Bad webcomics

[Ghostse]

Around the turn of the century, back when I was still chugging along on a 28.8kb/s dial up connection, I read a strip called Ozy and Millie. I was a huge Calvin and Hobbes fan and I recall finding the strip when someone suggested it and said it was as close to Calvin and Hobbes as you could get.

https://ozyandmillie.org/1998/04/29/ozy-and-millie-2/

I want to say I was 15 or 16 at the time. Ozy and Millie seems to still have a following and is still regarded as "pretty good" and did win awards.

Then the artist made a comic series called Raine Dog.

http://badwebcomicswiki.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Raine_Dog

I did not see this comic mentioned in the thread. Raine Dog is pretty out there and I was shocked to learn that the artist also did Ozy and Millie. Then the pieces started to fall into place, the artist is a graduate of Evergreen College (the day of absence college, if you remember that shitstorm) and is a tranny par excellence married to a dude. I only saw 13 hits when I searched "Dana Simpson" here on the farms, but I would say Raine Dog is one of the worst comics I've read. Especially since I did enjoy Ozy and Millie when I was a young and impressionable teenager.

You're going to have to excuse me a moment, because I thought long-gone were the days of someone doing the ol' "I really like Ozzy and Millie, it is a cute kids comic. Wait the artist is a what and a what? And they did another comic where a dog and a boy do WHAT?" and slow dawning retroactive realization of just how much of the artist's jerk off material they read, not really thinking too much of at the time. Its like thinking you've eaten all the skittles but there's still one. So let me savor this a bit.

Simpson also made a forgettable straw-man political cartoon that purestrain Dubya Edge, and then went straight to the bestiality in his heavy-handed and ill-conceived tranny-early-life-realization allegory story.

The sad thing is anymore I think "Well, at least they're only cramming their tamer shaving fetish into the kids comic".
He was simply 10 years too early with Raine Dog.

 

[Fistbeard_McThunderaxe]

View attachment 488071

Literally the same joke or theme forever. "TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF IS HARD " Also imagine being a full grown adult and still complaining about vegetables.

On top of that I am like 95% sure this artist used to work for for buzzfeed which makes all of this make only more sense.

What kind of neanderthal hates vegetables? Oh right, dumb children who go "ew, veggies!".

This dude is well on his way to having gout.

Have you seen the layers of the same face he uses for every comic?

He's a modern version of Buckley.

Oh wait...

 

[Alberto Balsalm]

The artist has a shaving fetish and routinely has children (mostly little girls) being shaved in his comics. They have an actual published newspaper comic series and can't refrained from their shaving fetish in it.

Where did the shaving fetish thing come from? It's such a random topic that I at first thought people were just joking about the author overusing a gag.

 

[0 0]

It's not outrageous or insanely stupid, but butthorn is, once again, another generic "oh man I sure am bad at living" webcomics. Unlike other webcomics, though, the art is exceptionally lazy and consists only of linework and incredibly simplistic designs.

Ironically enough, their art has regressed in quality as it mostly consists of a sad parenthesis now whereas before the author at least drew a crudely made characterture of themselves also failing at being alive:

Apparently the creator has a book which, in a shocking twist, is also about them being bad at living.

 

[morninghomo]

Credit where credit's due, he actually stopped doing this once he went independent and started putting a bit more effort into his work, which led to a lot of people joking that Buzzfeed actively sucks the souls out of its creators. Unfortunately, the strip itself is still mostly the same generic "adulting is hard" fare.

according to a lot of ex buzzfeed employees, its true - theyre meant to pump out the content easiest to market to the average buzzfeed audience [which is usually 'so quirky xD' millennial women] on a daily basis and with hardly any creative freedom anyway

speaking of "relatable" comics
deep in the depths of tumblr, the real weird tumblr, not the "quirky girl who blogs about song lyrics and flowers" surface level shit
they also make 'relatable' comics but their's is usually more uh

for some reason something abt these types of comics makes me... uncomfortable in a way i cant explain
like if someone told me one day these kinda artist snapped and went crazy or shot up their school i wouldnt be surprised

 

[UtopiaGuy]

Given the sheer number of adulting-is-hard/muh-anxiety comics, does anyone else get the feeling that there's a whole fucking generation totally dependent on anxiety meds and bipolar meds and all the rest of it? Sure, they really do help some people, but there's so many taking that shit it's like a real world version of Soma. Twenty-something? Millennial? Anxiety? Stress? "Just give 'em some meds! MEDS MEDS MEDS!" Meanwhile, my dad's generation would've just said, "Stop being a little pussy Carl, that's just life. Deal with it!"

 

[Guzzlord]

Given the sheer number of adulting-is-hard/muh-anxiety comics, does anyone else get the feeling that there's a whole fucking generation totally dependent on anxiety meds and bipolar meds and all the rest of it?

At this point I wonder if thats just some kind of "trend" pretending to be social awkward and struggling coping with adult life.
Because it makes you look quirky and special.

 

[morninghomo]

Given the sheer number of adulting-is-hard/muh-anxiety comics, does anyone else get the feeling that there's a whole fucking generation totally dependent on anxiety meds and bipolar meds and all the rest of it? Sure, they really do help some people, but there's so many taking that shit it's like a real world version of Soma. Twenty-something? Millennial? Anxiety? Stress? "Just give 'em some meds! MEDS MEDS MEDS!" Meanwhile, my dad's generation would've just said, "Stop being a little pussy Carl, that's just life. Deal with it!"

most of those people dont claim to have actual anxiety or bipolar or take meds for it, its just a fun lil trend for em

 

[Fistbeard_McThunderaxe]

Given the sheer number of adulting-is-hard/muh-anxiety comics, does anyone else get the feeling that there's a whole fucking generation totally dependent on anxiety meds and bipolar meds and all the rest of it? Sure, they really do help some people, but there's so many taking that shit it's like a real world version of Soma. Twenty-something? Millennial? Anxiety? Stress? "Just give 'em some meds! MEDS MEDS MEDS!" Meanwhile, my dad's generation would've just said, "Stop being a little pussy Carl, that's just life. Deal with it!"

First world problem comics became a thing after that "Alot" monster comic hit it big. These comics boil down to "I'm sad cuz life is hard and I'm depressed" while having a sustainable income and means to help themselves.

Try dealing with a mountain of debt from art school and having no sustainable income, while starving to pay for art supplies. They won't because they'll never allow themselves to be in a challenging situation.

 

[Donovan the Man]

I feel bad for Hyperbole and a Half's creator, she says she just has depressing but then she wrote a comic that shows her to be a text book bipolar case. One does not go from near catatonic depression to thinking they are invincible without being bipolar. Then she stopped updating for years, I think she may have made a couple of new comics, I'm not sure. I hope she got a proper diagnosis. For some people with bipolar, depression is the main defining mood with full blown manic episodes being sparse. They may have a couple short hypomanic episodes a year at best making them and the people around them think they feel better.

Having mania doesn't mean you feel %100 euphoric you may still feel like a piece of shit. People tend to have suicide attempts while manic for example.

 

[One Man Bland]

At this point I wonder if thats just some kind of "trend" pretending to be social awkward and struggling coping with adult life.
Because it makes you look quirky and special.

Little of Column A, little of Column B? While there's definitely a lot of "adulting is hard" comic makers out there who are clearly playing up the incompetence and problems for the sale of clicks, but the main reason those artists do that is because there's built-in audience for that genre who usually confirm to every "lazy millennial" stereotype to a T and love this sort of shit because it's easier to share a shitty comic with the caption "omg same/mood/me" than it is to fix your problems.

 

[Basketball Jones]

I can’t believe that Gina Biggs’ “futuristic, sci-fi romance” comic Love Not Found isn’t on this list yet.

http://www.lovenotfound.com/comic/chapter-1-cover

I have a shitload to say about this comic because I used to be a fan of Biggs’ work back when she was writing Red String. I’ll try to find the bitchy rant I sent a friend of mine a couple of years ago about LNF that still holds true about Biggs’ outstanding inability to properly storyboard. But towards the end of that comic, a lot of her followers were starting to lament about the pacing and unresolved character arcs (because there were like 20 characters or some shit). Basically, the followers weren’t 14 anymore; they were 24...and her narrative issues and half-assed artwork were becoming very obvious and very annoying. I remember there being drama about “ninja edits” being done to the comic after it went up because Biggs would change dialogue or art in an effort to save her ass from people criticizing either.

She started another story afterwards, that was a massive flop, and then she and her husband (allegedly) began writing the script for Love Not Found.

LNF is nothing special outside of pretty decent cover art, and follows many of Biggs’ narrative mistakes. It’s impressive to me that nearly a decade and a half later she still hasnt learned how to write/pace/dictate a comic, but quality isn’t needed when you’re too busy pandering. And pander she does...

What originally began and was marketed as a love story between the two main characters, Abeille and Miel, who must figure out how to love in a world where physical touch is now taboo and dirty. I don’t know how or why that became a thing for HUMANS to do, and if it was ever explained post-Chapter 11 I wouldn’t know because I bailed with a few other Red String stragglers from the original forum. But anyway, the main girl Abielle wants to get her fuck on with a human because the only way people get off in THE FUTURE is by robot-masturbation. Apparently they don’t even touch their own babies? I dunno..

She starts piling in more characters to fill the diversity quota and at one point introduces some boy-girl names Aster (Asher? Fuck I dunno) that uses xir/xim pronouns, some gay and deaf guy with a robot implant, some other gay guy for him to gay with, Abielle’s ex-girlfriend, the black friend that lives with her black boyfriend but they break up and keep living together amicably while she makes out with the boy-girl or some shit. And I’m sure more since I last checked.

 

[Ghostse]

Given the sheer number of adulting-is-hard/muh-anxiety comics, does anyone else get the feeling that there's a whole fucking generation totally dependent on anxiety meds and bipolar meds and all the rest of it? Sure, they really do help some people, but there's so many taking that shit it's like a real world version of Soma. Twenty-something? Millennial? Anxiety? Stress? "Just give 'em some meds! MEDS MEDS MEDS!" Meanwhile, my dad's generation would've just said, "Stop being a little pussy Carl, that's just life. Deal with it!"

Part of it is the ready availability of drugs. Or I guess I should say different drugs, before you'd just drink. Drugs are cheap, throw some zoloft at it, problem solved. So no one ever gains the mental fortitude to not just down some anti-anxiety meds when they feel a little ennui. This isn't saying there are people who legit need them, and I think rather than try to sort out who's got legit sadbrains and who just needs to sack up and deal with it, its safer from a liability stand point to just hook up both camps.

Another part is lack of meaningful personal connections. We know and talk to more people, but we're "closer" with few people than ever before.

Another part is how safe modern life is. There's no reason to take any risks.

Mostly though it really boils down to:

pretending to be social awkward and struggling coping with adult life.
Because it makes you look quirky and special.

I can’t believe that Gina Biggs’ “futuristic, sci-fi romance” comic Love Not Found isn’t on this list yet.

I remember seeing a picture of Gina Biggs and being not at all surprised she was the artist of quasi manga.

No matter how bad it is, I just can't bring myself to give a shit about LNF. And being that it isn't some wildly discussed tumblr darling despite trying to hit every square on a tumblr bingo card, it seems I'm not the only one.

 

[UtopiaGuy]

Part of it is the ready availability of drugs. Or I guess I should say different drugs, before you'd just drink. Drugs are cheap, throw some zoloft at it, problem solved. So no one ever gains the mental fortitude to not just down some anti-anxiety meds when they feel a little ennui. This isn't saying there are people who legit need them, and I think rather than try to sort out who's got legit sadbrains and who just needs to sack up and deal with it, its safer from a liability stand point to just hook up both camps.

Another part is lack of meaningful personal connections. We know and talk to more people, but we're "closer" with few people than ever before.

Another part is how safe modern life is. There's no reason to take any risks.

I would also add the pharmaceutical companies have made a shitton of money off the meds, and encourage doctors to prescribe them for any and all reasons by offering the doctors treats. Doctors in turn push the stuff on everyone in sight (especially Millennials, as youth equals long term customers) because money.

Now, as for Love Not Found, what I found was no reason to keep reading it. It was boring as hell without much happening. The last thing I remember is the girl wearing a silly bee costume.

 

[One Man Bland]

Surprised Sister Claire hasn't been brought up yet: the comic about a Catholic school girl who finds out she's going to give birth to Jesus, only to find out that she was messiah stand-in and the baby bump she had for several chapters was... magic indigestion I guess.

It's probably the only comic I've seen that has extremely immersion-breaking trigger warning pages that not only seem to be warning against the most mundane aspects that are so cartoony looking I honestly could not tell you who it's meant for, but also seem to overlook much more glaring weirdness like comparing implied twincest to homophobia in the military or the fact that the main character seems to be like 16 at the oldest but is teasing her being in a relationship with someone twice her age. Not to mention the excessive amounts of flagrant plagiarism and rip-offs that litter every other page.

It's also the only comic that I've seen where the creators seem to make fanfiction of their own comic/universe that often contain plot points that are essential to following the plot of the main comic, or in some cases just porn.

 

[Ms. Cegination]

Surprised Sister Claire hasn't been brought up yet: the comic about a Catholic school girl who finds out she's going to give birth to Jesus, only to find out that she was messiah stand-in and the baby bump she had for several chapters was... magic indigestion I guess.

It's probably the only comic I've seen that has extremely immersion-breaking trigger warning pages that not only seem to be warning against the most mundane aspects that are so cartoony looking I honestly could not tell you who it's meant for, but also seem to overlook much more glaring weirdness like comparing implied twincest to homophobia in the military or the fact that the main character seems to be like 16 at the oldest but is teasing her being in a relationship with someone twice her age. Not to mention the excessive amounts of flagrant plagiarism and rip-offs that litter every other page.

It's also the only comic that I've seen where the creators seem to make fanfiction of their own comic/universe that often contain plot points that are essential to following the plot of the main comic, or in some cases just porn.

The fanfic/comic thing has made such a shitshow of the plot that I've stopped giving a fuck entirely, not like it was much good to begin with.
Oh, don't forget that every member of the cast is some flavor of snowflake identity to the point the creator just outright said the comic has no straight, cis people. LGBT pandering is essentially the core of the comic, without it it's just boring melodrama.

 

[One Man Bland]

The fanfic/comic thing has made such a shitshow of the plot that I've stopped giving a fuck entirely, not like it was much good to begin with.
Oh, don't forget that every member of the cast is some flavor of snowflake identity to the point the creator just outright said the comic has no straight, cis people. LGBT pandering is essentially the core of the comic, without it it's just boring melodrama.

Another huge problem is that the further you read, the more obvious it becomes that the artist Yamino had no clue where she wanted the story to go or what she wanted it to be about (a hallmark with a lot of bad webcomics) so she just copied a lot of the themes, designs, and tone from whatever she was obsessed with at the time; to the point that I'm positive you could make a timeline of all her obsessions and be able to match them up with story beats in her comic perfectly. Hell, I don't think Claire not giving birth to Jesus was even planned until the actual page came out considering the closest I can find to foreshadowing is that page where they recreate Da Vinci's The Last Supper with Claire in the center, though that might be giving her way too much credit considering how much of the comic is just references.

Also I vaguely recall at some point she let her wife take over for writing, who is quite frankly a worse writer than Yamino and seems to correlate with the spike in melodrama, purple prose, and sudden inclusion of fanfiction the comic had.

 

[Vorhtbame]

I feel bad for Hyperbole and a Half's creator, she says she just has depressing but then she wrote a comic that shows her to be a text book bipolar case. One does not go from near catatonic depression to thinking they are invincible without being bipolar. Then she stopped updating for years, I think she may have made a couple of new comics, I'm not sure. I hope she got a proper diagnosis. For some people with bipolar, depression is the main defining mood with full blown manic episodes being sparse. They may have a couple short hypomanic episodes a year at best making them and the people around them think they feel better.

Having mania doesn't mean you feel %100 euphoric you may still feel like a piece of shit. People tend to have suicide attempts while manic for example.

Last I heard, she was doing all right, but that was a couple of years ago. Married Duncan, published a book, spoke at Comic-Con.

 

[atari]

Sorry to bring up someone that was mentioned almost two years ago (I accept all my lates), but I was reading through here from the beginning and saw

Does anybody know what webcomic this is? I know it's by a SCAD student and was getting a lot of attention on Delusional Artists, but I don't think it was given room to breathe at Bad Webcomics, because the author never was identified.

For anyone still wondering, the author is mashazart, and her art (at least her humans) has not improved much. Here's some more recent comics:
http://mashazart.tumblr.com/post/172056110967/minicomic-about-math-class-which-was-not-fun-but https://tapas.io/episode/1121905
http://mashazart.tumblr.com/post/169708882682/i-drew-this-instead-of-doing-homework-today-haha

 

[Fistbeard_McThunderaxe]

Sorry to bring up someone that was mentioned almost two years ago (I accept all my lates), but I was reading through here from the beginning and saw

For anyone still wondering, the author is mashazart, and her art (at least her humans) has not improved much. Here's some more recent comics:
http://mashazart.tumblr.com/post/172056110967/minicomic-about-math-class-which-was-not-fun-but https://tapas.io/episode/1121905
http://mashazart.tumblr.com/post/169708882682/i-drew-this-instead-of-doing-homework-today-haha

It brings to light the greater issue with all types of art schools; teachers will allow abysmal art and not guide the student towards improvement. In this case the person is going to a highly competitive and hopelessly expensive commercial art school. Getting mad at how bad their art is misplaced, as the blame should be put on the school for setting these artists up for failure. I assume people like this are getting a free ride from parents, though it does not excuse the teachers for letting them shovel out art that is worse than drawing 1 freshmen work.

Fine arts has it far worse. Contemporary fine art schools practically pressure students into becoming abstract artists and only support or display student art that fits the school (low effort abstract scribbles). Meanwhile, 10% all of fine art graduates make a sustainable income and it forces them into becoming art teachers. Abstract and many types of contemporary fine art cater to a niche that will pay less than furry porn commissions.

Teachers are the problem. Art students already are paying more money than some medical schools for a payout that is close to minimum wage slaves, so it doesn't help it when they lie to the artists and make them believe this trash will ever sell.