whole comic is just his retarded little fantasy with no direction or set genre. Tyler please do the internet a favor and spare us from having to read another shitty self-inset comic. Honestly, if I wanted shitty art, crappy writing and a protagonist with an ego trip I'd read Ctrl-Alt-Del.

Review: Life With Kreg

Perversion, stupidity, misogyny, and ill-founded pride are all perfect words to use when describing Life With Kreg. Not before have I seen a comic that was less funny are more offensive to humanity than this. Life With Kreg is supposed to be "a webcomic that views life through the eyes of a sarcastic pothead and his two best friends. There are very few story arcs in this webcomic (so you can start reading just about anywhere). Every strip is pretty much a day in the life with Kreg (hence the title). Although there is plenty of humor within the comic itself, most people seem to find that the true entertainment value comes from the commentary that follows the strip." The adjevtives I provided above provide a more accurate summary of the comic.

Before we get into the comic itself I think we need to meet the creator of this little toothpick-jabbed-into-the-internet's-privates. Craig Babin needs to have his internet access taken away. He's admitted to wanted to have his potential children taken away by Child Services. He's believes that a cross-over between Schindler's List and The Santa Clause is a hilarious idea. He thinks we need breath mints for our rectums. When talking about sex his opinion is as follows, "If there’s enough coke involved, you can find a woman who’ll lick the scabs off of a Leper." The list continues, but I think you get my point, Craig Babin is a creepy motherfucker. In his defense I could say that he might be a little screwed up because he supposedly worked as the DJ of a strip club for 12 years. But considering the way he draws women(which is to say he has no idea what one looks like clothed let alone nude) I'm going to go out on a limb and say he's a liar about that and is just really really fucked up.

Only a man this mentally deranged could come up with a cast of characters like this. First off we have Kreg, a perverted retard who is new to the internet (cutting edge of humor with that one) and dreams of fucking dead people, so basically in behavior and name he is the author. Then there is Rufus. Rufus consists of being the butt of jokes, being smart, and blowing his load into socks. Lastly there is Judy. Craig writes her as stupid, unitentionally perverted (in a WACKY way!) and totally in love with Kreg. These characters hover around CAD in terms of characterization. They can each be described in a word or two. The pot-head, the nerd and the girl.

However, the writing is bad in ways beyond bad characters. For starters, take any comic and we see that Craig can't make a joke. Well, except out of himself, but that is different than writing one. The comic is also slightly racist, demeaning to women (you see, in this world women are retarded animals who can't conseptualize things or draw inferences), years behind in cultural references, and just mind-numbingly stupid. The art is bad. Very bad. Judy suffers from CAD eyes. Kreg is drawn in the same position over and over. And Rufus, he changes about as much. The backgrounds are non-existent. Craig simply cannot draw women... or men, or children.

I found I was incredibly lucky in the fact that I did not have to read the whole archive. No, it seems that the first 100 strips are something I have to buy. Something I have to use my hard earned money on. I'm not about to do that seeing as it would make that asshole Craig a little richer.

Basically this comic is an insult to humanity. It offends me and it should offend you. Humor is devoid and art is shoddy. The comic serves as the platform for a disturbed man who needs to be committed. I read all of this shitty comic for you, just so you could avoid it. I wrote this for Craig, who needs to work on his art and writing. He needs to surf the internet more, and learn that "You've Got Mail" stopped being funny in 1999. Really.

Review: Massive Pwnage

If there is one thing on the Internet I hate it's Gamer Comics. Every last one of them is a pathetic copy of Penny Arcade. One such comic is Massive Pwnage. You see that? Massive Pwnage. This is making me ill already.

Being a gamer comic it has to be "created" by two people. I use the word created loosely because that would imply that some thought went into the comic. Nevertheless, this comic was shit onto the internet by Jon Nielsen and Josh Rivas. To my understanding Jon is the one who is the artist and Josh is the one who writes it. You see it's difficult to keep up because they actually go by different names, gamer names. You know because that's never been done before. GabeEncifer (what is this supposed to be?) is the wacky artist. TychoLocke is the angry smart one (you see wordy MUST mean smart). If you're stupider than Jon and Josh themselves and still don't understand what I am trying to say (in which case please get the fuck off the internet) then look at the fucking character page. I mean my God. To my understanding there are a few other characters namely the gamer girl and some demon-fruit-fucking thing. That's it. There are your characters. Congratulations.

Ence and Locke make jokes ranging from what the hell(?) to gamer jokes to racism. Not to mention jumping on the Jack Thompson bandwagon that is now law for all gamer comics.

Over all the writing is poor and hackish. Compared to Penny Arcade this comic actually makes more references to games then Penny Arcade does. This is because referencing something is actually easier then making a joke. Despite what the rabble of gamer comics might have you think, the two concepts are very different. This is what makes Massive Pwnage poor in terms of writing.

Take a look at this comic. See the girl in the last panel? See her? Have you seen her face before? I think I have. I think I saw it here. Oh sure a detail here or there is different, but, it is the same face. Jon and Josh's alter egos suffer from some sort of spinal-curve disease. This spine based illness can also be found elsewhere. It occurred to me this might be a slouch, but the way Jon scribbles these comics it looks like an illness.

If the forums should serve as any evidence, then Massive Pwnage basically has no fan-base. Which is good. The comic is a bad rip-off of Penny Arcade and shouldn't be rewarded for being so. With no fanbase though, why does the comic continue to exist? Why do they try to sell me stuff knowing that no one is even around to buy their stuff? I mean the fan-base looks to be of only five. Hell, my rapid archive digging probably provided 3/4 of this months page-hits. It's a bizarre situation.

If I had to make one suggestion to Jon and Josh then it would be to stop making this comic. It's an embarrassing copy of Penny Arcade that maybe 5 people read. Stop embarrassing yourself and those around you and stop Massive Pwnage. Make another comic for all I care, but please. Make it stop.

Review: Questionable Content

Questionable Content is supposed to be a comic about "romance, indie rock, little robots, and the problems people have" however the whole thing is too incomprehensible to really be about anything other than selling awesome t-shirts. I know that as I type this a tribe of neckbeared internet men are only going to read this far and begin to type up an angry tirade against my review as per their tribes tradition. For those of you that aren't fucking insane, or at least willing to read the whole thing before "proving me wrong" let's move on.

The biggest problem with Questionable Content is that it suffers from non-existent characterization. The main character is Jeph Marten whose entire character is listening to "indie" music and being surrounded by women. Martens only problem was that he couldn't decided between two women who were so in love with him but as soon as that was solved he really has no problems now. Then there is Dora whose character is being Martens kinky girlfriend. Before she became his girlfriend she was wanting to grab everyones ass, after becoming his girlfriend she still grabs asses so I guess not much really changed. There is Faye who unlike most of the characters, had characterization. This was explained through a hackish text dump but at least it was something. Until it was resolved. Now the whole of her character are snarky comments and getting laid. Lastly there is Hannelore she started out as another attractive girl who hung around Marten. Jeph must have decided he needed variety with his characters and decided to make her crazy as fuck. Now his retarded perverted fanbase (start reading a little after reply number 38) secretly faps to her.

The writing is poor in other ways. For instance, Faye was depressed? I'm pretty sure she was part of the punchilne and even delivered a punch-line (not funny but you get the idea.) When you are delivering punch-lines, chances are you aren't depressed. Also, apparently two dates, months of not being around caped off by sex means love? Also characters just dissappear when Jeph, according to him "probably got bored of writing them, so I stopped doing it. They'll come back if it suits the story and I feel like it."

This ladies and Gentlemen is the sign of a poor writer.

The art isn't terrible, and I don't feel like saying much though because unlike Buckley, Jeph has improved. My only two complaints are that (in the comic) the camera angle rarely ever changes. This could make it somewhat interesting to look at beyond all the flavors of boobs he uses to supply his perverted fanbase.

My other complaint about his art is that he thinks "large eyes equals ANIME!!!" It doesn't. Of course no one will point out this problem because all the comments are for that are "omg adorable i love it ^__^". Of course I don't really expect his retarded fanbase to give real criticism with the comic seeing as they do it wrong. Oh wait. Except for the time they wanted to make a thread to point out editing errors, and it got locked because "This kind of thread isn't really necessary."

It seems after a certain level of success webcomic "creators" turn into egotistical pricks who are above things like editors or listening to their fanbase. Remember how I said the art improved a lot? Don't expect any sort of improvement in the next few years, Jeph is now at the "Buckley's ego" stage of webcomic creation. The growth period is over.

Now Jeph makes comics that are only made to sell t-shirts. Did I mention he lives off this comic through awesome t-shirt sales? He also makes money off stuff he is not clever enough to make himself.

Why would one read Questionable Content? Probably because on the surface it looks like a decent webcomic. With semi-decent art a story that looks like it's deep it attracts a sizeable fanbase. However the comic is poorly written for something that is supposed to be "serial" and have a story. Jeph might better invest his time in a gag-a-day story-less format - a simple joke comic he might be much more successful with. (Indietits is an interesting example of what he could do, the only small problem here is that the character is based off a filler he did for QC) Writing that doesn't require the same amount of writing ability as serious stories. Of course, this (nor any needed change) will never happen to the comic seeing as Jeph has made his home in the "Buckley's Ego" stage of webcomic creation.

This blog has a purpose.

Solomon never got enough credit. He (and friends) took time out of their days to tell us what Webcomics were bad. We learned which ones to avoid. And creators learned that their work was not as great as their fans said it was. For the first time, the internet had the closest thing to an editor for Webcomics.

So what I'm doing here is similar. I'm not as smart nor a vivid with my language as Solomon, but I hope to review some webcomics. Unfortunate webcomics, and by unfortunate I mean webcomics that for one reason or another unfortunately exist. In some cases a webcomic can be fixed. In other cases the comic should be taken out behind the barn and taken out of it's misery.

So yes. This blog has a purpose, and that is to review webcomics.