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.