A friend linked me to a blog where I think it's safe to say that subtlety isn't a strong suit. The blog's title: The Worst Webcomics. The url: http://comicsthatsuck.blogspot.com/.
This one tries to be the new Your Webcomic is Bad & You Should Feel Bad, but it really doesn't work. How thoroughly does it fail? Let's see.
Early in his introductory post, John Calhoun remarks that "People like Solomon, and Burns and Tangents, lure you in with their cleverness and their sparkly, flashy writing style. And you think, Hey! These guys can use big words like "anthropomorphic," so they must know which webcomics are good and which ones suck!"
So, clever Mr. Calhoun decides to do the exact opposite: produce terrible, barely lucid writing filled with "fuck you"s and derogatory cracks about nerds and faggots. Obviously, he has too much intellectual integrity to make like Solomon, Burns, or Howard and write well; only Calhoun's terrible writing can truly cut to the heart of the matter and excoriate all of those awful, awful webcomics which plague the internet.
Truly, we are witnessing the birth of a revolution: modern blogging. For his next entry, I'm sure, Calhoun will just produce twenty lines of yellow. If we don't understand why it properly demonstrates the fundamental artistic failures of Achewood, well, that's our problem. He doesn't have to explain himself; it's blogging.
But it's not only his writing that's lacking. Let's take a quick look at some of the other highlights of the introductory post. He describes Order of the Stick as "a shitty stick-figure comic that caters to 300-pound nerds like Burns who still play D&D into their 30s." Actually, no. Order of the Stick is well composed and fantastically well written. If Burlew could update with any kind of regularity, it would be one of the comics I look forward to the most. As it is, it's always a very pleasant surprise to see it updated. And, as for the rest of the remark: the stigma against nerds mostly went out with the 80s. I'm sorry, Calhoun, that you're trapped in a world where intelligence is taken as a positive thing, but I'm sure there's a place for you, with your talent for spitting curses ineffectually. Maybe you could headline an awful hardcore band?
Also, Calhoun thinks Ctrl+Alt+Del (no link, because Buckley doesn't need another hit going to his ego) is the second best comic on the web.
Strike one. I'm just going to link to John Solomon's review, because he does a better and more thorough job of tearing apart Buckley's magnum opus than I ever could.
Here's how Calhoun concludes his brilliant work: "In conclusion, fuck you all. I'll be back sometime in the next few days with a review guaranteed to get you all worked up."
Worked up? Really, John Calhoun. Worked up? I'm not even breaking a sweat here. You can't piss someone off just by tossing off a few offhanded curses and some mild insults. You've got to put in some serious effort. Make me hate you. I don't want to do the work here. The burden of invoking hatred is on you.
Let's do a quick overview of the first post. Calhoun has one serious problem, which is that he doesn't understand that it's not actually that easy to piss people off. You've got to work for it. You've got to convince them that you have the credentials to be believed, and then drive a stake through their very existence. If you just churn out two-hundred fifty words worth of piss-poor writing and expect them to bow down to your golden visage, you'll be sadly disappointed. Burns has experience in literary criticism. Solomon has burn-the-world charisma. What do you have? A pocket full of tired curses and an outdated worldview.
And that's strike two.
Eric Burns kind of likes his audience. Solomon hates his audience with flair and élan. Calhoun hates his audience, but with all the energy and passion of an aging short-order chef. No luck.
But enough about the first post. Let's dissect the second.
Calhoun screws this one up in short order; any doubt about his lack of credentials is removed when he says, "I know I said I was going to post this earlier, but school stuff came up (my teachers are retards) and my parents blocked my Internet access, so I couldn't." So, Calhoun, not only are you incoherent, you're a teenager. Surprise!
That's strike three, you're out. Teenagers, as is well known, have nothing valuable to say. There's nothing you could say to further destroy your credentials on the internet than admit to being a teenager, except maybe admit to using Internet Explorer on Windows Vista and liking it.
But he proceeds to throw out some blatant falsehoods. Let's start on what he defines as the nerdiest nerds out there: "there are webcomics meant for the nerdiest nerds out there, the ones who spend their time drinking 2-liters of Mountain Dew and making quantum mechanics jokes and who've never seen naked breasts except maybe for Youtube porn. You know who I'm talking about. Yes, you, Adrian. I'm talking about you."
This is his description of the readership of xkcd. Once again, Calhoun: no. Most of the readers of xkcd that I know are smart, high-functioning individuals who get a reasonable amount of action. Some of them are, mind-blowing though this may be, girls. Some of them are even, astonishingly enough, attractive. Dude. No joke. I must concede one point, though. I know a lot of nerds, and they do indeed make quantum mechanics jokes. Why wouldn't they? That shit is hilarious.
Also, in case you thought that the Adrian bit was an inside joke-which would be another mark against him-Calhoun follows up with "(I don't actually know anyone named Adrian, but I thought it'd be funny to make anyone reading this with that name piss themselves.)" If that attempted screed made an incontinent piss himself, I'd be amazed, much less an arbitrary nerd named Adrian.
Some more failed attempts at deconstruction follow, including a few more attacks on the readership of xkcd. He attacks an xkcd comic that references the Matrix on the basis that referencing the Matrix isn't funny any more, even though that isn't the basis of the comic's humor. Then he whines about not knowing what karnaugh maps or Turing machines are. Let's get something straight here: if you don't get a comic, that doesn't necessarily mean it's not funny. You aren't some absolute godlike arbiter of humour. It might be that the comic isn't funny, or it might just be that you aren't in the audience. I suspect that this might be the case here. After all, Calhoun isn't a sad, pathetic geek, all alone in his little computer haven, desperately grasping at his mountain dew and doritos. How could he possibly be expected to have an idea of what Turing machines are? That stuff's for nerds.
Then he says one of the most violently incorrect things I have ever seen on the great wide reaches of the intenet. "Maybe you understand that, but what about those of us who didn't go to MIT and get all As?"
Nobody gets all As at MIT. Nobody. There are rumours about one guy way back in the 70s, but he was probably quietly escorted from campus in order to prevent a general panic.
Then we get this attempt at moderating his opinion: "Basically, Monroe is making a living by writing jokes that only fat, loser nerds will get and appreciate. This wouldn't be so bad if it stayed within the community of fat, loser nerds." Nice attempt to backtrack there. But, Mr. Calhoun, you're wrong. Fat, loser, and nerd are no longer synonymous, if they ever were.
Just when we think he's done, Calhoun's death throes manage to churn up one more attempt at defeating xkcd. "But worst of all is his "parody" of Penny Arcade. Not only does it fail completely at being in any way funny or amusing (unlike PA itself), it implies that Tycho and Gabe are faggots. Which I suppose they could sue over, but they won't, because they're far better people than Mr. Monroe." I think even Orson Scott Card could forgive me for playing the homophobia card on this one. Being gay is no longer thought of as an automatic stigma, except apparently to John Calhoun. Seriously, man. The 80s ended at least a decade ago. Get over it.
That's about it, really. I could pick apart a few more of Calhoun's failed attempts at witty criticism, but what's the point? There aren't even enough thoughts there to argue with him. His own words evidence that his words are not to be believed.
Mind you, I agree with him on a few points; I like PvP, and everything that Solomon writes is not gold-plated pure 24-karat gold. (How did I miss that on my first read through? Gold-plated gold? How about some sediment-shaped sediment to go along?) But really, he's overwhelmingly, constantly wrong, and he doesn't even have the talent to make his being wrong an enjoyable read.
John Calhoun's parents, I have a favour to ask. Can you please start blocking your son's internet access again? It's for the best.
