Woohooligan!

Sam Dealey provides weekly webcomic reviews. He's also a fellow webcomic author: http://www.woohooligan.com

[woohooligancomics]

Review: Heroes International #1

I've been really busy lately and I haven't had the time to create any more of my usual Webcomic Whimsy reviews, but a friend asked me to check out an ebook of this comic she was a part of Kickstarting, so I decided to do a video.

[woohooligancomics]

Webcomic Whimsy: Hell(P)

Welcome to the Woohooligan Weekly Webcomic Whimsy! If you're a webcomic author and would like a review, you can see my announcement and review rules here.

Title: Hell(P)

Author: Jey Levang & C. Vinter (art by Levang) • Patreon • Facebook • Twitter • DeviantArt • Tumblr

Site: hellpcomic.com • Tapas

Genres: (Black) Comedy, Adventure, Surreal, Horror, Hell is the Three Stooges

Rating: R (From their Tapas mirror: WARNING: Contains violence, blood and bad language.)

Updates: Fridays

My Starting Point (requested by author): Chapter 2

Synopsis (from Tapas): In this comic from Hell, you see the characters competing for a very special prize: A ticket to Heaven! Who will win? Who will lose? And do they really know what they've signed up for?

Hell(P) is a surreal action-comedy set in Hell. You'll recognize elements similar to Beetlejuice, but also lots of slapstick like the Three Stooges. If you enjoyed Beetlejuice or other Tim Burton films, I think you'll enjoy Hell(P).

Chapter 2 starts with several pages of the main character committing suicide via the traditional bathtub electrocution with a hair dryer. (It's not really important to the plot, but that's rather hard to do in modern homes where the law requires GFCI protected outlets in every bathroom.) I'm skipping over all those pages because, while some of them are rather beautifully illustrated, frankly I think it's needlessly slow with a lot of splash pages with only one or two panels. All I think it really needed was the bloody hands (which area already shown in the bathroom scene), holding the dryer in the tub, the electrocution, and you could have the floating dead body and the gasping awake on one page, followed by the elevator, which didn't need a whole page to open, plus a whole splash page. To be honest, I'm not sure it needed this somewhat confusing page about the interior of the elevator either. This character building shot showing the main character is a murderous wretch is probably a good idea, though it's confusing that all this stuff is in the elevator, I think it might muddy things a bit for the reader. I think this page is where the story starts getting interesting. This is after the elevator comes to a stop and the main character steps out in front of an amusement park, and again, I don't know that it required two whole pages to convey the location.

I don't know, if movies have taught me anything there's at least one serial killer at a given amusement park. :P

I know he's all shocked about the appearance of the ticket, but personally I think the bigger question is what gives with the pocket protectors. Why do serial killers always wear them? Did they have a meeting or something?

Come on, man! Hurry up so I can get some aspirin! Sorry, Tylenol... this is Hell, they're not going to give you the good stuff.

We found the mosh pit!

I always try to ask directions from someone who's obviously as lost as I am... that way I don't look like the only idiot. :P

Aw, man! We skipped straight past the amusement part of amusement park! No murder-clowns, no severed-head ring-toss, nothin...

Okay, now we're seeing something abut the contest mentioned in the synopsis... that's good.

So in this part of Hell, the damned are just recreating the worst parts of being alive, like being stuck in traffic and shit. Gotta have the Read Your Past psychic though, for all the dudes with amnesia... gotta be rampant around here... if movies have taught me anything.

I feel like joining something... dunno why... just this weird sudden urge...

Speaking of recreating all the worst parts of being alive, "Hell Yeah cola" has to be pretty high on that list. "Hell Yeah, it's not hella awful enough, that's why we market it this way!"

Part of me has to think that if all dogs to to heaven, then all alpha males must go to hell.

Oh "Flicker City"... the earlier sign wasn't quite as clear, I was really hoping it was Fucker City. :D

That and licking it off your friend's shirt is definitely the only way to drink Hell Yeah if you have any self-respect.

If they're already in Hell is it still called "foreshadowing"?

Yes, it's running around behind him, but they also just walked right past it a second ago.

I need a hero! I'm holding on for a hero 'till the morning liiiight!... No? Just me?

No kidding that's wrong! The word "you're" is a contraction, meaning "you are", and "sign you are team up" doesn't make any sense...

THATS MY JOB!

Is that an actual see-saw? It's usually a stray board laid over a short wall or something...

This is pretty good in terms of stock comedy gags and a unique world and presentation for them... it's pretty weird for this to be an all-out slapstick though... generally, the opening of a story sets its tone, and if I were juding by the first 24 pages (which is a standard comic issue), I would think this was going the direction of Hellraiser, not Beetlejuice. I think if you plan to print these, you're likely to have a lot of unhappy customers reading issue 2, expecting screaming and torture and instead getting Laurel and Hardy.

So they found the plant and they sign up for the contest to get into Heaven. (It turns out they need a demon to enter.) I'm realizing suddenly that the serial killer we followed for the first over 24 pages had nothing to do with the story, he was just there to show the entrance to Hell and these five are the characters.

Nobody reads... that's why beauracracy is hell.

It turns out they need six people plus the demon to enter, and after a bit of fighting with the clerk and the people they were cutting in front of in the line, they manage to get two extra people.

It's always nice when a random stranger you know is a douche (because he's in Hell) offers to join your team for no apparent reason. Or when some random group of strangers tries to draft you.

Once they're signed up they intrduce themselves to the new team members and that ends chapter 2, so that's where I'll end this review.

Overall I liked Hell(P). The art is endearingly sloppy and I think it works for a comedy set in Hell. The writing is good overall and most of the time the pacing was good (which is an unusual complement from me -- don't make me regret it ;P). I think the first half of Chapter 2 should really be pared down a LOT, and there are a couple spots where I think the pacing could be tightened up in other spots to get it down to a standard single-issue size if they're planning to print. So if you like Three Stooges style slapstick and surreal black comedy, you should definitely give Hell(P) a look! :D

If you are a webcomic author and are interested in a review from me, you can check out my announcement and my review-request rules here.

If you enjoyed this and want to help me make more reviews, you can contribute on our Patreon or if you're short on funds you can also help by checking out and sharing my own comedy and laughtivist webcomic, Woohooligan!

Thank you for sharing yourself with us! Sam

[woohooligancomics]

Webcomic Whimsy: Dogstar!

Welcome to the Woohooligan Weekly Webcomic Whimsy! If you're a webcomic author and would like a review, you can see my announcement and review rules here.

Title: Dogstar

Author: Brandon V. Williams

Site: ComicFury • Tapas (Brandon recommends this site.)

Genres: Comedy, Superheroes, Action, Adventure, SciFi, Anthropomorphic, DuckTales Justice League

Rating: PG (?)

Updates: Every other Saturday (for now -- previous schedule was weekly?)

My Starting Point (requested by author): Page 0

Synopsis (from Tapas): A mild mannered pilot/magician's life changes dramatically when he crosses paths with the world's most famous crime fighter. This sets him on a journey of many adventures, in which he grows into something far beyond his imagination.

For a sci-fi comic with a title like Dogstar, the opening seems a bit small scale. Here the five villains meet to discuss taking over... the galaxy? The world? The pacific northwest seafood restaurant market? Nope... one town called Beacon City.

After reading a bit further, it turns out that impression from the title was off-base and the story as a whole isn't a space opera, it's really a superhero story done in the style of DuckTales.

The jokes on the first page do a good job of setting the tone, with the pirate's hook-fingers, talk of brain stealing, and the mysterious evil overlord's mysterious silhouette cleavage.

The lettering on this first page needs work. The text isn't large enough to read comfortably and doesn't flow within the word balloons, leaving that incongruous feeling when a round balloon meets text with a straight left edge. It's like putting a sexy dress on the Iron Giant. Lettering on the latest pages shows marked improvement.

Writing does a good job of establishing the tone as not being Warner Brothers like I expected and instead being more Fritz the Cat. I doubt there will be displayed nudity or uncensored swearing, but dick jokes are definitely implied in what's obviously a champagne room.

Page two also commits some lettering sins that weren't on the first page. Dialogue balloons covering character art with plenty of empty "white space" left untouched is the big one. Panels 3-5 should have been close-up shots.

Ha! So the heroes' solution for a slow response from an agent is electroshock. That sort of thing is usually reserved for villains like Darth Vader's force choke. I guess if he's really insubbordinate he gets the hose.

Bullock Towers looks surprised! |8

Is it just me or is "Junk Jaws" a more intimidating name? Metal Mouth is literally how we used to insult kids in high-school if they had braces on their teeth. Spyke's trying to insult the guy, but he just makes him seem cooler. "Time's up, Ball Breaker! ... Actually, my name is Testicle Trasher, but now that you mention it I think yours is better, I'm gonna go with that..."

Wait... there are robots and cyborgs like Metal Mouth and he and his goons are still using tommy guns? "We could have had M-16s, but we're going for a prohibition era gangster look, you know, it's vintage!" I guess these villains are hipsters.

Nice visuals on that first panel... are the cop cars a photograph with a posterise filter?

Spyke McGruff apparently has the Judge Dredd gun... although glue-mode is new.

Panel 3 should have been close-up.

The extra space before the exclamation point drives me nuts... the font is too small, so every time it looks like an I in the middle of the sentence. "What a moron I he's using..."

Plus I sprang extra for the wax... but not the undercarriage, that's a rip-off.

He splits after one hit? Where'd all the confidence from the new jaw go? He never even tried to bite Spyke.

Just like a hipster... they can cloak a blimp, but they're still using tommy guns.

Oh, finally on page 11, the actual hero of the story! :P Oh, you thought it was Spyke? Psyche! Remember the synopsis said he's a mild mannered pilot, not a bombastic "secret" agent.

I guess you're just not extreme enough man... that's what real adrenaline junkies do, scope out the only two giant vertical poles in a hundred acres of open field just to perform a stunt that could get us killed. Barell rolls are for pussies!

Artistically, I feel like the presentation of the poles could have been better. I don't think anyone's going to be confused by the art here, but I think a shot from behind the characters' heads on approach, followed by a side-shot of the plane passing between the poles, (preferably with an exhaust trail), would have been a little clearer and more dramatic.

Is that other thing that's coming a beer? I don't always drive my business into the ground, but when I do, I prefer a Dos Equis hang-over.

You know what kids really love? Nearly dying in an airplane trick! ;D

What the hell was that? Pointy teeth and glowing red eyes?... It looks like some kind of Shit-Spider-Demon... It looks evil enough, maybe you should ask it for some help with the magic tricks.

The door was open, but property damage is how I get everything I need... I'm a hero!

That's SECRET Agent Spyke! You've never heard of me... psst... don't blow my cover while I demonstrate my SUPER-misogyny shutting up this broad witha face-full of glue... mmm, yes, "glue"...

Dialogue balloons in panel 2 are in reverse order... Daniel's dialogue needs to be at the top to read first, before Spyke's reply.

The best pilot but man he's the worst at everything else -- business, social skills, knowing when he's likely to be shot at.

What?! That last page looked like a direct hit... Gotta work on that perspective.

Pretty sure that's supposed to be light filtering in the corridor from the hatch, but it sure looks like the kind of glowing purple ooze that gives people superpowers... or mutates turtles.

Page 19 and here's that turning point where Daniel becomes the hero of the story... I have to say, of the comics I've reviewed so far, this is one of the few that's well paced. 20-24 pages is the length of a typical printed comic issue, and he's right on time to make Daniel the hero as the cliff-hanger for the end of the first issue. Nice work!

The name of the mad scientist who's obsessed with collecting brains is "Nobrainer". That's like if you invented the Richie Rich character, and named him "Deadbroke Deadbeat". :P

Okay, but can we talk about tha name? Because I'm pretty font of "axis"... you know, as a tribute. Why not? I mean... it couldn't be any worse than Confederate Monuments. :P

Yeah, man, like... you gotta be chill for High Leader... High Leader is chill, so just, y'know, get your bud on and chillax... Woah! Dude my hands are HUUUGE! Who's got the snacks?

Dialogue in the 5th panel is in the wrong order. Yes, left-to-right, however, top-down supercedes left-to-right. Think of the panel like it's a page of a book. So, put your thumbs over the art, you just have text on the panel wherever it is. Which do you read first? As a rule, people will read the first line at the top first, even if it's shifted over to the right, rather than starting on say line 4 or 5. So Dr Nobrainer and Captain Blackjack should swap Triforces.

The fair agent's condition is good.

Great!

No, good.

Wait, his condition is bad?

No, good.

What's the fair agent's condition?

Good, sir.

Yes, what is it?

What's what?

The condition.

I don't know...

NEAR MINT!

...

The words "Successful" and "Initiated" shouldn't be capitalized.

We control the vertical. We control the horizontal... so just chillax while commander mysterious-boobs pumps some of the good shit in the air for you, we're talking primo chronic, man...

Psst... High Leader... I think you might be a little too high, you forgot to issue any actual demands for people to comply with... like... bring me the mayor, hand over the key to the city, or call 555-2-surrender?

I think Daniel just discovered his battle cry... like the thing's "It's clobberin' time!"... Daniel rushes into the fight, "I CAN BEND THEM ALL!" Mostly it confuses the enemy and gets them off-guard.

Yeah, what were you thinking? Catching this guy is no job for a squad of cyborg-super-ninjas!

This is a job for a midget senior citizen!

You'd be amazed what drinking Ensure does for your reflexes.

Of course he doesn't have a choice... what's he gonna do? Punch out some old grandpa? That's not what heroes do... heroes cause PROPERTY damage... didn't we cover this already?

Best way to get a magician to tell you his secrets? Brutally murder him... by sawing him in half. They have to respect the classics.

Not sure why the robot suit looks like MODOK... He was building an evil Voltron and could only afford the head?

I guess the pink cockpit dome is supposed to make him look like MODOK's brain.

White motion lines in panel 5 would have been better contrast, easier to see.

I can't believe he used up all his brain-hostages... anything that's precious to the villain is leverage.

Oooh... Dogstar is like Skywalker... so... I'm guessing no space-opera elements like I expected from the title...

Doesn't Double-R still think Double-M stole a super-W? Doesn't destroying the blimp without securing the weapon leave it open to salvage by "the wrong hands"?

Caaaapers... <drool>

Doooouble entendres... <drool>

The juxtaposition of the angry MODOK face with Daniel's shit-eating grin in the first panel! Well done, Brandon!

Actually I'm fairly certain that dirigibles don't just careen into the ground when an engine goes out, because the gas in the envelope provides lift while engines are purely for maneuvering... even if an aerostat does require forward motion to stay up, the descent after an engine failure is likely to be a fairly sedate affair, not nearly as dangerous as an airplane crash (which has an over 95% survival rate).

But, y'know... Hollywood.

Plane should be in the lower-right corner of panel 5 (leave Daniel where he is), and in panel 6 the perspective is nice, but there should be ground below the plane, and the clouds should be perpendicular to the perspective, not parallel to it. And from that angle, there should be little to no gray on them, because you're seeing the water vapor from above, where the sun is hitting it.

I think it's fair that Bullock Towers looks surprised again. :P

Nice shot of the crash -- good job on the smoke and flames.

I think the plane in that last panel should be angled up and to the right -- or at least rolled so the wings angle the other direction. The position of the plane makes the wings line-up with the carriage under the blimp and creates a visual tangent. This one is called a "stolen edge" or "parallel". It makes the plane visually blend into the blimp, which is obviously undesirable for clarity unless you have a very specific reason to want something to blend in a particular shot.

I saw the job offer coming, although Spyke being a vindictive dick about someone else saving his life and completing the mission was a little unexpected... it doesn't seem entirely out of character, but I tend to expect government agents to be team players (Fox Mulder notwithstanding). It's not a bad twist, given that a lot of the first chapter was fairly predictable... and I think it's a good wrap for this first chapter overall, including the job offer -- tropes aren't always bad.

Overall I liked Dogstar. Decent art improves over time (though the six panel layout seems pretty rigid and I think you should experiment with some alternative layouts -- an occasional wide shot, etc). I think if you enjoyed DuckTales or DarkWing Duck, you should definitely give Dogstar a look! :D

If you are a webcomic author and are interested in a review from me, you can check out my announcement and my review-request rules here.

If you enjoyed this and want to help me make more reviews, you can contribute on our Patreon or if you're short on funds you can also help by checking out and sharing my own comedy and laughtivist webcomic, Woohooligan!

Thank you for sharing yourself with us! Sam

[woohooligancomics]

A Personal Racism Issue. Can I Get Your Advice?

I'm at a bit of a loss... so I'm hoping some of you hooligans might be able to help me out. This weekend I'm tabling a gaming convention with a friend of mine (and I'll leave his name out here for reasons that will be apparent -- I'll call him X). Admittedly, I'm a comedian and a cartoonist, so a gaming convention is slightly off-brand, but I'm hoping there will be a good cross-section of people who also enjoy comedy, and at the end of Friday I've already collected 5 new subscribers to our newsletter, the Woohooligan Weekly Dick Joke Advocate.

This came about when I got an unexpected call from X about a month before the event and he mentioned in passing that he'd already booked a table for this event. I offered to share the booth with him, because I want to attend more cons and I thought I could handle the 5hr drive. I've tabled about a half-dozen cons so far, this would be his first. And although he's a relatively new friend (a year?), I didn't have the impression he was racist -- at least not overtly or knowingly so... I wouldn't associate myself with anyone who identified as "Alt-Right", I think that should be apparent from my work, of which X is aware. Dunking on these racists was part of all three of my most recent YouTube videos, and a comic I published in 2016 which appears in my recent Woohooligan Vol 2 (page 29) that I now have on the table at the event thanks to our recent Kickstarter.

What I didn't realize until I arrived at the event, is that X is selling t-shirts labelled "Fantasy Lives Matter". There are about a dozen of them, roughly half of his t-shirt designs, so for example a picture of an orc with the text "Orc Lives Matter", another for Elf, Dwarf, etc. I hoped at first that it would go unnoticed as people often don't read the text and just check out the artwork. I've already noticed one girl at the table this morning was put off. She asked me, "are you a Black Lives Matter person or an all lives matter person"? To which I responded "black lives matter... I haven't had that specific conversation with X, though I suspect he's the same"...

Apparently I was wrong, which, I realize in retrospect is what I should have expected, because I think the majority of people would have picked up on the poor taste of trivializing serious problems faced by real people. I want to say I think most people would have picked up on that faster than I did actually, since I think I'd seen these graphics before (I mean, months ago), and it just hadn't clicked in my mind, despite all the work I've done.

I tried to have a brief conversation with X about it, which went nowhere good...

Me: Hey, X. This girl just left, put off by the FLM designs... she asked if I was BLM or ALM.

X: [rolls eyes] Yeah that was my dad's big problem too, thinking people would be offended, and if they are, fuck 'em. I'm saying "all lives matter", even fictional ones.

(That last sentence is a huge problem for me, for reasons I think should be obvious.)

Me: "All lives matter" is intended to shut down people trying to address serious problems.

X: People don't know how to address problems... and to be honest, some of those people running in with the police deserve what they're getting.

(We're way into not-okay territory here and I've invested a huge amount of time and a notable amount of money in this event, and knowing now that X apparently has difficulty staying awake while driving on the freeway, I'm also concerned about his safety if I decided to just leave suddenly... but at this moment I'm not ready to get into what seems like is likely to devolve into a screaming match in front of everyone at the con.)

Me: the BLM movement only exists because there's a huge amount of injustice built into the system. When everything else is held equal, a black person on average receives 2-3 times more jail time than a white person, and that should never happen.

(I don't have reference for that specific figure on-hand -- please check my work and leave a link if you have one, whether I remembered it correctly or not. Thank you.)

X: [basically murmurred agreement]

I don't want to make any excuses for his diminishing of real-world problems, I think it's bad... I'm conflicted about how to address this problem for myself... I plan to publish photos of myself at the con, and the signs for those designs will be in the background... do I black them out? If I do that, am I enabling him?

I don't *think* he realizes what the problem is... I don't *think* he's deliberately racist. On the way back to the house from the convention he offered to buy me dinner at a shawarma place (I'd never had it -- it was good -- it actually reminded me of some southern cafeterias, although the seasoning and the decoration were a little different.)

The waitresses wore hijabs and he was familiar them (had been there many times), and treated them nice enough... though I will say that some of the things he says seem fairly insensitive in a general sense. For example, he makes a lot of objectifying comments about women, including for example, one of the shawarma waitresses, "[damn she's hot]... and great tits". (Of course, he's only seen her breasts 100% covered -- not even cleavage -- so it's a little odd to me to hear someone be so overtly objectifying of someone who's entire outward image is one of "I am not here for you to ogle".) And the whole day at the con was similar -- frequent mentions of "she's smokin' hot" or "that red head" or "I've never wanted to give wood to an elf so bad", which I tried not to encourage. (I like porn too, but my interest in potential partners isn't based on their looks.)

These are things I hadn't noticed in previous phone or online conversations. So I'm a bit conflicted... He's open enough to be friendly with the shawarma waitresses... but he's also interested in them to the point of sexual interest in women who're being very careful to be NOT sexy. So how confrontational should I be about "fantasy lives matter"?

I don't plan to share a table with him again if he's going to continue promoting them... I would hope he would eventually figure out that the phrase is likely to reduce his sales, even when a person might agree with his sentiment, because they don't want to buy a shirt that's going to get them into verbal fisticuffs with people. But this being his first event, and saying that he's already plunked down $1400 into it, it seems to me unlikely that he'll learn that soon. Though in honesty, it always feels like cold comfort to me when someone is doing the right thing only because they realize some kind of financial reward for it.

So should just not sharing tables in the future be where I leave it? Is it okay to accept that, "he's not a deliberate racist, just kind of an insensitive jerk" and just limit my involvement? As an autistic person who knows what it's like to be ostracized for being unintentionally insensitive, am I being too harsh if I say I feel like this is too much? Does that make me a hypocrite? And what about the fact that there are now photos of me in the act of affiliating myself with the creator who promoted "fantasy lives matter"?

Regardless of how it may impact my image, I'm trying to figure out what course of action will produce the best results for everyone -- that hopefully anyone who can become a better person will, regardless of how it impacts my image. Obviously I always have to think about my image, we all do, but that's a secondary concern. I feel like I should be willing to sacrifice my image if the alternative is being hypocritical, cruel, or even just unwilling to evolve or better myself.

Thanks for reading and helping me with this. I appreciate any advice you have.

- Sam

(Now I need to get about 6 hours sleep, because I spent too long composing this blog and have to be up early for the event tomorrow. Thank god my diabetes didn't trash my energy today, and fingers crossed I have the same luck tomorrow.)

UPDATE 9/17/2018

Maybe I should have waited until the end of the event before writing this blog, but the subject distresses me and I wanted to talk about it sooner than later. At the end of Friday, neither X or I had sold anything at the event. Saturday morning, X printed off about 4 shirts as samples to lay on the front of the table (good marketing), to show people that, "hey these pictures on the poster in the back go on t-shirts". It worked and over Saturday and Sunday, he sold at least a half-dozen shirts, most of them "Fantasy Lives Matter" shirts. So while there are some people who are offended by them, there are apparently also a large number of people excited by them (I think exclusively white people that I saw, although most of the attendees looked pretty white to me as well). ::sigh::

Over the course of the event, 27 new people signed up for our Woohooligan Weekly Dick Joke Advocate mailing list. I know many of those people were either indifferent to the FLM shirts or some may have even been excited by them... but I have no idea how many people may have simply avoided conversation with me all-together because of them.

I still have no plans to share another table with X. It's weird to me, because he's really sensitive about other things, like he kept profusely apologizing for falling asleep in the car because he apparently suffers from pretty bad road hypnosis. He's made the hour drive before, but I was concerned about him making the drive after a full day manning the table at the con. Meanwhile I also discovered he's got a huge chip on his shoulder about (of all things) shaking hands.

X: I hate it. I don't like people touching me.

Me: You know people are about 30% more likely to buy from you right?

X: You may be right, but I don't care. It was originally a symbol of distrust. Do you know where it came from?

Me: Yeah, it was originally a way of showing that you weren't armed, but it's evolved into a symbol of trust.

X: It's evolbed into a bullshit thing we do for no goddamn reason!

So to recap: shaking hands is tragic evidence of the decline of civilization, while Black Lives Matter is deluded and don't know how to address problems, and "many of them deserve what they're getting anyway".

I just can't fathom how a person can have that set of priorities when they go out of their way to eat shawarma and so forth and don't appear to be outwardly racist in any other way that I can tell.

His FLM shirts outsold mine by a wide margin, and frankly I don't care... or rather, I find it disheartening... and I'm not about to deliberately associate my work with it in the future. All people need justice, and if you think it through, you should realize that "all lives matter" is the actual meaning of "black lives matter". Saying "all lives matter" as a response is like saying of the condition of slaves, "slave owners have problems, too!" It takes air away from the importance of addressing a great deal of injustice in our country and I don't want to contribute to trivializing that in any way. Even if I stood to gain financially from it, I wouldn't do it.

I'm still not sure what else to do, beyond just not sharing con tables with him again, and would still appreciate hearing any thoughts you have on it. Thanks.

- Sam

[woohooligancomics]

Webcomic Whimsy: Power Pills!

Welcome to the Woohooligan Weekly Webcomic Whimsy! If you're a webcomic author and would like a review, you can see my announcement and review rules here.

Title: Power Pills

Author: Natalie Sullivan (BookFanGeek) Patreon • Facebook • Twitter • DeviantArt • YouTube • Tumblr

Site: Tumblr • Tapas (Natalie recommends this site.)

Genres: Comedy, Superheroes, Slice of Life, Secrets Man Was Not Meant to Know

Rating: PG (?)

Updates: Mon / Wed / Sat

My Starting Point (requested by author): Page 0

Synopsis (from Tumblr): Power Pills is a superhero webcomic written by Bookfangeek that kicks off when a dorky college student named Caleb Budde receives a pill from a stranger at a party his roommate forced him to go to. The pill gives Caleb powers and turns him into a superhero.

Power Pills features typical if awkward college friends, who find themselves unexpectedly involved in an odd superhero conspiracy. I read three chapters and to be honest, there was a lot more slice-of-life comedy than there was super-heroing in those chapters (and while the first two chapters were about 20-ish pages, the third chapter was over 60 pages, where I stopped reading somewhere after page 111). It opens with the classic noir, shadow-government trope: a clandestine meeting between agents of a shadowy organization... vague discussions of plots and packages that are only slightly less obscured than the faces of the people in the meeting.

The meeting is brief as I expected, and then we meet our hero. It took me a moment to figure out that the sound-effects were supposed to be a heartbeat. Personally I think the sounds should have been on the 2nd panel. Placing them in front of the house implies that they're coming from the house, particularly when you don't yet know that you're seeing from a character's viewpoint. And I think either hand-drawn or at least a different font (preferably distressed in some way) would have been good for that particular sound. Also, the sounds should have been the same color. A heartbeat that swings from cyan to magenta doesn't say "scared" to me as much as it says either "party" or "the shrooms are kicking in!"

Our hero, Caleb is apparently having a heart attack because there are lights on in the old Miller house that no one dares go near... baaaad things happened there, years ago before it was abandoned. Terrible things. Things good people don't speak about.

Or he's just an agoraphobe with crippling social anxiety. I guess that works too. (A few silhouettes of people in the window dancing and chugging beer bongs would have easily switched the first impression from "haunted house" to "frat party".)

The lettering here feels a bit cramped, but Natalie shows definite improvement in that area with a quick glance at more recent pages.

That doesn't help Caleb deal with being judo-thrown through the door.

It was all a ruse! The house is full of aliens, come to take Caleb home!

Okay, I definitely don't understand the "woah" now... that looks like a typical college party, which is what Caleb was terrified of in the first place. I can relate though... I didn't know I was autistic until my early 30s and my social anxiety used to be damned crippling. I remember some time before my teens hyperventilating and having a near heart-attack at the thought of interacting with a clerk at the 7-11 to buy a candy bar. I was super-terrified of anyone I didn't know... and a lot of people I knew. :P

"M'lady! I hath brought the finest cola in all the land... Royal Crown! Only the best for the queen." Oh, that's going to go over great. :P

So... for all the extroverts who might be reading this, I know you mean well, but "you can do it" is not helpful to those of us with social anxiety. To us it feels like you've just told us "there's a live bomb in this tuna sandwich, here's a pair of clippers to disarm it, git-er-done!" Your confidence is... confounding.

We're ten pages in and we're still just establishing that Caleb is socially inept and Guy is determined to help him make friends now that they're college roommates... It seems a little long for that much character development -- if this were a normal sized comic book, we'd be half-way through the book on just those one or two ideas, which I don't suspect are central to the whole superhero plot. Granted, I think Caleb's being set up as the nerdy, Peter Parker archetype before his transformation into Spider-Man, but it feels like that could be done in fewer pages.

This is where I think judicious use of panels could help. I seriously think all the dialogue on this page could have been three panels, and then we'd have gotten to the plot device on this following page in one page instead of two.

There it is! The plot device we knew was coming from the page-zero prologue. So he takes the pill and wakes up with some kind of superpower. But first, you need to know that Caleb isn't stupid, he was MESMERIZED!

What? You thought the guy from the prologue wasn't going to use his powers to deliver "the package"? Anyway, I'm skipping ahead to chapter 2.

I know this is something I've said in most of my reviews, but it seems to me like pacing is something most webcomic authors really struggle to get right. Power Pills is a superhero story and the entire first chapter of 18 pages (almost a normal printed comic length) doesn't even get to the introduction of the main character's power. That happens here on the first page of the 2nd chapter. And it certainly could have been revealed before the end of the first chapter -- there were plenty of pages where some panels could have been smaller or removed, so that Caleb could learn that he can hear people's thoughts as the cliffhanger at the end of the first chapter instead of him passing out at the party.

Caleb fell back to sleep at the end of the previous page, which is why Guy is now sitting in the beanbag chair instead of on his bunk, but the transition was a little rough.

He hasn't figured out yet that he's hearing people's thoughts. To be honest, it took me a minute when I first read it.

It takes four pages for Caleb to realize he's hearing everyone's thoughts. Ooof! I can't really complain about any specific part of this sequence, but four pages seems like a lot of time to just get through the realization that he's hearing people's thoughts. I think he could have gone straight from "they're all talking right now" and "I assure you they're not" to "I have to go", and wrap this whole sequence up in 2 pages. That would be particularly useful, given that we move from this realization to a fairly lengthy explanation to and early training sequence with his roommate, Guy.

Guy's tongue is a heart-shaped tube! We should really get a doctor in here to catalogue this medical oddity!

The running panel at the top really should have been skipped. We know he left the class, we can see he went back to his dorm, and it's already established that he's hearing people's thoughts, which leaves that panel providing no additional information to the story.

This bottom panel shows another of my minor issues with the presentation of this story. The close-up of Caleb making this statement makes sense, but it could just as easily have been half the width of the page. There's no especially strong reason for that close-up to take up so much space, or for caleb's head to break out fo the frame there. (Breaking out of the frame is okay from time to time, but it ought to be avoided if you can unless there's some compelling metaphorical or otherwise artistic reason for it, which I don't really see here.)

On the whole it just seems that super-large panels to hold just one character in closeup is a common visual aesthetic here and I think it adds to the bulking up of huge numbers of pages with very little story delivered. It cocntinues on the following page where we've got two panels of Guy's reaction that certainly could have been half the size, one on top of the other, allowing the third panel to slide up to the upper-right corner.

Guy's laughing makes sense, but again, his reaction takes a lot of room (at least 2 pages) before we settle into acceptance of Caleb's unexpected power. It may be more realistic, but often in fiction the reader's experience is more important than pure realism. When I talk without a script, I do a lot of hemming and hawing -- I'm not real good at speaking off the cuff, and when I was in high-school I wrote a sci-fi short story that actually won a state-wide prize. But before I submitted it to the contest, I got editing advice from my dad (a journalist at the time), who pointed out that it's hard on the reader to see a lot of "uh... umm... " in the dialogue, except very sparingly and in specific places to show where a character is behaving unsually, like extreme nerves or stalling for time... and even then, don't let the character keep doing it. I think this is one of those cases where "less is more" applies.

But it's nice to see that aside from wanting his roommate to make friends, Guy is a Good Guy(tm) and he's not going to let Caleb struggle through this on his own.

Here Natalie uses a well-known trick to compress a week's worth of time. We see the calendar and the characters tell us it's been a week since the previous page. This same kind of mechanism could have been used to eliminate a lot of the previous pages in this story as well, e.g. "minutes later..."

Last panel wasn't necessary. We could have just seen Caleb freak out like he does on this next page.

A week to turn it off and another week to turn it back on, but the good news is that only took us a couple pages. :D

Man, Guy, you're lucky Caleb just wants to be lazy... god forbid Caleb were a practical joker.

I'd have just shown him at the sink with the dishes and Caleb telling him to snap out of it... again, it would have saved a whole page or maybe even two.

Chapter 3 is titled "The Robbery". Finally! It looks like we'll see some superhero activity. Caleb's still struggling to control his powers though.

These three have SUPER-POKER-FACE! :P

Speaking of super-poker-face... it might be a good time to think about who knows your secret identity.

That at least is super-helpful... but damn is it going to make Guy paranoid!

Wait! What the hell happened to Caleb's crippling social anxiety? I mean... I know having powers is likely to give him some extra confidence, but let it sink in a little! I will say though that giving the socially inept guy the mind-reading and mind-control powers is a cool bit of irony in the story, and I'm glad that (as far as I know), Natalie doesn't fall back on the old trope of having powers turning him into a colossal dick, like the villain in MegaMind.

Wait... is the problem that the robbery is happening this week, or that you now have to throw a party?

Called it! Guy is paranoid.

Well, cops don't give out that kind of information on an anonymous tip, but okay... I guess Natalie wanted to give Caleb and Guy a reason to do something else... and I'm guessing the other three anonymous tips were made by the robbers, on the assumption it would distract the police, sending them off to another location across town.

Bullet dodging must be a black-belt level technique in Taekwondo. :P

A car would be a giveaway? ... You couldn't park the car down the block?

Should the plan be "wait 'till they illegally enter the bank then call in the license plate number of their getaway car?"

If they can let up on the Three Stooges routine, they might actually foil a bank robbery. :P

Okay, so... after all that prep, the robbers finally arrive... I dunno, I think we could have skipped straight from hanging up the phone with the police to "here we are in the dark waiting for the robbers". We would have missed the explanation of Caleb's gi from Taekwondo, but to be honest, I think explaining that he took lessons could happen after he kicked somebody, and likely would be more impactful.

It also occurs to me that Caleb and Guy could easily have simply used an air-horn to scare them off at this point, without even revealing their position... or they could have deliberately tripped the bank's silent alarm just before the robbers arrived, so the police would show up while they were in the bank. There's a bunch of ways to handle this situation without confronting them.

The sledgehammer is a standard part of the Acme bank-robbing kit.

I ... don't think it's that easy...

What could go wrong? :P

They heard their partner yelling from the other room and everybody suddenly took their ski masks off? Is that like burglar 101? When there's a hitch, immediately expose yourself!

The gun is really invisible in that first panel... Should put a little shine on the edges of the metal so the reader can see it -- or maybe just don't make the room quite so dark. That's usually what I see in comics night scenes or dark room scenes are cast in blue shades and dark enough to know there's not much light, but light enough to make out details.

Last panel definitely didn't need to be that big... That's a ton of page realestate for very little story.

Okay, that's a good ending for the page. Kudos, Natalie!

I guess the bank robber is a black belt.

I dunno... wondering about his identity seems like a pretty essoteric thing for him to be thinking while he's curled up in the fetal position from a gut-kick... but I guess that's not so unusual in the superhero genre... but that really makes me wonder, where the hell is the guy who gave him the pill in the first place? In the prologue he said he was putting together a team of heroes (villains?) and it's been over two weeks since he delivered the pill, shouldn't he have been keeping tabs on Caleb? Maybe showing up to explain why he gave him the pill?

That must be him now...

It's different, I'll give it that... but I'm not sure how I feel about heroes with an art style that makes them look like Mr Stay-Puft. After all, he could never ever possibly destroy us.

Acme sledge-hammer-o-matic coming back again... I thought for sure that last page was going to end the chapter... but since that's not Reggie, that must mean Guy is in serious trouble... but we haven't heard anything from him, we don't know where he is or why we're not hearing anything from him.

In retrospect, I guess this series is meant to be read like a superhero parody, like the Tick or Megaton Man.

Yep... definitely meant to be read like the Tick. :P

Ugh the splash pages!

Man, even this fight scene draaaags! Too many giant panels.

Okay, now I'm thoroughly confused... we saw Stay Puft teleport before, sure... and his suit seems to turn a particular color when a given power is used, so blue for teleport... but why is he suddenly green and growling on the floor?

... so, aside from the awkward transition... why? They didn't seem to be having any trouble beating up Reggie before, being two guys with mind-control and teleportation powers... why isn't that enough? Now he's just showing off like, "I know it's just a fly, but look at the size of my warheads!"

Showing off or possibly playing with his food...

Hey, somebody noticed he's gone after like ten pages... actually I take that back, he was shot in the arm a little while back (and didn't even yell or anything that I recall), but they never explained where he was, what he was doing, why he wasn't fighting anyone, why he wasn't talking, why if he wasn't fighting someone he hadn't moved to a safer, less shootable location, etc. He seems to have just been standing around in the bank waiting to be shot and then checked-up on after.

Oh, he's supposed to be still squaring off against the girl in their group... I guess they were in some kind of suspended animation for a minute while Caleb and Stay Puft were tag-teaming Reggie and the guy they put to sleep.

Dude, maybe I shouldn't tell you how to do your job, but just put her to sleep and then you can tie the three of them up and leave them for the cops.

Batman in the daaark, exchanging punches. Isn't it a laaark, we can't make out a damn thing....

Stop playing with your food!

He's STAR STRUCK! Ba-dump-bump!

Come on! ... Giant panels, almost no dialogue...

STOP PLAYING WITH YOUR FOOD!

So Mr Stay Puft who gave you your powers and claims to be a "hero" is a bona-fide psychopath... I'm guessing red is super-strength. He must have taken all the pills.

Yes it would, but daaamn... the fight alone was like 20 pages! How long is this chapter?

That's convenient... you you could've, I dunno... worn masks?

Aha! An un-silent alarm... there are several more pages in this chapter. Mr Stay Puft has to spell-out the whole "I gave you the pill, that's what gave you the powers" thing, they leave the bank and have an awkward conversation with a friend from the first chapter on their way home. I actually read significantly longer than I had planned to, because I wanted to get to what's supposed to be the heart of this story, the "superhero" stuff... I feel like it has real potential, but man Natalie, tighten up those pages. It takes such a loooong time to read.

Otherwise the art's decent and it gets better over time and it's got some interesting concepts and character development. So if you like superhero fiction with a lot of slice-of-life, give Power Pills a look!

If you are a webcomic author and are interested in a review from me, you can check out my announcement and my review-request rules here.

If you enjoyed this and want to help me make more reviews, you can contribute on our Patreon or if you're short on funds you can also help by checking out and sharing my own comedy and laughtivist webcomic, Woohooligan!

Thank you for sharing yourself with us! Sam

[woohooligancomics]

Webcomic Whimsy: Return of Wonderland

Welcome to the Woohooligan Weekly Webcomic Whimsy! If you're a webcomic author and would like a review, you can see my announcement and review rules here.

Title: Return of Wonderland

Author: Emily McKenna

Site: ComicFury

Genres: Comedy, Fantasy, Adventure, Slice of Life, Blood-Bath Mystery, Acid-Trip War Story

Rating: PG (?)

Updates: Unknown

My Starting Point: Page 502 begins what appears to be the 16th chapter. Emily suggested starting on page 1, but there's a marked improvement in the art over nearly 600 pages and I want to give her the best chance of finding new readers. I read the prologue for background, but won't be including those pages here.

Synopsis (from ComicFury): Allie Leland has grown up in a small town where everyone has a missing family member. No one knows why they are disappearing, and the few that do turn up have lost their mind. Allie wanted to help find the truth while still sticking to her normal high school routine, but when she is suddenly attack by a two head monster things start to unravel around her. Now she must become the Alyss for the White Kingdom of Wonderland if she ever hope to find the truth behind the disappearances.

Several things are obvious at the start. First, the story is a treatment of the world from Lewis Caroll's Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Secondly the art is hand-drawn, although I'm not sure if the colors are crayon or pencil, and the lettering is digital even though the dialogue balloons are part of the hand-drawn panels. It's a little jarring to see the obviously digital letters placed into hand-drawn balloons, and I suspect it's caused problems for Emily on occasion when a balloon isn't large enough for the dialogue she planned.

What's not as obvious is that the spelling and grammar for the series are pretty rough. I presume that "hello there, non-cat animus" is supposed to sound a little odd, coming from a Wonderland native, but it's often hard to know whether phrases like "in work" (instead of "at work") or "it will be easy to communicate better" are deliberate or if they're written that way because Emily is young(?) or speaks English as a 2nd language?

With or without reading the prologue, "we have a rabbit hole to inspect" should ring bells for anyone who's ever heard of Lewis Caroll's work.

The following page shows two other dudes who appear to be nearby but not actively engaged with the heroine, Ally, and the Hatter.

Why is he saying "both of you"? Does the blond guy have multiple personalities? Anyway, both of them seem to be Wonderland natives in disguise... and although the one is a rabbit, he appears to be a tan color, so I don't think he's the White Rabbit from the book. The faces in the middle panels here are a good example of why I didn't want to start on page 1. While the art as a whole is rather rough, moments like this show that Emily has real potential. :)

As a bit of an aside, everyone who treats Caroll's work fixates on the Hatter, who was kind of a footnote in the books... once I'd like to see a treatment where he's not a main character and they focus on someone else instead like the Mock Turtle or the March Hare. I'm not picking on Emily, it's just something I've noticed about writers who piggyback on Caroll.

Oh, the dormouse is in Allie's purse... I didn't get that on the page where I started -- looking back now I see it.

I can't make heads or tails of anything else on that page... This may be like the TV series Lost where you can't miss any episodes or you won't be able to follow the story.

That's an interesting interpretation of the Cheshire Cat... Maybe it's just the illustration, but he looks like Danny Trejo. To be fair, "we're all mad here" is totally a Trejo line. :P

The story switches back to the rabbit and the red knight, who're investigating something that I can't quite follow... and then.

Oh, it's a Five Nights At Freddies parody, too...

And then we're back to Allie, Hatter, Cheshire and the Dormouse.

You have to be careful with size-changing cakes... they're addictive. I hear the same thing about Viagra.

You know, Allie is supposed to be bringing peace after the 100 years war... (according to the prologue)... she seems to be doing a pretty shit job, even her friends are fucking bloodthirsty.

We're a representative democracy!

We're not a representative democracy!

You have to respect an informed murderer...

Hatter's dialogue is spearing Cheshire in the head? ... Isn't he beat up enough? Now he gets death by Scrabble?

Oh, the Red Knight is the other "Alyss"... it's in the Prologue -- "Alyss" is a title given to prophesied peace-bringers. But I guess the Red Alyss is hacking into people with a sword, so maybe Allie's doing a better job anyway.

Oh, the other peacekeeper is a bloodthirsty dick... there's a twist I didn't see coming. "Extra! Extra! Peacekeeper begins peace talks with brutal massacre!" ... That's a bold strategy, Cotton, let's see if it pays off for him.

Okay, I'm sorry to Emily if I haven't really been able to piece the plot together here... if you're a fan of Lewis Caroll fan fiction and ultra-violent mysteries, give Return of Wonderland a look!

If you are a webcomic author and are interested in a review from me, you can check out my announcement and my review-request rules here.

If you enjoyed this and want to help me make more reviews, you can contribute on our Patreon or if you're short on funds you can also help by checking out and sharing my own comedy and laughtivist webcomic, Woohooligan!

Thank you for sharing yourself with us! Sam

[woohooligancomics]

Zen and the Cult of Personality: a ComicsGate Story

You can't be a comedian and be afraid of people insulting you. And if stand-up or really any live performance is part of your act, hecklers are a fact of life. Performing live comedy and not expecting occasional hecklers is like working for the Fish and Wildlife department and not expecting bears, or not expecting drunks at a bar, or being a storm trooper and not expecting to get force-choked by Darth Vader.

I've talked about heckling before, but I haven't talked much about the hecklers themselves. Hecklers are a bit like internet trolls, although they're actually a bit worse, even cult-like. You see, internet trolls aren't bundles of narcissism, sadism and sociopathy like hecklers. ;)

As a comedian, if you ignore a heckler it ruins the enjoyment for the rest of the audience, so you have to do something. Most comedians fight snark with snark. Unlike internet trolls, hecklers often just won't give up, so it becomes a kind of roast-battle where the comedian and the heckler fire back and forth, competing for the most creative and entertaining insults. "Yo mamma so dead, you attended her funeral!" This is the most challenging part of performing live comedy because you have to be really creative on the spot, and while they're not quite the same, internet trolls can offer a substitute for us to practice against.

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

I don't have any video of heckling handy, but I do have an exchange with an internet troll, and I'll add some commentary here to show how hecklers are different. I exchanged barbs with Tre_420, a totally normal lone-wolf troll, who would never do anything cult-like. Hecklers on the other hand are frequently fans of another comedian, and invent entire alter-egos for the express purpose of stalking and harassing anyone who's remotely critical of their glorious leader. A troll like Tre would never spend so many hours of his own personal time relentlessly insulting the critics of someone like ComicsGate celebrity Richard Meyer (D&C), who totally didn't create the Diversity and Comics YouTube channel for the purpose of mocking comics he doesn't like, to amass a cult-like mob of followers to harass their creators at every turn, and certainly has never flat out admitted that being a deliberate asshole is his brand strategy. They certainly haven't recently harassed the widow of a beloved comic creator after she objected to them trying to claim her husband as one of their group. No, trolls are far too busy with their normal daily lives, jobs, families, friends and parties to engage in that sheer volume of cult-like stupidity.

These aren't entirely in order for a few reasons, but you get the idea. It begins with a tweet from cosplayer Renfamous, not even mentioning Meyer by name, much less tagging him. Meyer's fans totally aren't hovering over a feed of the #comicsgate hashtag, waiting with baited breath to insult anyone who's remotely critical of them. You can see more of Renfamous' thoughts on ComicsGate as a whole in this thread she pinned. IGG = IndieGoGo

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

Like I said, trolls are lone wolves, so their harassment isn't on behalf of some glorious cult leader. And you can see here that their jabs are quite creative, even sophisticated, providing great entertainment. They're certainly not the kind of sloppy and purile insults you hear from hecklers who believe that everything you need to know you learned in kindergarden, and therefore there is no need to evolve as a person after that age.

This means trolls also understand when someone has stopped arguing with them and begun simply mocking, at which point they stop trying to make any real arguments (assuming they were trying to in the first place).

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

One thing a heckler does have over a troll is their ability to truly engrage their targets. While a troll will get creative, looking for different kinds of insults or different ways of delivering them, the heckler knows that the most effective strategy is to simply continue with the same insult with very little (if any) variation. Even when there's no logical reason the subject should be upset by their insult (because they're only stating the obvious for example), mere repetition always makes people super angry until they break down in a sobbing, heaving mass on the floor. I suppose it's a lot like the way parents inevitably snap when their five-year old won't stop asking "why?"

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

The troll remembers that repetition is key. The less a subject cares, the more important it is that he repeats his oh so logical argument about sales figures! On that note, the troll also doesn't exhibit the heckler's cult-like obsession with making money... or the size of their in-group, remember trolls aren't cultish, they're loners. Nor would they be obsessed with not just their own income, but the incomes of ostensible competitors as well. And they certainly wouldn't share a common delusion about that income amongst their group, like the shared delusion disorder often found among cult members.

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

Nor do comicsgate trolls, like the cultish hecklers, have a polarized "us vs them" attitude, a persecution complex, worry about or discourage people from leaving their group, or hold secret meetings to discuss their enemies, or attack people who leave their non-existent group as apostates.

Trolls don't see themselves as elites or saviors. And they certainly would never deliberately drum up a fake story to inspire backlash against a competitor and drive support for a persecution complex or savior status.

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

Note that, having a level of sophistication the heckler doesn't possess, the troll displays impeccable spelling and grammar! The troll knows how important spelling is, not just when you're trying to enrage someone, but for future job prospects.

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

And the troll's brain would never just short-circuit in the middle of a conversation, leaving him unable to decide if he's trying to defend himself or lend support to someone who's mocking him. Trolls are winners and winners don't do drugs!

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

Where a heckler tends to be prone to apocryphal pop-culture ideas, the troll, again with a greater level of sophistication, always does his research and knows what he's talking about. They would never look at a a task like trolling a comedian and fall for the Dunning-Kruger effect, the comfortable assumption that it must be easy, thus making them bad at their primary goal. The troll would also never fall for a charismatic cult leader because his is the loudest voice in the room.

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

As I said before, trolls are loners who never feel the need to gang up on people the way hecklers do. The troll also understands that his behavior impacts the reputation of his peers, unlike the heckler who's always on the lookout for ways to make himself seem like the worst garbage person you've ever met.

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

And of course, a troll would never "own" himself by using an insult that applies more to himself than his intended target, having never created an anonymous alter ego for the express purpose of insulting anyone who dared to criticize a beloved cult leader... sorry, I meant alpha troll.

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

Like I said before, hecklers often just won't give up, but a troll knows when to call it quits. A troll would never say "I don't have to sit here and listen to this", and then not only listen but continue to reply for several more hours.

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

Have I mentioned how Richard Meyer's popularity totally has nothing to do with his not being able to handle the existence of comics he didn't care for from Marvel and DC? Also I like how he doesn't think anyone will notice the racist undertone of "a man named Tyrone".

Trolls also stay on topic, unlike a heckler who'll just change the subject if he doesn't like where things are going. A troll will always deny an insult if it's innacurate. At least, so I've heard from these trolls. Tre never actually denied that he's throwing a fit about the cult thing. He's deflected and changed the subject though.

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

Oh, and trolls can count! When a heckler counts, it goes 1, 2, ALL THE THINGS!

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

Like I said, trolls unlike hecklers know what they're talking about. They often have degrees in clinical psychology to give them deep insights into why people behave the way they do. They know that when someone is sensitive about something they could easily hide, they always hide it in plain sight, like including it in their Twitter bio.

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

Plus hecklers are huge hypocrites. Trolls not so much. Trolls would never joke that murdering gay people would be doing them a favor and then send their fans into a hysterical group shit-fit because a comedian's joke about them implied they're a hypocrite. The troll's fans would never say to the comedian, "now calm the fuck down, he's just joking", then belie their own inability to take a joke by whining about ad hominem (without understanding what it means), refer to the comedian's riffs as "sjw tantrums", respond to the comedian stating he's a comedian by calling him a liar, or saying he was "on the wrong side of history" like being called a hypocrite is an act of war.

Incidentally, the "wrong side of history" guy was especially bothered by my barbs implying he has homosexual tendencies (I myself am bisexual), and blocked me shortly afterward, which all of these guys say means he's a whiny baby and I "owned his ass". They should know, they all have degrees in clinical psychology! :P

They might tell the comedian they can "smell your weakness" over the internet, because our best our comics have taught us that browbeating the weak is what real heroes do!

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

A comedian might string someone along while mocking them, to create content for their show or their blog. The heckler just mocks people for his own personal enjoyment, not at all like the troll. Like I said, trolls aren't bundles of narcissism, sadism and sociopathy. I confess, I think performing comedy comes with a certain amount of narcissism, but I try to balance that out with being the biggest asshole I conceivably can to anyone who's remotely critical of my work. Comicsgate celebrities like Richard Meyer wouldn't know anything about that. ;)

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

In the long run, the troll has the decency to understand that some things in life are worth more than money, and it's not worth sacrificing countless hours of your life that you could spend with your family instead stalking and harassing people who might be critical of your fandom, no matter how much money your alpha troll... sorry... no matter how much money your cult's glorious supreme leader makes.

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

hack comicsgate diversity and comics hack

So even after showing them, in no uncertain terms, that all I'm going to do with their bullshit is mock them (because that's what comedians do), they're still soooooo stupid they can't possibly fathom that I blocked them for any reason other than that I'm lying in a pool of "liberal tears". And they're not entirely wrong, I mean, I am laughing so hard I'm crying! :D

The block was to clean up my notifications and remove the temptation to continue mocking them because the well had run fairly dry. Tre just repeating himself wasn't getting any funnier, and I thought my Twitter followers were likely getting bored of seeing him if they weren't already.

I don't expect this blog to "end of Richard Meyer", nor did I expect that of my earlier First World Problems video, any more than Colbert expects his Late Show monologue to end the president. I just think they're all hilariously stupid and hypocritical, and if they're being deliberate assholes, it's fair game for us to mock them. I know I'm going to hear #notallcomicsgate - whatev'... if you're huffing conspiracy theories about a nefarious secret cabal of SJW assistant editors at Marvel, I don't know what to tell you other than bye Felicia!

Remember, when we do exactly what Meyer and his fans do, we're on the wrong side of history! ;)

- Sam

a

[deadbeatpoetsociety]

100/100 It seems only fitting to end a project that attempted to spotlight lesser-known women from history with a woman who spent her life doing the same. Nina Baym was teaching English at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1975 when she started writing a book on Nathaniel Hawthorne and started wondering why 19th century literature was dominated by men. Hawthorne himself helped pique her curiosity as in 1855 he had famously complained that “a damned mob of scribbling women” was cutting into his sales. She wanted to know where those women were. Searching through library shelves and 19th century newspapers and magazines, she found plenty of novels written by 19th century, although they varied in quality, she found some that definitely deserved a spotlight. Her 1978 book, “Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and About Women in America, 1820-1870,” was a foundational work in the field of feminist literary history and criticism. In addition she wrote several other books on women and American literature as well as countless articles on literary criticism.

[woohooligancomics]

Man, ComicsGate is OOOLD!!!

[woohooligancomics]

Webcomic Whimsy: Furry Experience!

Welcome to the Woohooligan Weekly Webcomic Whimsy! If you're a webcomic author and would like a review, you can see my announcement and review rules here.

Title: Furry Experience

Author: Ellen Natalie • Patreon • Facebook • Twitter

Site: Smack Jeeves

Genres: Comedy, Drama, Furry, Mormons

Rating: G (?)

Updates: Saturdays

My Starting Point (requested by artist): Page 182 (I'm not sure if they're arranged in chapters -- the archive doesn't seem to have chapter numbers)

Synopsis (from the About page): Three roommates attending college in Utah Valley. Between their different backgrounds, beliefs, and friends, there's sure to be lots of comedy and drama before anyone earns a diploma.

This starting page is probably a decent example of what you can expect from Furry Experience. Obviously the characters are anthropomorphic animals, as you'd expect from the title. The main characters are college roommates, so you would expect that kind of sit-com-esque, day-in-the-life humor. And the art is of good enough quality that we're not scratching our heads about what's going on here.

Ultimately, yes there's a good bit of comedy and a little drama in it, but the drama seems rather tame and the comedy seems very much of the family-friendly variety. I think where the story really excels is in a kind of smooth-seas, non-threatening character development. The characters never seem especially challenged by the events in their life, despite plenty of displays of emotion, and there are lots of scenes of friend and family bonding. To be honest, a lot of it feels to me like the TV commercials the Mormon church sometimes airs, where something ostensibly portrayed as bad seems to have happened, like the kids got their dress clothes all dirty, and just as the parents are about to lay into them, they start a water-fight with the garden hose instead.

I seem to always be waiting for something more outlandish or more personally challenging to happen to one of the characters and it never really does. Maybe it's just me, maybe I'm conditioned to expect that from the TV shows I watch. In any event, if you like friend and family bonding and g-rated humor, this might be for you! :D

The first several pages of this story arc is all three of the roommates continually changing the whiteboard to pass the dishes chore onto each other until Cat, who I presume is a dimwit stereotype, reaches the conclusion that the whiteboard is cursed, rather than that her roommates have been changing it.

Some people might not like me saying this, and fuck them. I like the fact that the cast is weighted on women. I counted fourteen female characters to six male on the about page. The reason I say I like this is because culturally, we've been programmed to expect the cast to be heavily male weighted. This programming is so strong, that when you ask people to estimate the number of women in a room, they usually will say "about half" when the room is actually only 20% or one in five women. Despite its sexist origins, Star Trek: the Next Generation did a better job featuring a 6-to-3 cast ratio in the first season, before Yar died, leaving the ratio 6-to-2. To be fair, Furry Experience isn't even that heavily weighted, the men are slightly less than one in three, so it's comparable to ST:TNG's first season.

The whiteboard joke ends abruptly after a few pages once Cat destroys it, and without showing any further bickering over the dishes chore, so those several pages are essentially a really short comedic subplot or a really long self-contained comic strip.

Then we're on to the next story which starts with Ronnie and her friend Vikki visiting a book-store at the mall. I have to agree with Ronnie here, I've been inside Mormon book stores and I'm not sure I would call it "culture". Mormons are if anything extremely conservative, so aside from picking up on some of their religious idiosyncrasies, the Mormon bookstore would actually restrict the amount of alternative views you're exposing yourself to, not expand them. I personally was raised Mormon (I'm Unitarian / positive agnostic), and my mother was Mormon until some time in my mid thirties. She still refuses to believe anything a liberal says, but takes on face value anything said by a conservative, like for example that Trump never said "grab them by the pussy" (even though he and his wife both admitted it on TV and during the debates), because the whole tape was manufactured as a part of a grand conspiracy. As far as she's concerned, the conspiracy is more believable than the idea that Trump said it, despite the fact that there are numerous TV apperances showing Trump bragging that he wants to fuck his daughter. :-/

But I'm off topic... Ronnie and Vikki are going to the Mormon book store. If you're unfamiliar with Mormonism, Utah is like the Mormons' Vatican... Well, Salt Lake City is, but also most of Utah. Mormonism is such an entrenched part of the state that it's actually somewhat difficult to live in the state without being Mormon, because you can't go or work anywhere without the Mormons in the office giving you crap about the fact that you drink coffee. (They have a religious prohibition on coffee like they do alcohol and cigarettes.)

Honestly, it's hard for me to say much about the following page except "agreed".

So they leave the book shop and they're talking about hanging out the rest of the evening and of course, like I said, it's hard to live in Utah if you're not Mormon, the subject comes up again.

Yes, that's really a thing, Mormons are supposed to have a "family home evening" (most of them do it on Monday), in which they have a gospel lesson... but because it's super hard to maintain that amount of bullshit for such an extended period of time (they all just spent three hours at church the day before), most of them don't manage to have their gospel lesson ready and then feel guilty and go out to eat somewhere with their family instead. And this isn't even mentioning the host of extracurricular church activities they're supposed to engage in, like their weekly study-buddies with other church members.

So the discussion about where to hang out leads to some mystery about what Vikki is hiding at her apartment.

Ronnie decides to stalk Vikki to find out what's wrong with her apartment, and thanks to the laws of sit-com world, what's wrong is that all three of Vikkie's roommates aren't just practicing Mormons, they even bought the "god is watching you" poster from the previous page.

Ellen told me that this series included furries, comedy, drama and Mormon's in that order. So I'm taking her word for it that most of the content isn't specifically about Mormonism, but she did start me out right in front of an arc about how annoying it is to live in Utah if you're not. Vikki's roommates are all attending "Furry Young" university in Provo (Brigham Young is the university owned by the Mormon church) and have stereotypically conservative, female career goals like school teacher, nursing and housewife.

When the discussion turns to the typical Mormon attitude that "of course everyone wants to get married", the story does briefly touch on one of the more awkward and imo hilarious aspects of Mormon religion: if you don't marry on earth, you get to marry one of god's soldiers in heaven! :P

It seems a little odd to me personally that Ellen sidestepped the fact that the Mormon church is polygamist, so it wouldn't matter that those soldiers had already married, because they would get to be wife #3 or 8 or whatever and should be just as happy with that. :P But damnit, Ronnie, don't use the G word in front of the roommates, it really upsets them, and Vikki still has to live with them.

I mentioned all the extracurricular churcch activities, right? Basically the Mormon church expects its members to fill every waking moment with church doctrine in some form. On the toilet? Great opportunity to brush up on Leviticus!

Okay, that's actually a sweet moment between Ronnie and Vikki, and as much as I think Vikki's approach was off, at least now I understand why she was going to the Mormon bookstore. This page was originally published in 2012... I don't know, it seems to me like using Google on your smartphone would be an easier way of learning the Mormonisms than frequenting their bookstore. Google? Why? I have libraries!

So Vikki's roommates want Ronnie and Vikki both to participate in their "family home evening" (which, when you're not living with family, necessarily beccomes "roommate home evening"), which involves praying, singing hymns and a lecture about the importance of marrying in the Temple (a place non-Mormons aren't allowed to go, so obviously you have to marry within the religion to do that). As this is about as appealing as sand-papering your eyeballs, Ronnie gets them out of it by suggesting a "more interactive" activity so she can get to know them better: doorbell ditching! Which, to Vikki's surprise, the Mormon girls are toally into! Because when Mormons do it, they leave cookies, so... for all their faults, at least they're engaging in random acts of diabetes. :P (Fun fact, Mormons use more sugar in their cooking, are heavier set, and have more diabetes than just about any other religion.)

And then rather than buy cookies at the store (it's Monday, they're allowed), they start baking cookies at the last minute to go doorbell ditch them. The point of this page is primarily about how jargon-laden Mormonism is and, although I'm unfamiliar with these specific terms, I don't doubt them.

This story wraps up with a sentimental exchange between Ronnie and Vikki, which seems to me to be much of the flavor of the series as a whole: yes, there's your typical sitcom humor, but the overall tone feels to me less "let's make this hilarious" and more "even Lifetime movies have comic relief". Obviously that's a personal opinion and mileage varies.

The following story centers on one of the few male characters, Hunter, who's also college age, though still living with his parents. He's decided to make (nude) modelling for college art classes his full-time job, which sets the story up for tension between Hunter and his mother.

It isn't apparent until the following page that Mom is aware that Hunter's job is getting nakedy naked in the colleges of the world's most sexually repressed city ... seriously, there's probably more fucking in the Vatican than in Salt Lake. Probably a lot more. Anyway, Mom doesn't like it, that's why she's helicopter-momming Hunter and calling to set up job interviews without his consent.

And like I said before, this is where the story gets real Lifetime on us, with Mom talking about Hunter's entirely non-sex job like he's an alcoholic or a drug addict and this is an intervention.

I definitely have some questions about the pirate job. If we're talking movie or theater, that might be pretty cool, but it would be so much cooler if someone's hiring crew for a replica of the Queen Anne's revenge to terrorize rich people on their yachts in Lake Erie. It's probably disappointingly, a mascot job for a seafood restaurant or worse pirate-themed tax prep. "We be takin' deduction ARRR!"

Yes, he's deep undercover in Salt Lake City, trying to recover state secrets stolen by the Illuminati and hidden in the Mormon temple. Okay, that may not be as funny to you, but it's hilarious to me... after growing up with my Mormon mom, who's now a non-denominational pagan (ask me about her salt altars) who obsessively watches atheist YouTube channels. :P

Honesty, yes... that goes over great with Mormons who're so sexually repressed their sex organs have literally shrivelled up and become vestigial. Seriously, these people think kissing on the lips is a sin.

Oh! Hunter's family are mormon, wow... I sort of assumed they were the rare non-Mormon family in Utah... When I was younger, I think my mom's reaction to me being naked for money would have been on the order of apoplexy or a stroke. But I can certainly relate to the sleazy sales company -- I've been on a few of those interviews, even tried to work those jobs once or twice. Ugh! The only bright side there is that when you do eventually go to hell (and you will), the job will have prepared you for it.

Yes, an hour is a typical amount of training in a lot of telemarketing jobs, and they're just as evil as the door-to-door sales job. I'm pretty sure I saw Stabby's owner on the cast list page, so I guess not all the characters know each other.

Called it! I really wish it had been actual pirating on Lake Erie. :-(

Meta joke! It must be about a webcomic I haven't read. I have no idea why Panda-Joel works as a joke.

Anyway that story ends with Hunter getting a concession job at a movie theater to replace Luke (Joel) and the end of the tension with his mother is that the job is great because it's mostly at night and fits neatly into his existing schedule so he can work both jobs and save up to potentially move out. Mom appears stunned at the news, which I'm guessing is supposed to mean she's not entirely happy with him moving out (and we know she wasn't happy with the art-modeling job he's still keeping). So I think the "punchline" there was "be careful what you wish for". As a former Mormon, I can't tell you how Mormon that whole thing feels. It's all so... mundane and uncomplicated. I'd have tried to end that story with a more challenging, possibly even surreal punchline, like the introduction of Stabby.

Artist insert. There's usually a single-page joke between stories and they're all labelled "filler page #". This one is 28.

I like the fact that the whiteboard changes mid-scene when it's obvious nobody's touched it. It may have just been a callback to the haunted whiteboard from the previous story, but I just think it's a cool bit of meta humor in general. I did the same thing with writing on the walls of the women's bathroom in the Pit (hell's bar, run by Azrael, who's Grumpy Cat's dad).

Again, this is Salt "No Sex Period" Lake City.

And just like they have a prohibition on sex, they also have a prohibition on ... you know, fun.

Tricking your kids out of things they want is really the job of being a dad if we're being honest.

Like I said before, the strip seems to focus primarily on friend-and-family bonding, sort of a furry, colorized Leave It To Beaver. So if you like family-friendly sitcoms, give Furry Experience a look!

If you are a webcomic author and are interested in a review from me, you can check out my announcement and my review-request rules here.

If you enjoyed this and want to help me make more reviews, you can contribute on our Patreon or if you're short on funds you can also help by checking out and sharing my own comedy and laughtivist webcomic, Woohooligan!

Thank you for sharing yourself with us! Sam

[twitterlols]

[the-headless-vulcan]

do men like having their genitals kicked? combat boot lesbians in new survey say yes

[woohooligancomics]

Webcomic Whimsy: Tame

Welcome to the Woohooligan Weekly Webcomic Whimsy! If you're a webcomic author and would like a review, you can see my announcement and review rules here.

Title: Tame

Author: Tailzkip (of the illegibile signiature :P) • Patreon • Facebook • Twitter • DeviantArt • YouTube

Site: Webtoon (some earlier chapters are also on Tapas where I read them)

Genres: Horror, Modern, Black Comedy, Drama(?), Action(?), demon rules-lawyering, young people make the worst decisions

Rating: PG, T for Teen(?) - some violence

Updates: 15 page chapters at a time (I assume not every week)

My Starting Point (requested by artist): Beginning

Synopsis (from Webtoon): Kioshi lost everyone close to him during an explosion at his school's festival and ever since he has had the ability to see demons. With his demon Nekeo at his side, Kioshi must make it through the grieving process and move forward in his life.

Tame seems like an interesting concept. A demon growing to love the guy who's passive-agressively trapping him into a contract that the guy doesn't even give a shit about... It's sort of like where Anime meets one of those Life Time movies about someone struggling with addiction or alcoholism. The characters seem to be trapped in cycles of horrible decisions that endanger, hurt, and even kill themselves and everyone around them, and have no notable benefit to compensate for all the destruction (at least as far as I can tell from what i've read)... but with a healthy dose of PUN-ishing comedy.

If you enjoy manga, demons and black comedy, I think it's worth a look!

Oh, look! A big bowl of foreshadowing!

Well so far we're only seeing one shape and size, which appears to be a cat with some kind of alien parasite on the end of it's tail? Seems like these three panels could have been condensed and not taken up a whole page.

The start still feels a little sluggish, but we're getting somewhere... mass murder in the diner and the waiter, Kioshi, is blaming it on a demon, and presumably (since he's off camera) the police investigator is humoring him instead of just sending him away for the padded-room guys to deal with.

Wait... is the cop a demon? Why do we only get to see part of his face surrounded by blood spatters? Is Kioshi tripping balls? That would explain a lot. Plus he seems pretty balsy for the prime suspect in a mass murder while being a waiter... how's he going to pay for his legal defense? Big tippers in his town?

"I didn't mean literally."

Is he not a waiter? If not, then why was he wearing a bloody apron? He swiped it off a waiter when the shooting started? Didn't want blood on his nicely wrinkled, untucked shirt?

Okay! We went from "parked car" speed to "is time dilating?" in about two pages flat. Not that I mind it picking up speed, but it's a little whiplashy. And I feel a flashback coming on.

Flasbhack. Called it! Ow, the whiplash! No information in this page outside of the fact that buildings are on fire and demon kid's got some weird hair.

That's a pretty weird way to define a contract... "Hey Humpty, gimme a hot-dog with extra relish! ... Damnit, I entered into a demon contract AGAIN!"

Greedy? It's not like he asked for extra relish... but I guess that slave-form thing is pretty convenient for Kioshi.

I don't think anyone can figure out what that is... Alien invasion? The world's largest hula-hoop?

A special summons from a corrupt monk... damn, that was my next guess.

Sooo... he's faster and a better escape artist in his slave form than his true form? That's a pretty lousy slave if the slave form is harder to control.

I see the part where the demon is becoming tame has started... he violated one of the "demons will not..." clauses at the beginning by moving in with Kioshi. So if this is true to form, the rest of the series is Nekeo violating one of those things every chapter or so.

And there we have it, the whole hunt-down the terrorists thing is a McGuffin to give Kioshi a reason to keep a mass-murdering demon around, because... he's cute, in a mass-murdery sort of way.

Did I say cute mass-murderer? I meant cut mass-murderer bent on destroying any hope you have of happiness in this life or the next. So... Kioshi is a clinically depressed massochist who won't settle for a regular cat, because why have that when you could have people dropping dead around you on the daily, yo?

Is he "SO DEAD!" Or "sooo... dead"? I'm getting the sense Kioshi is also bi-polar.

Wait... the demon Nekeo has horrible eldritch powers that helped you escape the collapse of a burning building, and later murder a diner full of people... but not so much keeping him from catching the flu? Like... when it comes to medical, I've got an upper hand over this demon because I have Purell.

I always bake using antifreeze... it's the only way to keep the cookies soft in the frozen tundra.

I dunno... doesn't seem like it's the cat-demon that needs to pick up on things.

You know he can hear you, right? He's still a cat.

She's served for generations and she's fine, but Nekeo needs to jump from contract to contract and 3 years is too long... hmmm... Also, this Konno kid is way too smarmy for a 14 yr old.

This starts a short action sequence where this Kireina demon-girl is all blood-lust trying to kill Nekeo, so Kioshi and Nekeo are running to try and get away until Konno confusingly stops her, which he said he couldn't do.

And right on schedule, Nekeo violates the 2nd list item at the end of chapter two.

That's the end of my hour of reading after two chapters, and whatever happened to that cop with the ghost face? What about the murderous grandma next door? So many questions.

One other thing I'll mention is that as I was reading, I forgot that Kioshi is supposed to be grieving a loss of family and friends. It's really not mentioned IN the story, just in the synopsis. The only thing that comes close is the mention of the terrorist attack and the collapse of the building, but that scene only describes the creation of the contract with Nekeo, it doesn't give any backstory or insight into Kioshi's mental state. Some mention of the family and friends he lost (presumably in the terrorist attack) in the story would likely help explain why his behavior is so self-destructive.

While there's a fair amount that could use improvement in the first couple chapters, I think the concept has some potential. If you enjoy manga, demons and black comedy, give it a read!

If you are a webcomic author and are interested in a review from me, you can check out my announcement and my review-request rules here.

If you enjoyed this and want to help me make more reviews, you can contribute on our Patreon or if you're short on funds you can also help by checking out and sharing my own comedy and laughtivist webcomic, Woohooligan!

Thank you for sharing yourself with us! Sam

[iguanamouth]

I'd like to make a request. An Iron Maiden... but with hands instead of spikes. Think about it.

why even stop there lets keep this awful finger train goin

[woohooligancomics]

Artist Spotlight: Ben Howard, from Song to Sketch

Welcome to the Laugh It Forward Kickstarter Artist Spotlight!

Today I'd like to introduce you to Ben Howard!

Ben is a professional comic critic and writer, who's worked for The Outhousers, Graphic Policy and Loser City. He's co-founder of the comic-music podcast Panels to Chords with Madi Butler, and writer of the short comic "Beastly Dance" with art by Niina Eveliina and Edwin Lopez, soon to be published in the Quantum Echo anthology.

Sam: I used to make the mistake most artists make when asked about my work, and get into the details like characters, plot and story elements. Those are important in telling stories, but I learned they don't really draw people in. So I'm going to ask you to tell us a short story about the more important question:

why do you create your art?

Ben: I've always read a lot as a kid, mostly books with some comics here and there. Something about reading books and comics, watching TV and movies, playing video games, always sparked creativity in me. I would make up my own stories, in my head, and play them out. In high school, I seriously contemplated writing, but it wasn't until I read the "Preacher" series by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon I knew I really wanted to be a writer. I've been trying to figure out how to be a proper writer since then.

Sam: Preacher's always a great one for kids. :P Religion features fairly prominently in my own work as well, despite my not being particularly religious.

My second question is who or what has most inspired your work? If I compared you to someone, what names would you be most flattered to hear?

Ben: A lot of the work by writers I like inspire me: Garth Ennis, Jeff Lemire, Edgar Allan Poe, Jack Ketchum, HP Lovecraft, Brian K. Vaughan. They all write vastly different fiction, yet I think a part of each of their writing styles is reflected in my own even though I'm trying to carve my own unique voice. Music is also a huge inspiration for me. Whenever I listen to music, I imagine stories playing out. Sometimes a song has directly lead to a story written, such as when I wrote "Beastly Dance" after listening to Septicflesh's "Therianthropy." Like so much of the music I listen to, I think what I'm trying to get at with my fiction are emotional tales with a surreal, dream-like quality to them.

Sam: Alice In Wonderland or the like. Reminds me of the video for Tom Petty's Running Down a Dream.

What have you learned from your work and what's your advice for younger creators starting out?

Ben: I have learned that creation takes a lot of work, discipline, and dedication. Also, it takes communication. There is no such thing as the lone super-artist. Not only do you need a publisher, editor, and other business relationships, you need a readership and friends and supportive family to give you the confidence needed to pursue creative projects.

Sam: Very true. I try to think of my fans as friends. I don't want to create any unnecessary distance between us.

Ben: My advice to creators is time-manage yourself. Give a slot of time for when you do things. Some other advice I'll give you is to always keep reading and researching on creative fields. Whether you need a piece of art to inspire, advice on how to get into the business end of whatever field you choose, make sure you have a game plan.

Sam: Last question. What one thing do you want to change about the world?

Ben: I would change people to have more empathy for their neighbors, strangers, animals, and the natural world around us. If we don't care about one another, we can't make the world better.

Sam: I'm supposed to be making a joke here, but all I can think is "nod, yes."

To see more of Ben's work, find him on Twitter.

p.s. If you are also an artist and are planning a Kickstarter, you might find my Six Tips to Kickstarter Success helpful, plus links to other helpful resources.

[woohooligancomics]

Pop-culture, political, and educational satire to change the world! Punching nazis is hard work, let's make it fun!

Hey, Hooligans! The reviews have been on hiatus for several months while I've been working on the Kickstarter for Woohooligan vol 2: Laugh It Forward. The Kickstarter failed in March, which set me back a bit since I had to rethink and relaunch it. I launched the reboot just before midnight last night and it's already 52% funded! :D Thanks for all your support over the years, it really means a lot to me! The campaign ends June 14th after which, I'll be writing more reviews again. - Sam p.s. I also gave some artist spotlights to a bunch of other cool, talented people during the campaign in March. You can check those out here: Laugh It Forward Artist Spotlights

[woohooligancomics]

Hey, Hooligans! A few months back I had this little dust-up with professional Internet troll and arguably the most hated man in comics lately, Richard Meyer, which was great for me, gave me tons of material for satire. Basically he and his fans can't handle their own medicine. I pushed back the relaunch of our Laugh It Forward Kickstarter because I wanted to get this off my to-do list first.

I've had some pretty good feedback on it so far!

"I love what you’re doing... like Swift meets a calm Bill Hicks, you use your comedy to expose the animal trappings of human nature. Ego, fear, ignorance, etc... You have a unique voice and perspective." - Eric Hailey

"oh...mygod. I... LOVED it xDDD Even lovey is sitting to the side, having no idea what I pulled up and says 'I love this guy, he's hilarious' and we're both just laughing our asses off." - Punkocalypse

I put it in my Twitter rotation with a bunch of Carlin-esque descriptions like:

"Meyer says jokes bring people together, so in that spirit, I think the world would be better off if he were butfucked to death by a pack of rabbid hyenas. ;P #satire"

or

"Meyer says jokes bring people together, so in that spirit, I think the world would be better off if someone force-fed him 50 gallons of Ebola-tainted whale jizz. ;P #satire"

Those descriptions make more sense a few minutes into the video, they're basically Meyer's idea of satire. Thanks in advance for the likes and let me know what you think!

- Sam

[woohooligancomics]

Update 54: What an Amazing Ride! Let's Go Again! · Laugh It Forward! Comedy & Comics to Change the World!

Hey, Hooligans! I want to thank you all so much for being a part of this amazing journey! :D It's been really incredible. Yes, I know our project didn't fund, and you would think I'd be bummed, but... you see, it's hard for me to be too discouraged when so many of you came out to be a part of our movement! It's hard to be discouraged when I was able to help 36 other great artists! It's hard to be discouraged when I know that we had so much success, despite my making SOOOO MANY hilarious mistakes! :D Mistakes that I'll fix on a second run! Sorry for the cover graphic on this video -- no idea why Facebook keeps doing that with my Logitech webcam. :P https://www.facebook.com/woohooligan/posts/1160196947450598 ...So that's the plan! I'm going to regroup and reboot the project soon. I'm thinking about late April or May, but comment below if you have a different idea. I'm thinking that around that time a lot of people may have their tax returns and be in a better place to back the project. Since there were only one or two backers for the Hellbent book, I'm dropping it from the reboot. (If you backed for that book, we'll have a separate campaign for it later.) I suspect more people will pledge for the double-feature when it's "volumes 1 & 2" instead of "vol 2 and something completely different". A few people told me they thought I'd under-priced a few things, so a couple rewards will be adjusted slightly upward (not huge adjustments). I'm also going to sweeten the lower tiers, giving the volume 2 ebook at $1 and the other two previous ebooks (Nerdgasm and the Secret Life of Kliingons) at $4. That means that for the same price as purchasing the books individually, people will be able to get their name in the new book, and get the Kickstarter exclusive wallpaper.Also, next time people won't be confused and think the project is named "Dick Jokes for Justice." :P Oh, and something else made me smile, Celina Hernandez pledged $3 in the last hour at the end and brought our total to $555 which is a kind of new-age-thinking bingo. :P And she also brought our total number of backers to exactly 42! BINGO! :D- Sam ...p.s. In the next update, I'll post the preview URL for you all to check out the reboot and provide any feedback before the next launch. I'll make that a backer-only update.

Thank you so much to the 42 backers on our Laugh It Forward Kickstarter campaign! :D We didn't fund, and that's okay! I made a ton of HILARIOUS mistakes that I'll correct when we reboot this project, probably in May. :D This is my post-campaign update where I talk about the mistakes I made and changes for the reboot. - Sam

[woohooligancomics]

Update 53: Happy Easter Fools Day! My Daughter's Getting Married! · Laugh It Forward! Comedy & Comics to Change the World!

Spring is in the air! The flowers are blooming, the birds are singing, and the Catholics are meticulously reenacting a gruesome murder from two-thousand years ago! Can a people who practice symbolic cannibalism every week really be all bad? :P Here we are! Easter Sunday and also April Fools day! I hadn't noticed that those two events would line up during the middle of our Kickstarter. Ha! And maybe I should have originally planned for later in April or May anyhow, since there might not be a lot of people online to check us out on Easter Sunday, and maybe people would have their tax refunds in a few weeks. Oh well, I'll know next time! Despite that, we've had a few new pledges today! :D And since we've got just four more days after today, now's a great time for you to get out and share the project with your friends! Let them know they can get their hands on some cool comedy books and help spread our message of hope! And a Wedding! My oldest daughter Alex is getting married! They're planning a wedding near the end of June, and boy am I glad her anxiety is better. She'd been having problems since she moved out a couple years ago, and I'd hate for it to ruin her wedding. So, to my little girl, mazel tov! (I mean that literally, we're a family of hobbits.) April Fools I thought about trying to come up with some kind of April Fools joke I could tell in this update, but to be honest, I kind of hate April Fool's day. I'm not a big practical joke guy, but I thought maybe I could find something that wouldn't be too obnoxious... but I don't have much practice thinking them up. I did make a comic strip about it back in 2015 that will probably be included in Woohooligan vol 2, so here's a little sneak peak. ...I hope you all had a fantastic Easter! Remember to Laugh It Forward with your friends and share the project in these last few days! :D - Samhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjZjAMuEVEQ

There's just five days left in our Laugh It Forward Kickstarter! Not much time left to get your hands on some cool new comedy books, and to be a part of our message of hope! :D