Bad webcomics

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Is a webcomic bad if it's been 9 entire years and the comic itself STILL hasn't reached the midway point of the story?

Ava's Demon was supposed to start updating again "either every thursday or a Thursday when enough panels are completed" about a month ago but unsurprisingly the creator went radio silent again after like 2 updates. I'm convinced she's allergic to working on this fuckin thing because of her neuroticism and the 4 colorists she has helping her out don't get updates out any sooner. The art is awesome but damn is it slower than molasses on a snow day. I'm surprised it hasn't become a cancelled project yet.
 
Is a webcomic bad if it's been 9 entire years and the comic itself STILL hasn't reached the midway point of the story?

Ava's Demon was supposed to start updating again "either every thursday or a Thursday when enough panels are completed" about a month ago but unsurprisingly the creator went radio silent again after like 2 updates. I'm convinced she's allergic to working on this fuckin thing because of her neuroticism and the 4 colorists she has helping her out don't get updates out any sooner. The art is awesome but damn is it slower than molasses on a snow day. I'm surprised it hasn't become a cancelled project yet.

You need to chill brah. She's too busy making porn of the underaged characters for Patreon to update the comic.
 
You need to chill brah. She's too busy making porn of the underaged characters for Patreon to update the comic.
I thought she quit that tier after the whole debacle 3 years ago though. At least something would be getting made if that were the case. That was a weird choice to have as a reward tier in retrospect. But idk maybe I'm missing something since Avas Demon isnt exactly what I look at and think "ok but what if they were naked"
 
I think she pulled down the tier but I know that a good chunk of the art from the leak predated her starting a patreon.

But I'm not sure' I'm not e-stalking her, just getting some good laughs when the trannies get offended and leak her "Oh, no they are totes 18 in that image, promise" patreon spank bank.

Also, only 9 years? You need to need to learn to chill. 9 years is bush league. I mean, look, Sluggy Freelance is old enough to smoke drink Rent a car without paying the rape rates, and it just like two years ago FINALLY concluded on one of the big mysteries from year 5. Kids born when the plot line were introduced were able to read the conclusion before they enlisted and went to boot camp.
And the less said about SSDD the better.

But idk maybe I'm missing something since Avas Demon isnt exactly what I look at and think "ok but what if they were naked"
Then why the fuck are you even on the internet? Like what are you doing here?
 
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Did you check out Sinfest lately? We all know Tats went nuts at least a decade ago, but it used to be leftwing radfem men are evil nuts. But he turned terf and the slating he got for that from his new feminist buddies looped him around to the right and he's ranting about the evils of woke culture. He's also an anti vaxxer:

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Did you check out Sinfest lately? We all know Tats went nuts at least a decade ago, but it used to be leftwing radfem men are evil nuts. But he turned terf and the slating he got for that from his new feminist buddies looped him around to the right and he's ranting about the evils of woke culture. He's also an anti vaxxer:

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damn, look at Tats. I knew he went full tranny disrespecter. Big Boy is almost Fox News Facebook boomer now
 
Did you check out Sinfest lately? We all know Tats went nuts at least a decade ago, but it used to be leftwing radfem men are evil nuts. But he turned terf and the slating he got for that from his new feminist buddies looped him around to the right and he's ranting about the evils of woke culture. He's also an anti vaxxer:

View attachment 2630488
It's funny how nobody seems to decide, when the current batch of nutjobs they're with piss them off, that maybe they should stop being nutjobs. Instead, they become nutjobs but exactly the opposite kind of nutjob as originally.
 
I reminded myself of l33t5p34k today, which caused me to remember Megatokyo. I had to go check and see if it's still publishing, and… yep, as I write this, the most recent comic is from September 15, which counts as "still active" by Fred "Piro" Gallagher standards.

I searched the forums to see if we have a thread on that guy or his comic, but this thread is all that has come up. It then struck me that Megatokyo is probably older than a not-insignificant portion of the people who post here…

Please forgive me for once having been a fan of it. Believe it or not, there was a time where a comic featuring characters who played video games and knew stuff about computers and understood l33t and of course what nerd doesn't dream of going to Japan and effortlessly getting cute girlfriends like in the harem anniemays?

The comic was originally written by Gallagher's friend Rodney "Largo" Caston, but soon after it started becoming mega-successful, Gallagher did some sort of weird hostile takeover thing where he basically assumed all rights to the project and "fired" Caston. I can't remember the details of this and I'm sure any retelling of the story will have some bias to it depending on whose take you read, but I remember it looking very much like Caston was suddenly and without apparent warning screwed over by Gallagher right when the real money started rolling in.

Without Caston, the strip lost the tinge of nerdy humor it had and became just more of a seeming attempt to cram as many anime tropes as possible into an increasingly convoluted and unfunny storyline. I lost interest somewhere around 2005 and seemingly many other people did too - but not everyone, apparently. Seeing as how the most recent comment features foxgirls, and still has Gallagher's mediocre anime faces (that are particularly weird from the side - for some reason they've always reminded me of orange wedges) and usual lack of backgrounds, it looks like nothing has changed - neither Gallagher's interests, nor his drawing skills. Incredible. I'm pretty shit at art but I'd like to think that if I were being paid $2300 to draw one comic a month, I'd be able to put more effort into it.

But, of course, that's not the only grift. Searching the Farms brought up this earlier post about a Megatokyo-themed visual novel game, which I wasn't aware of before today:

so, megatokyo had a kickstarter for its visual novel, raising 300k

estimated delivery: feb 2014

last update: july 2017

chapters released of visual novel: 0

the comments are going apeshit, and aparently the artist won't communicate with anyone except through one of his admins because he's too stressed out

comments say he says he'll refund people if they ask but then they ask and he doesn't refund them


Well, at least Gallagher has come through in this regard. The game was released a couple years ago and was pretty well-received, and the subsequent chapters were released on time after that.

ha ha of course I'm kidding, there's still been no fucking updates since July 2017, for a game originally scheduled for release in February 2014, from an incredibly successful Kickstarter started in June 2013. That's right, this game is coming up on eight years overdue.

As a programmer, visual novels are far easier to make than any other type of game I can think of; the hard part is just the writing and the art, which shouldn't be that hard if you have a comic artist (as well as several other staff members) on the project. If you use a pre-built engine for VNs like Ren'Py, it's even easier, and Ren'Py is what Katawa Shoujo used when it was first released in 2012, so it existed and was plenty usable at the time. (Doki Doki Literature Club also uses Ren'Py.)

But he got his money and then apparently eventually got bored of the project and that $300,000 in pledges just kinda… poof. I don't know, hopefully he at least bought something useful like a house, who knows. Zoe Quinn would be proud of this guy's grift game (ha ha see what I did there?).

There but for the grace of God, I suppose.
 
The comic was originally written by Gallagher's friend Rodney "Largo" Caston, but soon after it started becoming mega-successful, Gallagher did some sort of weird hostile takeover thing where he basically assumed all rights to the project and "fired" Caston. I can't remember the details of this and I'm sure any retelling of the story will have some bias to it depending on whose take you read, but I remember it looking very much like Caston was suddenly and without apparent warning screwed over by Gallagher right when the real money started rolling in.

Without Caston, the strip lost the tinge of nerdy humor it had and became just more of a seeming attempt to cram as many anime tropes as possible into an increasingly convoluted and unfunny storyline. I lost interest somewhere around 2005 and seemingly many other people did too - but not everyone, apparently. Seeing as how the most recent comment features foxgirls, and still has Gallagher's mediocre anime faces (that are particularly weird from the side - for some reason they've always reminded me of orange wedges) and usual lack of backgrounds, it looks like nothing has changed - neither Gallagher's interests, nor his drawing skills. Incredible. I'm pretty shit at art but I'd like to think that if I were being paid $2300 to draw one comic a month, I'd be able to put more effort into it.

The only people to bias the story are the orbiters. Both Rodney and Fred have roughly the same version of events:
Piro was a double-shot depresso sad sack who became friends with Largo over multiplayer games; The early Largo/Piro relationship in the comic was basically an amped up telling of their real gaming opinions. Anyway, Piro was doing sad anime girls in snow, and ... I am fuzzy on the details, but basically the topic of starting a webcomic came up (maybe because of Penny Arcade. Or might have been Mac Hall... anyway it was webcomics started to become a viable self-employment option) and Largo basically set up the website, did all the back end work, and then told Piro to go nuts and make a webcomic they'd find funny.
Largo owned the domain megatokyo, offered critique and direction on the early part of the story, so as Megatokyo got y00g3 they formalized a business agreement where Largo got creator credit and a slice of the pie primarily for his ongoing back-end work (and because he'd more or less flogged Piro until he started it). But in contrast to the social reject in the comics, the real Largo was basically a normie who liked games, and he he grew up and got married and started a family. During this process, Largo suggested that Piro buy him out of his stake in Megatokyo to simplify the business. Megatokyo was moved over to a group-hosted CMS so there wasn't any webmaster work for Largo to do anymore, and Largo had graduated college and moved to a big-boy career. Revenues were also declining, and Largo sold Piro his share at a real bargain.
(Neither talks about it, but its pretty clear it was Largo was giving an old friend a bit of charity he could easily afford)

I remember there was a lot of internet rumors about a "falling out" and disagreements about Piro going full weeb. But none of it was true. Rodney hadn't had input in the comic... really ever, except as the initial concept and that's by his own admission. He wrote some of Largo's dialogue to make it 'authentic'.

Again, by both's admission, they aren't really friends anymore but its not because of any single event or a fight over anime girls.
The reason is well firstly they weren't really close to begin with, but simply because they just drifted apart. No big event, they just stopped talking because they were leading different lives, but are still friendly.

Sources: Fuck like I'd saved the links. There was some blog post Piro made, and some internet publication did an article that included an interview with Rodney that amounted to a long form 'who are you and why are you contacting me? Oh god this again.'

edit: Fuck you guys for reminding of this so I did some digging to find sources. I'd forgotten that what kicked this off was drama queen Scott Kurtz throwing shade at the more successful.

I can't find the article about it, but here is Piro's blog post,
Saturday - January 15, 2005

[Piro] - 19:32:00 - [link here]

This is actually a two-part rant, and i want to get the happy stuff out of the way before i deal with something more serious. So, lets get to the happy news :)

I got a msg out of the blue the other day, one i didn't catch, from Largo. "I'm gonna be a dad!" I didn't see the message right away but when i did, it made me blink. It sort of didnt sink in. Then i heard it from some other mutual friends - yes, Rodney, the Great Largo himself, is gonna be a dad.

Oh wow. ^^;;;

Official word is that Rodney and Ruby Caston are expecting a baby. Everyone here at MT would like to say a big 'congratulations' and wish you two the best of luck on this new adventure. :) I'll keep y'all updated on things, but i'm sure you'll find the freshest updates over on largo's own site www.rcaston.com :) Congrats you two!

-- -- --

Now, i want to touch on something that i'd rather not have to do, given the happy news related above, but it's not me who brought this up. Given what another web comic artist has said publicly i feel i have to respond.

Scott Kurtz over at PVP online today posted his own best wishes to Rodney and Ruby on the news that they are expecting a baby. Good stuff, but I wasn't prepared for Scott's parting line:

"Luckily, this is one of Rodney's creations that Fred can't steal out from under him."

What?

You have no idea how shocked, upset, and very... sad this comment has made me feel. Not only is it mean spirited, but by it is a lie. So much of a lie and a falsehood that i feel i have to set the record straight.

Rodney and I had the equivalent of a creative break up. There are always bad feelings in break ups, but you move on. Contrary to what people might think, we were not best buddies who had known each other since childhood prior to starting Megatokyo. We just knew each other via IRC chats and general hanging about,. We got to know each other after he offered to host my Fredart site on his servers. We soon became friends. After a while Rod really did bug me about starting a webcomic, he really thought i could do one, and wanted to do one together. It wasn't very well thought out, really. He owned the domain megatokyo.com, so thats what we named it. We then came up with two characters named after ourselves, i scribbled some stuff, Rod wrote some scripts, and we just randomly started.

While things were good at first, over time we found that we were not working well together creatively. There is no fault in this, it happens. I've never blamed Rodney for this creative 'falling out' nor do i blame myself. Not all creative relationships click, ours didn't in the long run. Megatokyo continued because i was able of doing both the writing and the art for it, and since much of my scripting comes out of the art, scripts really end up having little effect on the final comic anyway.

Eventually, as the story grew more solid and the randomness started to fall away, I found that I was doing the comic more and more on my own. Not all of Rod's ideas fit in to the world i was starting to build. He came up with the concept of "Great Teacher Largo," and i wrote it into the story. Rodney wanted there to be zombie hordes going around and killing lots of people. I refused to do this. Rod was so frustrated with the restraints the 'story' was putting on him that he felt we needed to tie it all up, have a few characters get run over by busses, and get to some kinda place where we could do more randomness. I didn't want to do this either. It's not hard to see how our creative partnership sort of fell apart. Our ideas ceased to 'click'. Eventually i was doing the comic entirely on my own and Rod and I didn't talk that much.

As you might imagine, since there was no real partnership anymore and I was doing the entire thing on my own, I want to move on and officially do things solo. I didn't cut Rodney free, i didn't steal anything from him or trick him out of anything, i tried to do it right. I approached him with an offer that I would either buy out his interest or agree that Megatokyo would end and I would move on to something else. What I would not do is continue with things the way they were.

Sure, Rodney was not happy about this, but neither was I. It wasn't a happy situation all around, but i feel that both Rod and i approached it professionally and we worked together to reach an agreement (a legal agreement, of which the details are private and between Rod and myself. I am legally bound not to say much more about it. Thats the nature of legal agreements). Rodney determined a settlement amount that he felt was fair and i accepted it. Over the course of time I paid it. I have completely and fully honored our agreement.

I did NOT steal Megatokyo from Rodney. I did not force him to accept an agreement, i just didn't want to continue doing Megatokyo the way things were. He could have chosen to let Megatokyo die, and i could have decided not to accept his buy out price (which would have also resulted in Megatokyo ending - I could have switched over to work on 'warmth'). Both of us, however, believed in the future of Megatokyo, we had a lot of respect for our readers. Neither of us wanted it to die. I was willing to take the financial risk to keep it going. Rodney has indeed felt bad about no longer being a part of something he helped start. No one said life was perfect, and we did the best we could with a difficult situation.

I will not accept being accused of 'stealing' Megatokyo. I have said little about it for years, mostly because i felt that the problems between Rod and I were not anyone's business. I am very often slammed and accused of being a horrible, greedy person and that i 'screwed my best friend.' These people don't know anything about what happened between us. It's sad how people fill in the gaps about what they don't know with the worst possible things.

As far as i am aware, both Rodney and I have moved on. In fact, look, he's about to be a dad! Sure, we aren't best buddies anymore, and there has definitely at times been strain between us, but things are fairly cool between us now, i think. Thats what happens when you have a falling out.

Now, Rodney and Scott are good friends, and it's only natural that Scott is going to support Rodney more than he would me. That's fine, i have no problem with that. When there is a break up, each side has friends that support them, and those friends tend to dislike those on the other side. I nor any of my friends have ever talked trash about Rodney in public. In fact, i always give Rodney a good and honest rap at cons and when questions are asked about him. We did a lot of good stuff together.

I've never taken any pot shots at Scott or said anything bad about him either. In fact, Scott had contacted me recently wanting my opinion on some business matters, and i was more than glad to help out. I'm shocked that he'd take a swing at me like that. I feel kinda hurt.

I can deal with and respect the fact that you don't like me, Scott. that's fine. You may even say that its not right that im still doing Megatokyo without Rodney, You may feel that in the end Rodney didn't ask enough. Those are opinions. Do not call me a thief.

(BTW, is it me, or aren't there plenty of examples in comics where writers and artists move on and the series continues? Aren't there plenty of examples of this? How come i'm not allowed to do this? Does this make all of these people who continue work started with others, thieves?)

Rodney was a big part of where Megatokyo came from, but i have since done far more comics on my own than we ever did together. It is different today than it was then. There was some real concern that Megatokyo would not survive our split. I was scared that it wouldn't - we did loose many readers. Sure, some argue that Megatokyo was better back then - thats fine, i can accept that, but some people actually like it better now. Without a LOT of hard work, Megatokyo would not have made it, and still won't if i don't keep working on it. Its not like this is some kinda oil well that just keeps pumpin out the money. If i slack off, things will crash.

All in all, we're doing ok. Is that a bad thing? I guess i'm supposed to feel guilty and ashamed that i was able to make Megatokyo successful in spite of doing it without my founding partner. I hardly think that this is the first time in history that this has happened. Does it make me a thief?

Shame on me.

-- -- --

Thank you for reading this, as full an account of what happened between Rodney and I as I can give you. My apologies to Rod for having to respond to this at such a happy moment in his life - It's not fun talking about such a difficult period. For you readers, I hope you can now understand that things are never as perfect or as simple to define as people like to believe they are.

Rodney had a response that is lost to the sands of time (his domain requested exclusion from the wayback machine)

Anyway, so much as I hate to admit it, Megatokyo is on my quarterly old-skool "have they tossed in the towel yet?" webcomic list because he hasn't gone woke so I'll see if he manages to conclude the comic before he does. Piro managed a weekly update schedule for while that saw his self insert finally get laid (I think). I remember the broad strokes of what's going on, but he is trying to do some Namesake shit with the world of anime stories and magical girls that I don't fucking follow at all.
 
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It’s baaaaaaaaack…….

First, it was about abortions. Then, it was about becoming a lesbian and homophobia. And now, in its final chapter……it’s a JFK assassination.
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Wait what the fuck is this?
Do you remember a few years back when there was this fancomic of Zootopia in which Judy gets an abortion and Nick leaves her. It was ridiculously well drawn but the story itself was batshit insane?

This is the third chapter of that.

Seriously, Google “Zootopia abortion comic” and you’ll see.
 
Do you remember a few years back when there was this fancomic of Zootopia in which Judy gets an abortion and Nick leaves her. It was ridiculously well drawn but the story itself was batshit insane?

This is the third chapter of that.

Seriously, Google “Zootopia abortion comic” and you’ll see.

Oh I remember that one. I guess I missed the one about being a lesbian. But ngl I kinda want to read furry "All the president's men".
 
I don't get why they'd pick Judy for the stand in for JFK when you've got a perfectly good shyster in Nick. Mind you this is a fucking strange ass comic as usual so seems par for the course.
 
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