Bad webcomics

[Surfin Terf]

Stumbled on this piece of shit, Souls Foreclosed.

A haunting tale of transsexual demons fighting a church of soul-stealing vampires, finding love, and facing loss in a world of the 19th century that never was, inspired by ye olde pulp novels, queer zine comix, and gothic horror illustrations of yore. To be filed under "Queer Catharsis".

That cover image doesn't actually look so bad, the author has some artistic ability... ability that does not translate to appealing human faces.

The last two are from the most recent page, so he hasn't gotten better. Which kind of makes sense since this is what the artist's human face looks like . He goes by Sev Wildfang, I'm not sure if that's just a pseudonym or his true and honest troon name that he makes his friends call him

The ugly faces ironically work well for the villains who look suitably spooky and hateful, but makes it kind of hard to like our trans protagonists.

Really, it reminds me of a much worse version of Kill Six Billion Demons... K6BD's art isn't that different than Souls Foreclosed, but Abbadon coloring his comic makes it so much more beautiful... if the city of Throne had just been a monochromatic mess of black lines and every character had been a white shape surrounded by a heavy black outline no one would have ever cared about the comic.

But it's not just the artwork that's subpar. I've enjoyed far, far, far uglier comics than this. It's the unreadable font and formatting...

but mostly the shitty writing. Holy fuck the writing is garbage. I've only read through the first hundred pages (out of about 300) or so and skimmed a couple recent chapters (see below) and have no intention of going further. Surprise surprise it's shit (and the formatting and handwriting makes it almost unreadable, Sev includes a transcript for each page because even he realizes that it's impossible to read).

The story: the world is ruled by a vampire/necromancer church (hey, a little cliche, but not a bad premise... too bad that part seems to be completely neglected and mostly abandoned a few pages in as far as I can tell) and all the gods but Lucifer (god of "chances" (don't know what that means) and balance) have been starved or driven off by necromancy.

Salvatore (I don't remember seeing his name in his backstory, but his real name is Salvatore and his tranny name is Reah) is a boy who is raised by the church to be a priest but wants to be a girl and a nun. Apparently the vampire church (which we have established turning people into literal zombies so their souls can't reincarnate and are starving the gods to death) also enforces strict gender roles and heterosexuality which is portrayed as their main crime. Anyway, Salvatore is caught cross dressing and gets bullied, so the headmistress sends him off to a secret nunnery full of trannies. Now, I'm not religious at all, but if you aren't willing to obey god's commands to not wear a dress then why can you be trusted to be obedient to god in every other way?

Tranny nuns seems like a huge problem for a church which considers gender roles to be divine, which would explain why the nunnery is eventually destroyed by based inquisitors.

Anyway, Salvatore runs away, decides that god must be evil (it was the transphobia that convinced him, not the whole eternal enslavement by necromancers) and makes a bargain with Lucifer who turns him into a hairy, muscular tranny demon.


Corvus Karthosian is a church sorcerer who performs at the tranny cabaret (under the name Tabitha Wylde, because even in a fantasy world trannies have to choose the corniest fake names). He gets ambushed by a squad of his own men who suspected him of being a degenerate and he jumps off a balcony and makes a pact with Lucifer who turns him into a witch demon.
Censored deadname.

Anyway, I read a few recent chapters just to give it a fair chance and all the problems remain unfixed. Characters are bland and Mary Suish, font and formatting are shite, and the morality is hamfisted and unsubtle while still being confused and incoherent.

Summary, short fat medical assistant (named Joey Styx) who hangs out at the cabaret gets blessed by Lucifer rubbing his dick against his belly

Spoiler: NSFW

Corvus and Salvatore enter town in disguise as a very tall and ugly noblewoman and her bodyguard, some guy (who I'll call Irish Lad) aggressively hits on Corvus so Salvatore bashes his face in and then Corvus mind controls the cops to rape him. Joey can see that they're demons because of Lucifer's blessing which also tells him that Salvatore is a woman despite very obviously being a man.

Joey rescues the guy from rape by saying that he'll take him to the medical academy where he works for treatment. Then Joey goes to the cabaret where he flirts with his boyfriend or crush or whatever who goes on and on about how Tabitha Wylde (Corvus) was the greatest performer that the cabaret ever had.

Next chapter, Corvus goes in disguise to visit a museum that his brother, Malthus, runs. Apparently Malthus tried to kill him before and Corvus burned out his eye. He's at the museum to scout out a mostly complete ancient super soldier. The brother goes on and on about how he will get his revenge on Korvus. Weird incest vibes here, because obviously Tabitha Wylde is so beautiful and glamorous that even her own brother can't help but be taken by her feminine charms.

Anyway, we cut back to Joey who is called to the medical academy late at night, turns out his boss is completing a major medical discovery. Lucifer's gift allows him to see that he's evil and he discovers that he is going to turn Irish Lad into some new kind of undead (which is actually the super soldier from Malthus' museum). Joey manages to escape, but discovers that the boss had the cabaret raided (fucking why? Why is a necromancer scientist ordering the raid of a gay cabaret?), but that Salvatore saved Joey's crush.

Then we cut to Malthus' unveiling of his newly completed super soldier which , but it turns out that the audience is all Corvus and his allies. They fight the super soldier but are losing, but for some reason Lucifer's love make Irish Lad decide not to kill Salvatore... for some reason which then allows Salvatore to consume Malthus' sorcery (I'm not sure if this power had ever been established) and then Irish Lad kills Malthus and let's the trannies go free.


My conclusion shouldn't shock you, this comic is bad in every way. It's ugly, badly written, the characters are annoying, and it's also genuinely hard to read (I probably got some details wrong because it's so fucking confusing). Some of the world building almost teases cool ideas, but they're hardly unique and overall the execution is lacking. It's not worth reading other than maybe out of morbid curiosity, but if someone with a higher tolerance for this kind of thing could read it and give it a more thorough write-up I'd be interested in that.

 

[Ghostse]

A interesting set up ruined by Trannies. got it.

 

[Honeybadger v2]

How are you supposed to read that shit? Are you even supposed?

 

[Arthur Morgan]

View attachment 4296249
How are you supposed to read that shit? Are you even supposed?

I would say no, it's probably just background shit that wasn't supposed to be read. Unless he really did want people to try and read it.

 

[Owls Owls Owls]

The Inquisition razed her home, tortured her to make her repent, and put the Brand of Obedience on her to forcefully convert her into a mindless undead servant - none of it was able to break her spirit. In her resilience, Lucifer saw great material for a demon to carry out Their mission. As a demon, her body's ability to persevere is heightened to superhuman levels, being able to close wounds in a matter of hours that would instantly end the life of anyone else. She is a being of raw material strength and toughness - with the soul of a bumbling country nun who only ever wanted God to show her a little kindness.

Troons and their power fantasies, I swear to God. Look at the kid's photo. A being of raw material strenght and toughness this author has never been, before or after the cross-sex hormones. Fuck's sake.

At least the art is suitable ugly for the themes and characters, I'll give it that much. "Sev" may not admit it out loud, but his art shows that he knows that no matter what, a man in a skirt will always be a repulsive image no matter how much people call them 'queen'.

 

[AnOminous]

As a demon, her body's ability to persevere is heightened to superhuman levels, being able to close wounds in a matter of hours that would instantly end the life of anyone else.

Not exactly a very useful ability if you want to troon out and your axe wound keeps closing up every couple hours.

 

[lolcow yoghurt]

I saw Lore Olympus books in a bookstore. And, boy, the page arrangement is stupid. More than half of the pages were empty. That's why you shouldn't make books out of webcomics.

 

[Haramburger]

Momlife Comics (@momlife_comics) is a webcomic series and the Instagram page of illustrator Mary Catherine Starr, who creates humorous parenting scenarios related to motherhood, her husband and women's issues. Her characters and drawings became the subject of ironic memes and exploitables in mid-2022 on Twitter where users found her comic titled One Of The [Many] Differences Between Me & My Husband cringy because it levied unwarranted criticism towards the husband for seeing a "ripe peach" and wanting a smoothie.



article: (https://www.inverse.com/input/culture/peach-instagram-comic-mary-catherine-starr-momlife)
archive: (https://archive.is/3Ut8D)

MOTHERHOOD
Chris Stokel-Walker Aug. 31, 2022

Twitter mercilessly mocked her peach comic. Now she’s speaking out.​

In an exclusive interview, Mary Catherine Starr, creator of Instagram’s @momlife_comics, discusses “Peachgate” and how it changed her.

Mary Catherine Starr’s latest Instagram post, published on her @momlife_comics account earlier today, is a little different from most of her content.

In the illustrated, multi-panel post, Starr, a millennial mother of two, says that she’s been doing a lot of “soul-searching” since she became the focus of Twitter’s ire last month. The vitriol stemmed from a comic she made about her husband taking a peach she felt would be best given to their children.

She writes that she would have to make “adjustments” to her content: “Moving forward I am going to be more thoughtful about the biographical comics I create about our relationship dynamics.”


Twenty minutes after making the post, she spoke with Input from her home in Cape Cod, Mass., addressing the “Peachgate” controversy and how she intends to move forward. “You’re the first guy I’ve talked to about all of this,” she says.

A design studio owner, yoga instructor, and blogger, Starr says she began posting cartoons on her personal account in 2020 as “a fun little creative outlet for me,” before switching her comics to a standalone Instagram profile the next year. “I like connecting with other moms about these challenges we’re all facing,” she says. “It grew fairly quickly.”

The @momlife_comics account was first thrust into the limelight in January 2022, when one of Starr’s posts — about double-standards in relationships, depicting a man who brings home takeout as a “fun dad,” and a woman who does the same as a “lazy mom” — went viral and was picked up by mainstream media.

That, Starr says, was the beginning of her problems. “Things kind of exploded,” she says. “What had once been a very small conversation with like 5,000 to 10,000 people became more of a worldwide conversation.” (Between mid-January and mid-February, she gained nearly 120,000 Instagram followers.) Before then, she explains, “There were a lot of things I didn’t have to say” — namely that she loves her husband, Ben, a lawyer.

Then, on July 29, fellow comics creator Rachel Jane Andelman posted this on Twitter:

“I for one promise to never make comics about how much I hate my spouse, should I ever possess one,” Andelman subsequently tweeted.

The comic about the peach turned into a meme, with some rewriting the panel’s text to more accurately display what they felt was the underlying sentiment. Others took the conceit of the peach, writing 21st century versions of William Carlos Williams’ famous plum poem.


Starr, who does not use Twitter, didn’t become aware of what was happening until the next day. “I woke up on Saturday morning, and had thousands of comments and DMs that were really mean,” she says.

Since her “fun dad/lazy mom” comic went viral, Starr had occasionally received negative messages from men who dislike the way she portrays her husband. “I’m totally fine with nice disagreement,” she says. “I’m happy to have a conversation. But this was the first time I’d had a flood of anger and hate — really mean, scary stuff.” This time around, she was called a “narcissist” and, even worse, the C-word.

“First it was shock and confusion,” she says. “There were a couple of days I thought it would pass, but it kept picking up more and more fuel. People kept coming to attack me.” What made it more perplexing was that the peach comic felt innocuous compared to others she’d done, including ones addressing reproductive health. She was also baffled because it had existed on Instagram since 2020 without issue; she had reposted it in July 2022 on a whim.

Starr says the peach comic “was completely taken out of the context in which I was sharing it.” She explains, “There’s two issues going on here: One, my husband does think about himself more than the kids, which is a problem in our house. But also, I don’t think about myself enough; I think about the kids too much, which is a problem in my house.

“When you throw it up on Twitter and know nothing about these two people, or what my goal is with my work,” she continues, “all you see is what I guess looks like an angry woman and a man who pays for the peaches and can’t even eat the peaches in his own house because his wife is so controlling and crazy.”

CHANGE OF APPROACH​

The virulence of the response to the peach comic also shocked Starr’s husband, whom she shows the comics to before posting. “At first he thought, This is ridiculous, these people are crazy,” she relates.

Things changed when people found his work website and email address and began messaging him. “Then it started to feel really scary, and there was this feeling of ‘Is this worth it for us? You have this message you’re trying to put out and you care about this and you’ve made this community, but if people are going to be attacking our family, is it worth it?’”

Starr says she considered shuttering her Instagram account. “We both ultimately landed on — after lots of conversations about it — being a little less autobiographical in my comics,” she says. “I’m still going to tackle the same subjects, but less ‘Me and my husband’ and more big picture.”


Mary Catherine Starr modeling one of the shirts available on her online shopMary Catherine Starr

It’s not a totally welcome transition, she admits. “When you’re really small and have a very small audience and no one cares about you and what you’re saying, it’s not as scary to be really personal,” she says. “But when you know 200,000 people are seeing it — or that someone can take it off this platform and millions of people can see it — you can’t help but start to think a bit more about how you’re perceived by people outside your circle.”

Meanwhile, Starr says that she and her husband continue to address their marital issues. “The topics I tackle in my comics are things that offline — out of the public eye — we are working on,” she says. “We’re working on fixing these dynamics and making the relationship more equal. But so much of this is socialized and cultural and patriarchal.”

That extends to the aftershocks of the initial controversy. “In terms of the internet pile-on, I think that hasn’t affected him as much,” she says. “It did initially, but now it’s over for him. I’m the one still getting the hate stuff.”

But should the internet also have been a little angry at him — and at men in general — for creating the circumstances that led her to draw the comic? “People took this at face value,” Starr responds. “It’s very nuanced. If you’re in a relationship, you understand it’s not about the thing, right? It’s not about the peach. It’s about the fact that I feel, over time, he is able to put himself first, and over time, I have had to put the kids first. Usually that’s a cultural, societal issue.”

She points out that younger Twitter users mocked the peach comic by asking “Are heterosexual people okay?” “Well, no, from an equality standpoint, we’re not — and that’s what this comic is saying,” she explains. “This comic is saying that mothers are expected to be self-sacrificial and fathers are not, and we’ve now got this huge imbalance.”

When Input asks whether it’s perpetuating the imbalance by asking her to explain the situation, rather than her husband, Starr says she appreciates the thoughtfulness behind the question. “In our particular case, I’m the one who has decided to speak out about this, and it’s probably because I’m the one who’s suffering — and I say ‘suffering’ lightly as a very privileged white woman,” she says.

“Right now, I’m trying to pull him out of the public eye because I don’t want him to be trolled over and over again, but I hope in the future, when all this calms down, there is a way for him to speak to my audience and speak to what we’ve learned and how we are trying to change,” she says.

That change includes being “extra thoughtful about what I’m putting online and how it could be received,” she says. But being thoughtful doesn’t mean being silenced. “It’s put a fire under me to keep talking about this because I see there’s so much misunderstanding around motherhood right now,” she says, “and so many judgments and stereotypes.”

She worries that if mothers say anything negative about their role in bringing up children, they’re labelled as bad moms. “It hasn’t scared me away from that topic,” she says. “It’s important to keep talking about it.”

 

[Ghostse]

@Haramburger
That's a great post too good to quote.

I just love that she's calling complaining about her husband to strangers, expanding that behavior to all men, is considered '#feminism'.
Also lol, "Fathers aren't expected to be self-sacrificial" bitch what is that nigga doing 8 hours every weekday between 9 and 5? You think he's drawing dumb comics berating his spouse all that time?


Also:
"A design studio owner, yoga instructor, and blogger"
the Karen version of "Aspiring Rapper"

 

[Haramburger]

@Haramburger
That's a great post too good to quote.

I just love that she's calling complaining about her husband to strangers, expanding that behavior to all men, is considered '#feminism'.
Also lol, "Fathers aren't expected to be self-sacrificial" bitch what is that nigga doing 8 hours every weekday between 9 and 5? You think he's drawing dumb comics berating his spouse all that time?


Also:
"A design studio owner, yoga instructor, and blogger"
the Karen version of "Aspiring Rapper"

/v/ has taken a recent interest in general threads about "games like this image" and her comics, which is where I found out about this story, though it took a little research to track down the particulars. She admitted in one of her posts that he's a successful lawyer with a basketball coaching 'side hustle,' does the laundry, dinners, yard work & other assorted chores while having offered(or did) hire additional help, so that informs some of the vitriol she gets.


A few more images not from KYM:




This has similar vibes to Jess' New Guy backlash & art supplies theft, which pleases and inspires me. I really love the idea of this undercurrent of common-sense havers that make all this content anonymously to vent their frustrations with bad ideas gone mainstream, and that its the same people responding to each new thing. Gives me hope.

vs.
I want to collect more backlash reactions from more artists

 

[MarineN*4235431]

Yeah, the art style hasn't improved... pretty much at all, really. Seriously, the obsession with tits it the only even remotely constant about the comic.

What's worse; I can't remember where I last dropped the comic, so I'm going to need to go over the entire damn thing again to figure out where the hell I was. Yay.

At least the Webcomic Relief's old review on the comic is still accurate up to a point...

cant find it is lost media?

 

[Coelacanth]

cant find it is lost media?

Can't find it either. Did Riiser DFE or something?

 

[Tepes Thot]

Lore Olympus…..when I thought I couldn’t hate anything more than the Hades game(s), I found its disappointment room cousin.

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

cant find it is lost media?

Can't find it either. Did Riiser DFE or something?

For some reason, every link I got to him channel is "404 Not Found." I think YouShit deleted his channel or something; would fit with how the site is getting rid of all of the good stuff...

 

[Grand Duke Snowfall]

Man, these Momlife comics are gold. Goes way beyond just the peach.

Spoiler: Bitching about husband

This is not true, at least in my family.

This lady is weirdly obsessed with her husband taking a shit.

Lol. Lmao even.

Instagram recommended this Rewriting Extinction page to me, I look and it’s basically just a collection of climate/environment doomerism. Don’t get me wrong, I think there’s some legitimate environmental concerns…but preachy comics ain’t going to do shit.

 

[Manimal House]

View attachment 4403052
View attachment 4403060
This lady is weirdly obsessed with her husband taking a shit.

It's kind of a typical thing for wives to complain about because they don't understand why anyone would be on the shitter longer than they need to be. https://cafemom.com/parenting/214845-why-men-take-so-long-to-poop

Considering how whiney she comes off in her artwork, I'll bet he just occupies the throne for a while so he can get away from her to have some peace and quiet. But who knows, maybe she does have an obsession with his dumps.

Fictional or not, that shit is hilarious.

 

[Absolutego]

@Haramburger, the husband in that marriage is 100% going to throw his entire family down an oil well Chris Watts-style someday and I honestly wouldn't blame him.

 

[CoolFool]

/v/ has taken a recent interest in general threads about "games like this image" and her comics, which is where I found out about this story, though it took a little research to track down the particulars. She admitted in one of her posts that he's a successful lawyer with a basketball coaching 'side hustle,' does the laundry, dinners, yard work & other assorted chores while having offered(or did) hire additional help, so that informs some of the vitriol she gets.
View attachment 4314327

A few more images not from KYM:
View attachment 4314035 View attachment 4314042
View attachment 4314045 View attachment 4314059
View attachment 4314061 View attachment 4314330

This has similar vibes to Jess' New Guy backlash & art supplies theft, which pleases and inspires me. I really love the idea of this undercurrent of common-sense havers that make all this content anonymously to vent their frustrations with bad ideas gone mainstream, and that its the same people responding to each new thing. Gives me hope.

View attachment 4314427 vs.View attachment 4314454
I want to collect more backlash reactions from more artists

I don't get why the wife is humiliating her husband and putting out all their issues to the public. She says they're working on their issues and basically says he's being deprogrammed from society's harmful sexism. Which, hey, I agree, there is sexism and shit. But why would you air this dirty laundry online and then act all surprised when people make fun of you? And then go on to act all patronizing towards your husband in an interview? I feel bad for the husband.

What's worse is reading that blog about how much he does. I kind of expected him to be an unhelpful husband based on the comics she's made and the way she talks about how they're "working" on their "issues"... but from her own words, he's doing way more than his fair share of the work. He makes all of the family's meals, does the grocery shopping, does chores, works as a lawyer, coaches kids, and offered to pay for assistance... like wtf lady. What more do you want from him?

 

[Jeff Boomhauer]

I remember reading a few of those Mom Life comics a few months ago. The woman just wants asspats for being a mom and for not losing her shit over trivial manners. I can't tell if she has an inferiority complex or if she's just that self-centered.

This bib comic is especially telling. Most people do hold their tongues with their spouses when something minor annoys them, but they don't make webcomics showing their dysfunction over the internet...

 

[Honeybadger v2]

This comic makes me to feel strong sympathy to her husband and wishing him run away with money and children. Was this her goal?