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Dethroning Moment: Web Comics
As there's more freedom with Webcomics than some other mediums, it was only a matter of time before a slip-up happened.

Keep in mind:
  • Sign your entries
  • One moment per work to a troper, if multiple entries are signed to the same troper the more recent one will be cut.
  • Moments only, no "just everything he said," or "This entire comic," entries.
  • No contesting entries. This is subjective, the entry is their opinion.
  • No natter. As above, anything contesting an entry will be cut, and anything that's just contributing more can be made its own entry.
  • Explain why it's a Dethroning Moment of Suck.
  • No ASSCAPS, no bold, and no italics unless it's the title of a work. We are not yelling the DMoSs out loud.

  • Knight9910: In my opinion the real worst VG Cats strip was #259: The Comedian, or more specifically it was The Comedian, before it was edited and the part where Leo confessed to raping and murdering Aeris' mom was replaced with a lame joke about anal. (Related note: changing the original to just a series of lame jokes really just means Aeris is the one who crosses the Moral Event Horizon for murdering Leo for what amounts to...well, a series of lame jokes.) It's bad enough Scott made that one, but then he made the next strip into an insult aimed at anyone who didn't like 259, under the pretense that they were offended by the abortion thing, as opposed to them being offended by the fact that he'd suddenly changed lovable dimwit Leo into a mentally retarded sociopath with no redeeming qualities or by the fact that a quirky comic about video games was now about Leo being a mentally retarded sociopath with no redeeming qualities. That almost made me stop reading the comic altogether.
    • Grand Duke Nukem: VG Cats also gives us "Nerd Rage", a parody of The Word that's more Ann Coulter than Stephen Colbert.
    • Hikaru The Hedgehog: Those may be bad, but I present you what is, quite possibly, the worst VG Cats strip ever made. It's basically a rant about Final Fantasy XIII and why it sucks. But that's not it. Oh no. The absolute worst thing about it is that it is the point where I realized that the comic has now become an excuse for Scott to voice his opinions. It's sad, because I used to love this comic.
    • biznizz: The "Nerd Rage" one nearly broke me, but the one that was it for me was this abomination. In it, Scott using his Author Avatar Aeris, expresses his rage & disbelief that gamers use other mediums which touch upon games & game franchises. Basically, Scott says if you want backstory and world building novels / comics / whatever, something is wrong with you. Go piss off, Scott.
  • Some New Guy: For me Sluggy Freelance's moment was the ending of the Paradise arc. I can handle Wangst, but when that Wangst causes Character Derailment, that's when I get mad.
  • Wretchkin: Grim Tales From Down Below gives us this monstrosity, which doubles as a Moral Event Horizon, in which Mandy caused 9/11, the ensuing wars, Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 tsunami in order to get Grim back in his game. Yes, it wasn't meant to be offensive (it's not presented as a joke), but some things just hit too close to home.
    • fluffything: While I originally found GTFDB to be little more than Guilty Pleasure, albeit one with poor writing and artwork that would make even 90's Kid cringe at how Liefeldian it is, there is one aspect of the more recent comics that just made me go "screw this" and stop reading the comic once and for all. That of course, is the utter and blatant character rape of Danny Phantom Ensemble Dark Horse villain Dark Danny. In DP? Dan is a Magnificent Bastard villain who is hell-bent on causing as much mayhem and destruction as possible and loves nothing more than to both physically and emotionally destroy others for his own amusement. The Dan featured in this webcomic? A sleazy, perverted Jerk Ass. I'm sorry...what? That's not Dan. That's not even close to the sociopathic DP villain fans of the cartoon love (or love to hate). Please, Bleedman, give us the real Dan. A sociopathic lunatic who loves death and destruction. Not this pseudo-Betelgeuse you've unleashed unto your lil' story.
  • Fairfield: I have long found the work of web artist Bleedman horrifically overrated; a collection of well-illustrated but grotesquely-written fanfiction with little to no regard to the actual nature of its subject. By far the most painful moment was in his magum opus, Powerpuff Girls Doujinshi, in which Dexter and Mandark's feuding leads to Deedee being killed.
  • Ometta7: I thought Least I Could Do was pretty funny when it was in it's earlier stages, back when Rayne didn't get laid every. damn. time. Over time, I started to notice how Summers was becoming Sohmer's vehicle to live out his frustrated hopes and dreams and how nothing seemed to work against him anymore. I put up with it, and even defended the comics as harmless fun whenever somebody criticized them in front of me, but the last straw came during that painfully-long and boring story arc they had recently where Rayne goes to a brothel and requests a midget prostitute. He spends like five strips telling her how big his dick is and how he's worried he'll kill her with it. I stuck with it, thinking "Hey, maybe by the end this prostitute will reveal that he isn't so big, and maybe expose some of Rayne's insecurities for a more engaging story. This could be good." You can't believe how wrong I was. Not only does the arc end with the force of his thrusts pushing her through a wooden door, a few comics later(as if to mock me for assuming he would be more realistically portrayed and less wish-fulfillment) he actually sits down, stares right at the fourth wall, and says: "I'm just like you.....only better." Needless to say, I stopped reading it after such a disgusting display. Rayne used to be flawed, relatable, funny. Now it just makes me sick to look at his smug face.
    • Rothul: The thing that made me stop reading was when Marcie revealed to Rayne that she was dating a Native American, and Rayne, angry at the fact that she would dare try to have a relationship with someone other than him, started spewing a number of racist jokes at the man, including giving him some small-pox infected blankets. We're supposed to forgive him because he was hurt, or something, but you know what? If your character's response to having his feelings hurt is blind racism and mockery of friggin' genocide, that's not a character I want to be following, especially when he is so easily forgiven.
    • Conhale: This troper stopped reading during the recent "lesbian coworker" storyline, in which Rayne hears a rumor that a coworker is a Lesbian and then goes on a mad scavenger hunt for the person (including calling "Here lesbian lesbian lesbian" over the PA, like she was a dog), meeting them, and then somehow hitting it off and they do things such as play Battleship. While Rayne was always portrayed as a crazy guy who gets results, this was ridiculous. Similar to the Native American storyline mentioned above, this was extrordinarily out of line for anyone and why he never meets anyone who either genuinely finds him offensive or throws a lawsuit at him is beyond belief - anyone who does dislike Rayne is portrayed as a villain. He used to be an eccentric, he's become a Mary Sue who can get away with anything - the more outrageous the better.
    • InTheGallbladder: I gave up after the Fuckmageddon arc. The build-up was a bit obnoxious, yes, but I hung around to see how it panned out, especially as it could have had lasting repercussions on the 'verse and the characters. It does not. They cap it off with a few jokes about gay sex and a transparently contrived Heartwarming Moment, because heaven forbid Rayne should have a meaningful negative experience.
    • DrGonzo And just to prove again that he's got a high horse up his ass, Sohmer's lashing out at the Brony community. Whether you like My Little Pony or not, this pretty much amounts to a personal attack on an entire group.
  • Jonn: PvP's Scott Kurtz is known for sticking his oar in. He wades into any wank even tangentally related to comics or webcomics, expressing his opinions in about the most dickish manner possible. He then has a newspost that's a touching story about being reunited with his wife after six months apart, and how the things he missed about their marriage are things like failing to move a bed together and laughing about it. He ends with a somewhat cloying "God bless [x]" list, which is odd, because I didn't know he was a Christian. It's a little saccharine, but I can live with that. The last line of the paragraph is "And more than anything else, God bless those couples who must justify their companionship to a society that isn’t prepared to realize that a person doesn’t get choose their gender any more than they get to choose who they fall in love with." I can understand that he has strong feelings about LGBT rights, but this completely derails the tone of the post by making it suddenly about a controversial issue. All he had to say was "And God bless love, in all its forms", and let readers get the hint*. He seems to have specifically phrased it in, yes, just about the most dickish manner possible. The most galling part is that the guy can't even talk about himself without being wanky.
    • Rothul: As for in-comic moments, the teasing of of Max Powers sexuality. Not the fact that Max came out of the closet. That's fine, and showing him in a relationship contributed into the deepening of the character. It's the fact that Kurtz tried to make it into such a friggin' cliff-hanger, when it was obvious what was going to happen: after all, he had everything to gain by diversifying the cast, and everything to lose by chickening out. When it got to the point when Max was having vague conversation with his sister Sophie about "Chris" in comics that had no real humor, I started to realize that maybe Brent and Jade's wedding was the natural ending point for the strip.
  • King Cr Inu Yasha: The December 2010 comics of Sabrina Online. After being trolled on the internet, Zig Zag goes to various towns getting revenge, one of them having her beat up a troll to a bloody pulp, all the while acting like an arrogant Inquisitor declaring war on trolls - and by trolls, read Straw Men. Depending on where Schwartz takes this, Zig might soon be joining the ranks of Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin in characters going from Jerk with a Heart of Gold to just a jerk, period.
  • Gahars: I've always been a fan of Penny Arcade. However, the lowest point, I think, was Lookouts. Pretty much, if you aren't a parent, you aren't going to like it, but you have to wait for almost 2 weeks worth of strips for it to be over with. I've always loved Gabe and Tycho's habit of experimenting artistically, but now, it feels like its alienating a lot of old fans more than anything else.
    • Kellor: Speaking of experimenting: "Paint the Line". It was this weeks-long series of comics that were supposed to be in the style of an 80s movie, depicting a ping-pong tournament that would decide the fate of the world (or something). It was an unfunny, tedious mess.
  • Revelo: Ctrl+Alt+Del and the Landing strip which closed out the infamous Loss storyline. Most people will cite 'Loss' as the moment the comic really hit rock bottom, I admit i'd followed the comic for a year out of curiosity, then was ready to abandon the comic then because of how Loss came out of nowhere, was a serious Mood Whiplash and poorly backed up by Tim however I kept an eye on it just to see how this panned out. What landing gave us was Lillah turning Christian into the authorities by making up that he was in possession drugs. Not only does she not get in trouble for making false charges, but then she apologizes to Ethan for how she acted during the arc, even though she done nothing wrong. This was the moment I realized I couldn't put up with a comic with terrible writing, poor humor, a Mary Sue main character who treats his best friend and wife like dirt, have them apologize to him when they go along with his bullshit and gets everything given to him for no effort.
    • Joseph L: Initially, I had a high tolerance for Ethan's Man Child bullshit in Ctrl+Alt+Del, but it eroded steadily over the months, until this comic—hell, the first panel—washed it all away. I haven't been back since, except to get the linked comic. I guess I was able to tolerate it for at least as long as I felt that Ethan wasn't truly aware of it, that he was motivated more by (albeit sometimes misguided) love for Lilah than anything else. Seeing such puerile behavior put out so obviously made me feel, for at least a moment (though still a moment too long) that Ethan's primarily motivated by laziness and greed.
    • So We Ate Them: This strip from Ctrl+Alt+Del, and the corresponding blog, (which he tore down after realizing he'd discredited himself). It states he's never played anything in the game's franchise. That was all it took to convince me that this webcomic is unprofessional in all aspects. No, the Author's Saving Throw (specifically, playing the freaking game) did nothing to sway me, as Buckley should have known this from the start: Experience first, pass judgment later!
      • Doctor Worm: Just to pile on to that strip, Buckley holds up Dragon Age II as an example of an awesome game. Probably a poor choice, given the critical and fan roasting that game got (and I say this as one of the six people who actually liked Dragon Age II).
    • Bek359: Ctrl+Alt+Del. This strip, which was replaced with this strip after Buckley started getting reams upon reams of outraged comments. ...Just read the first one.
    • Dynamite XI: I'm finding that I really REALLY hate Ctrl+Alt+Del's ongoing storyline, where Ethan receives a massive electric shock and becomes sane and normal. The long-term ramifications of this change could have been fascinating, much like how Steve Dallas had a personality swap in Bloom County. Instead, however, Buckley puts Lilah and Lucas through Character Derailment, turning them into insane copies of Ethan's old self, which leads Kate to break up with Lucas in the process. The implication is that without Ethan's insanity in their daily lives, both Lucas and Lilah will themselves become insane, which DOES NOT HAPPEN IN REAL LIFE. And the way that things are looking, it appears that Ethan will voluntarily choose to go back to being an insane manchild again in order to save Lilah and Lucas. (And if it turns out that Lilah and Lucas are just pretending in order to get the old Ethan back, then the implications become even worse.)
      • Peteman: Ugh, yeah. Seriously. The only positive thing about this storyline is that you can make a reference to Linkara and Spoony's Warrior review on whether or not Ethan is an insanity magnet, and protects those around him by absorbing the insanity on the universe, without which it affects those around him. Bleh.
      • ABLb0y: This strip. Especially the Blog page thingy, in which he implies that there's nothing worse than homosexuality. I knew Buckley was a cock before, but this just kinda sealed it.
  • Stevie Will Show You: Jay Naylor's old comic, Better Days. Now, you might think the chapter where Fisk joins a group of American terrorists without any hesitation or resistance would be the comic's dethroning moment, but no, that honor is saved for a far worse chapter - "Persia". Fisk discovers that his cousin Persia is out in California and, having gotten strung out on drugs, now works as a hooker/porn star for a bunch of mobsters (she had gone out to Cali to be a model/actress). When Fisk finds out where they're holding Persia from one of the mobster's paid-off lackeys, he sets out to save her single-handedly. How does he do this? Fisk first kills two "mobsters" by shooting them - while using a third one as a body shield. After he gets upstairs, he tosses a guy who'd just been with Persia out the window - although he could have been just paying to have sex with Persia, being completely unconnected to the mobsters. But it doesn't matter to Fisk, apparently. When he gets back downstairs with Persia, he damn-near-literally AssPulls a grenade, then uses it to blow up part of the house, killing (at least) two other "mobsters" in the process. The very next strip after this? Fisk is then shown calling a hospital while he watches Persia eat, then he's shown driving her back to Virginia from California. Fisk suffers no consequences for his actions - no mention is ever made of law enforcement investigating the scene, no other members of the "mob" try to retaliate, and even his own employers (the American terrorists, remember?) seem to just look the other way. Other chapters could be forgiven for being bad since Naylor has never really been a great writer, but this one just went way too far - and it, combined with the American terrorists chapters, really did a lot to create the Hatedom that's been building up since then.
    • Belfagor: I really don't like Jay Naylor to start with, yet I think the biggest Dethroning Moment Of Suck ever found in his production is (NSFW and Nightmare Fuel for some) this. All right, Naylor, you wanted it. I understand you don't like Communists, bisexuals or democrats, I've got it and I'm not starting to whine because of this. But calling someone who simply doesn't share your ideas "bed-wetting" and "deer-f***ing" instead of trying to give your ideas any trace of validity is never, I repeat, never the way to get your point across. And to top it all off, you did this while making your pompous, ludicruously arrogant God Mode Sue Jerk Ass soapbox protagonist act in full-mode sociopathic behavior. You say you don't mind being called an extremist. Good. It means I have no remorse in acting in Knight Templar mode towards you, then. Your webcomics are the scum of the net. They make me want to put Fisk Black to sleep by repeatedly hitting his brains out with a baseball bat. You're right, you have nothing in common with the biggest part of the world. Just remember that the biggest part of the world already knows this and is probably relieved, if not proud, of it.
  • Stevie Will Show You: Jay Naylor's current comic, Original Life. Naylor had promised before it began that it would be his attempt to "just keep it fun" and do a Lighter and Softer strip. All that pretty much went out the window in Strip #20. Elizabeth (sporting one of the single creepiest facial expressions ever in any Naylor comic) is pleading with Fisk to let her kids visit her parents in Florida, despite his objecting to it. Why does he object? Because her mother might take the kids to Temple. See, before Elizabeth married Fisk, she was Jewish - but when she married Fisk, she "converted" to being an atheist and failed to tell her parents about it. That "keeping it fun" promise? It got tossed out the same window from "Persia". Since then, the strip has veered back and forth between ripping off sitcoms and soapboxing Naylor's Objectivist beliefs and ideas, with a pop culture reference or two tossed in for good measure.
    • SG_Man_Forever: The chapter where Fisk asks if The Vietnam War was "worth it." After a wall of blithering logical fallacies, the person Fisk is talking to concludes three things: (1) A country having a system of government another country doesn't like (Communism) is a legitimate reason to attempt to destroy that country. (2) The war was a moral victory for America, and (3) that yes, the war was "worth it." Reality check. Vietnam was probably the single most horrifically pointless war in American history, thousands of Americans lost their lives in the name of a fight that had nothing to do with them, and it was one of the single most brutally fought wars in American history. There's a reason so many men came back with PTSD. They were being put into (in many cases, drafted into) a position where they were forced to fight child soldiers, lived constant fear of ambushes or booby traps, and constant fear that someone in the platoon would lose their mind and murder someone else in it. As you can tell, people being ignorant about Vietnam is something of a Berserk Button with this troper, as his uncle served in it, and he has seen the effects of PTSD firsthand, and it is heartbreaking. Nevermind that the war was started on extremely shaky evidence. As a result of this evidence, almost sixty thousand men lost their lives, and hundreds of thousands were injured. Mr. Naylor, I want you to tell the families of those sixty thousand men that the deaths of their brothers, uncles, fathers, and sons was worth fighting the deadly threat of communism. Tell me that my uncle's sanity was "worth it." Tell me that him living in madness for 37 years was "worth it." Tell me the thousands of shattered families that it was "worth it."
    • Dont Kill Bugs: I have been known for being an extraordinarily patient man. I read all of Better Days and a good chunk of Original Life before I even knew a Naylor-hatedom existed. I still hold the theory that Fisk joined a completely legal black-ops group, and every single person on earth misinterpreted it. I still do not believe that Naylor and his webcomics are nearly as bad as the people on Godammit Freehaven insist, and continue to state that said people are the worst trolls I have ever had the misfortune to meet. But when Naylor started a story arc about the ''sexual awakening'' of Tommy and Lucy's son Leo at the ripe old age of twelve, I threw up my hands and jumped ship. My respect for Naylor, which had been whithering slowly over the duration of the uber-strawman Justice Defender arc, including its utter lack of an ending, finally croaked it and died. Congrats, Freehaven trolls, you finally won. Congratulations.
      • Ndro: Tommy's little tirade about "ass-men," including a depiction of what appears to be anal rape (seriously), while he's attributing every advancement in society to ass-men, all while saying Ass a lot, is meant to be comedic. If anything it was more cringe worthy. Lighter and Softer indeed.
  • Steinman77: It's been months now since Penny stood up to a modern-day moneychanger in the temple in Goblin Hollow, and months since Lily slapped her down for it. I've tried to get past it, chalk it up to Values Dissonance, but I just can't. Lily took the side of a bully and con-man against her own sister just because that bullying con-man was a preacher. That's unspeakable. The forum at RH Junior's that day turned it into a discussion about parenting and discipline, but in my mind, the entire conversation missed the point. It's not about discipline, it's about betrayal. Lily betrayed her own flesh and blood because her community approved the bully. That's vile. It's also, I should note, siding with the proud and the powerful against the weak, which is pretty much the polar opposite of what Jesus preached, which makes Lily a hypocrite as well as a traitor. As far as I'm concerned, Lily is the villain of the strip now, and every positive thing that happens to her is an injustice. I also need to talk about the strips that showed up later the same day, seemingly in response to the firestorm. Many have identified these strips as an Author's Saving Throw. I'd argue that they're nothing of the sort. An Author's Saving Throw would have involved a groveling apology from Lily, possibly in public, a rescinded grounding, and a proper comeuppance for H. Lee Roller. Instead, we get Penny's Freudian Excuse. Those strips were supposed to regain sympathy for Penny after she crossed the Moral Event Horizon by making a scene in Church!
  • Synjo Deonecros: Anyone who tries to defend Ian Flynn's work on the Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comics obviously doesn't know about his webcomic, Other M (not to be confused with the Metroid game of the same name). The entire thing is retched from start to finish, but if you really want to pinpoint the nadir of all things wrong with his writing, "Knuckles as Hitler" must be it. No, I'm not joking; the moment we are introduced to his Canon Defilement of Knuckles, we see him 1. Express the purity and superiority of the echidna race with as much vehemence as the Nazis and Hudlin combined; 2. voice his desire to bring Holocaust-esque genocide to anyone not Echidnan; and 3. abuse his version of the Chaotix (which includes Tails) before mentioning he doesn't care one bit about their safety and will likely kill them after they've outlived their usefulness. What's worse, is that he's the source of all of the problems in the series and his hatred infects virtually everyone it touches, turning his Mobius into a Crapsack World. One has to wonder whether or not Archie even read this series and noticed the sheer level of bigotry and hate Ian put into this comic - and especially into this character - before they hired him as Sonic's head writer.
  • Lizuka: While the Sheldon - which as the name for a major villain is a Fail O'Suckyname all its own - arc of Misfile was rather weak in general, it came to a head when Ash did a complete 180 during the climax in terms of character. Throughout the entire storyline, Ash had (quite rightfully) complained that solely due to being the best others were forcing him to fight their battles, until during the climactic race itself - which was a Curb-Stomp Battle painted with a gloss of Deus Angst Machina - he suddenly mid-page decided that he loved helping people and Sheldon needed to lose with absolutely no foreshadowing. That butchered Ash's characterization in the face of two books worth of building to that race; a short storyline in the next book kept with it for awhile, but it was at least thankfully dropped afterward.
    • That Flying Rodent: And now, we have James trying to get Ash's attention after a lengthy disappearance. Faking a relationship with Cassiel is fine, if a bit juvenile, and he was always a bit self-absorbed, but we had no reason to truly dislike him... until he started making the rudest, most vulgar statements as if that was supposed to get Ash interested. He borders on sexual harassment to top off making one chance encounter all about him. I got the idea we were supposed to sympathize with this character before, that he was a genuinely good friend who just happened to have other ideas... but now, he just comes across as any other Jerkass only pursuing Ash for his own pleasure.
  • Adam C: From Ménage à 3, the dethroning moment for me is certainly the baffling decision to have Zii get revenge on an internet troll by having sex with his mom. To elaborate: Zii is being teased online by an internet troll and decides to get revenge. She gets his address from Gary and, in spite of Gary's attempt's to stop her, bonks the kid's Mom all night long. The next morning when he gets up, Zii gleefully teases him about it and rubs it in his face while his mother cheerfully informs him that due to Zii's super-magic-love-making, she and his father are getting a divorce. The comic tries to save this from making Zii look like a total sociopath by having it awkwardly shoved in that his father was apparently sleeping with his secretary, claiming that Zii was ultimately doing the woman a favor by nailing her for extremely petty and selfish reasons and made her life better, but this almost makes it even worse. Zii had long since been getting complaints from the fandom about being a Karma Houdini and not receiving any punishment for her "antics" but breaking up a kid's family for being mean to her on the internet and trying to make it seem like it was a good thing just took it too far. The entire thing left a bad taste in people's mouths and Zii has yet to be punished for it. It totally ruined her character for me, and while others claim she's just a Loveable Sex Maniac, I can't get past this.
  • Master Hand: Everyone's going to kill me for this, but I think Homestuck had started to jump the shark a while back. The real Dethroning Moment, however, was in Act 5 Act 2: Eridan kills Feferi and Kanaya after getting in a fight with Sollux, but not before blowing up the matriorb right in front of Kanaya. Meanwhile, Gamzee becomes a Monster Clown apropos of little else, and Tavros is found dead, ostensibly at his hands. It was blatantly out of character for both Gamzee and Eridan, and while Cerebus Syndrome can be done right, here, it wasn't. As if all that wasn't bad enough, it invalidated opportunities for plot twists and character development that would've made for a much better direction for the story to take. And on top of that, the way that the comic tried to make jokes about it was just mean-spirited and disrespectful towards both the characters and those who cared about them— Feferi falls dead into the horn pile, Kanaya's death is subtitled with a line from Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, and Tavros gets a posthumous Humiliation Conga from Vriska, Terezi and Andrew. The comic certainly had potential, but I really wish it took all that back and started being entertaining again instead of just resorting to cheap heat. I was able to put up with Andrew's shit up to that point, even if I really didn't think it was a good idea (and there was quite a bit of that), but I wasn't able to keep reading after this. The comic was making me feel uncomfortable just reading it, and that's not the mark of something you want to read. What were they thinking?
    • duckflesh: Andrew puts the reader through so much that I think everyone is bound to get tired of his shit eventually; it's just a matter of when. For me, I was with him until Act 6 Act 1. He made what I consider a big mistake: introducing five new characters at once, none of whom were particularly original or interesting, whilst simultaneously foreshadowing the appearance of an additional thirteen. Homestuck already has a huge cast of characters, and he really overstretched the limit of how many I can care about. Now I find myself hoping certain characters will die just so they can get out of the plot's way.
    • CJCroen1393: A minor gripe, but after Jade's reality bending dog, Bec, prototypes himself to save Jade's life, its revealed that his love and loyalty to Jade is transferred to Jack Noir. This leaves him incapable of killing Jade. Then, Jade prototypes Bec with her dead dreamself—and Bec's entire personality is erased. Unceremoniously. So, Bec's love for Jade was strong enough to overpower Jack's murderous impulses but Jadesprite's Despair Event Horizon is able to erase all of that from Bec? In all honesty, it all just reeks of "this was done solely as a giant plot device and Jadesprite held no plot importance besides making Jade God-Tier". True, the latter was important but it still makes very little sense for Jadesprite to wipe out the love and loyalty that overrode Jack's murderous rage.
  • bobdrantz: For me, it's this strip, from Super Effective. Oh, dear Arceus, where do I start? First of all, the whole "Pokemon VS Digimon" war is old. Very old. Nobody really cares anymore compared to way back when the two shows were first duking it out for viewer attention. Second, Pokemon and Digimon only have a handful of similarities to one another (IE: Both are about monsters who befriend humans and fight one another). Apart from those similarities, they're nothing alike.
    • FFKonoko1: I personally thing it gets even better if you remember the dates. While released in '96 in Japan, the pokemon games were released outside of Japan in 1998. But apparently the very first Digital Monster toy was released in the middle of 97, over a year before they got the pokemon game. Vastly different popularity and such I know, but still from the point of view of people outside of Japan...technically they got Digimon first?
  • Albertosaurus: Sure, Better Days had its iffy moments. Strawman characters. Unsubtly shoved in political viewpoints. Wallbangers like "Father's Footsteps" and "Persia". Puppy Love. And yet, I kept reading. I liked the characters and Jay Naylor's willingness to tackle themes like incest and child abuse. So when the sequel Original Life came around, I hopped on board. And it was okay. But then the muffin storyline (link NSFW) started, concerning kids dressing up as superheroes and fighting over whether some kid has the right to not share his muffins for free or not. How are we to interpret this storyline? The inherent ridiculousness of the concept would suggest that it is supposed to be comedic, but the many earnest conversations bordering on Author Filibusters about economy and justice suggest that is to be taken seriously. I am well aware that comedic stories can have a serious message and that serious stories can have comedic moments, but this is a bizarre mishmash of the two that does not work at all. Worst of all, the Black siblings, who the comic is supposed to be all about, almost completely disappear from sight. This comic proves that Naylor has finally gone off the deep end.
  • magnum12: The Devil Seymour mini arc of Sin Fest. More specifically, the ending. The arc starts out funny with resident Scrappy Seymour being turned into a demon in a twist of irony, leading for the potential for the unpopular Knight Templar Holier Than Thou Jerk Ass to finally suffer a long overdue taste of his own medicine (especially for all the crap she puts a actively reforming Fushia through culminating with Bad Behavior) via a Humiliation Conga Line. What we get is him simply jumping into a lake and being purified, suffering little struggle and virtually no suffering on the way. Talk about karma dropping the ball here.
    • TheAlbinoPrimid: If you take it as a commentary about the comic's fanbase, this strip dethrones Sinfest hard. First, yes, it addresses the complaints people have had about the comic, which would make it good, right? Nope, it becomes a Take That, Audience! moment by creating a character made entirely of straw and portraying them as a complainer that threatens to walk out because of how preachy Monique (i.e. the comic) has become, but doesn't. This alone makes it clear that the creator cares crap all about the actual opinions of the fans, and instead makes them out to being a bunch of whiners, even though they are quite justified in addressing the comic's change of tone. The only redeeming feature is that the horrid Sisterhood does not make an appearance, even if the comic is ultimately a result of their actions.
    • Peteman: I agree with those who take this as the straw that broke the camel's back. More Take That, Audience! stuff. The problem is that a better metaphor for our reactions is that Monique is the Sisterhood Arc, and a different performer is everything else. We're booing Monique because she's hogging all the time from the other performer. The author seems to pretend to believe we hate this strip for being too preachy and that any criticism we have is based around our own sexism. He adamantly refuses to acknowledge the possibility that we're pissed that we're trading developed and interesting characters for preachy, flat Mary Sue-ish ones with no development for the last year. If it was any other message, we'd be just as pissed. I'm a Dominic Deegan snarker. I chew that comic out for its preachy anti-bigotry message and laud its over-the-top bigots. Does that mean I'm pro-bigotry? No, it means I'm anti-terrible storytelling, and if I that means coming down on the side of the Strawmen, then so be it.
  • TooMuchCowbell: Therkla from The Order of the Stick had her dethroning moment shortly before her death in strip #593. She came across as a Satellite Love Interest when she was introduced, fawning over Elan for apparently no reason other than finding him handsome. For most of her stint in the comic, her characterization consisted solely of being in love with Elan, and whenever he wasn't onscreen she would spend her time thinking about him or convincing someone else not to kill him. Despite this, she had begun showing some Hidden Depths: wanting to protect all those she cared about regardless of Character Alignment (most notably Elan and Kubota). This went along with her being half-human/half-orc, and the deconstruction of the concepts of "good" and "evil" as presented by tabletop roleplaying games had been a major theme of the comic. So here was a perfect chance for her to rise above her perceived status as a Satellite Love Interest, and she immediately threw it all away when she decided she would rather die (and stay dead in a world where Death Is Cheap) than live in a world where Elan was in love with someone else. A Satellite Love Interest to the end. (Note that this is a dethroning moment for this character, not the comic.)
  • So We Ate Them: Same troper, different webcomic; VG Cats. This strip. Misogyny for shock value? That can be let fly. Misogyny, realistically portrayed misogyny, as the punchline of a joke! You don't do that. You just don't.
    • Scarlet Wave: What really solidifies this as VG Cats's nadir is that the second-to-last panel tied up the joke (commentary about sexism in games) perfectly well, yet the author believed that adding the last panel would make the comic funnier.
  • TheSupineLupine: Brinkerhoff originally began as a catharsis for the author after a nasty break-up, and I can appreciate that there's black humour to be mined regarding unsuccessful relationships, but one storyline goes too far with it. The eponymous protagonist (and apparent Author Avatar) fulfills a fantasy of having sex with a stripper, but the sex is unsatisfying, and he ends up berating her for being a bad lay and "ruining [his] fantasy". This is apparently played straight; she doesn't call him out for using her like that, and he doesn't appear to suffer any negative consequence for it, however tangential; presuambly, we're supposed to side with him and hate her for wasting his time and ruining his poor little fantasy. I'm not sure what's worse: the implication that someone who patronizes strippers is somehow morally superior to them and has a right to demand anything besides services rendered for payment received, or that if you have a sexual fantasy that doesn't live up to reality, it's the other person's fault and you're right to berate your partner for it, even if they didn't know they were being used like that.
  • Blunderbuss: Penny and Aggie's new sudden lesbian relationship in Penny and Aggie. For a good chunk of the series these two girls hated each other with a burning passion because they both believed the other was a huge bitch and they were two totally different people. They managed to come to enough of an understanding to become friends, but out of goddamn nowhere they suddenly find a sexual/romantic attraction between them and now they're Lesbian Lovers Forever. Sure, there had been tiny teases of sexual attraction, but only through moments of Foe Yay that horrified them; otherwise Penny seemed entirely attracted to boys (her biggest fling being with a macho Bad Boy) and Aggie somewhat questioning but also spent a whole arc practically worshipping a hot guy. But after their own arcs struggling with sexual attraction and who they like, they both suddenly decide they're hot for one another and go straight to heavy making out in a closet. Not only is it really boring, lacking the drama and teenage confusion of their earlier flings, but the comic still shows they're very much opposite people with almost no middle ground, with Aggie confusing Penny with her interests and Penny being insensitive to Aggie's feelings. And yet the comic and most of the cast act like this is the best and most natural thing ever. Christ, Aggie's shallow crush on Marshall had more depth and realism than the so-called 'OTP' of the series.
  • Animeking1108: I hate to sound like a fanboy, but the epilogue of 8-Bit Theater makes this, because was basically an excuse for the author to go on a rant against the 3 D Final Fantasy games. Now, I wouldn't have a problem with this if it weren't for this way-too-harsh Stealth Insult towards post-FFVII-fans:
    Fighter: Everything else seems like a big waste of time.
    Black Mage: I could have told you that.
  • Dominus Temporis: This Super Effective comic. It's bad enough that it's making a joke about Steve Jobs' death less than a week after the fact. It's worse that it's just a poor rehash of this comic. The real clincher is the blog post where Scott mentions he scrapped a Spiral Knights comic that took actual work and researching, and just put this out instead. Offensive and doubly lazy! You can't even try to be this bad.
  • N Troper: Nearly every reader of Vampire Cheerleaders agrees that Lori turning Leonard into a thrall counts as one, especially seeing how Heather did nothing so far to stick up for Leonard. The author stated that he has a long-term plan regarding this but it still changed the fans' opinion on Lori, and Heather by extension.
  • Fofa: I normally love Awkward Zombie, but this is one strip I just can't defend. I never played any of the Professor Layton games and even I know that Layton would never slap Luke in a million years, but besides this, it plays child abuse for laughs. It hasn't stopped me from reading the strip altogether, but it almost did.
  • kablammin45: As much as I dislike that Winnie the Pooh strip VG Cats did, this one really rubs me the wrong way. It involves a cruel, heartless Yoshi giving Baby Mario over to the baddies, saying he hopes he gets crib death. I know it's Baby Mario, but someone who shoves a sock into a baby's mouth and wants him/her to die isn't funny, it's terrible! It doesn't help that things like that have probably happened in real life, too. Whoever thinks they can make something as horrible as killing babies seem funny has something wrong with them.
  • Lhipenwhe: The 'orc-rape' storyline in Dominic Deegan. One of Dominic's friends rapes a girl who'd just been traumatized by seeing her parents killed in front of her. The 'reason' he needs to do it (orphans are put to death, he marries the girl, the orc tribes check for 'proof' that marriage is consummated) struck many as both inane, forced, and convoluted from a writing standpoint. The fact that Dominic's friend is treated as doing the right thing for raping her, and having the orc girl call him his husband, disgusted many others. And this during a arc where there was magical rock concert to save a town.
  • deeman45: David Willis' Shortpacked! has many, many problems. Many strips are out-and-out attacks against people Willis doesn't like: the Straw Fan, the Strawman Political, the religious. But I still found many of his strips clever and funny. But this was really too much. The men's movement isn't about ignoring women's issues; nor does it concern making every conversation center around male problems. Intimidating women is right out. What especially irks me is that he has the douchebag-of-the-week talk about a REAL problem before setting him up as a whiny strawman. Apparently getting upset over being blamed for your own sexual assault is just a sign that you're a self-centered whiner.
    • Jonn: It also contributes to the idea that men should go talk about men problems somewhere where women aren't talking about women problems, and that attempting to do so is necessarily trying to drown women out. The sad thing is that wasn't the last straw for me. That was when he dismissed people who didn't understand his comics as "imaginary". And the fans agree with him. As if he never could be wrong in premise, delivery, or both. The very next day, he seems to have a totally distorted view of the comic, much less the generally positive reaction to it. The comic in question wasn't about "justifying sexist attitudes", it was specifically about how people who don't understand or agree with Willis don't matter, as far as he's concerned. He literally said so. Which means that he doesn't actually care about convincing people or effecting change, just being "right". Unless he honestly thinks that anyone who doesn't understand or agree with him is actually sexist.
    • dmh3000 - While I love Willis, he has said numerous times in response to people who point out that the Mike/Amber romance had a horrific start that he thinks the argument of 'reverse the genders' is bullshit. Despite being a feminist, he still subscribes to the idea that women cannot hurt men, and by extension, men cannot be raped, which is disturbing.
  • EarthClown: Critical Miss hit an all time low by making this story arc called Chapter 2. Basically it starts off promising, where Erin gets into a fight with Molly and after almost hurting her seriously, she runs off to a bar, and is harrassed by videogame character hallucinations and meets a guy she starts to like. After that, the story dies, the jokes are lame, the entire plot progresses so slow to the point of massive Arc Fatique. And after SIX months of writing that goes absolutly nowhere, a fight that is never shown, and stupid jump cuts to incoherent places, the ending is revealed to make absolutly no sense and has such a stupid shocking swerve it seems that Grey Carter was inspired by M. Night Shyamalan. Then again, what do I expect from a webcomic about videogames?
  • Kellor: Instant Classic had a lot of problems, but if I had to pick one moment, it was a particular strip which was nothing but a Wall of Text written in a blurry, scrunched-up font. A ton of readers complained in the forums about not being able to read it, so one person said he'd write a transcript. Not a big deal, right? Suddenly, the comic's creator, Brian Carroll, stepped in and demanded that no one transcribe the comic, saying that reading the words outside their context would "ruin the experience" of the comic. What the hell? People who don't have Superman's vision don't deserve to know what's going on in the comic? Are we supposed to believe that reading a block of text inside a comic panel is some transcendent experience, while reading the same text in a forum is a crime against art? There were plenty of indications among his comics and news posts that Brian was a pretentious twat, but this was the first time he crossed the line into being a full-blown, head-up-his-ass, self-important nutjob.
  • Spring Rights: Episode 21 of Marauder Shields really makes it obvious that Koobismo really doesn't give a shit about lore accuracy. It attempts to justify the titular character's existence by saying that the geth converted Nihlus into a Marauder, but the space magic of an exploding Prothean beacon freed him from Reaper control. Not only is the handwave completely stupid and nothing in the games even comes close to hinting at this, but it also ignores that Marauders were created at the beginning of the Reaper invasion through the Reapers' experimentations—so the geth created a type of husk that hadn't been created yet. The same episode bastardizes a sidequest from the first game where you have Nirali Bhatia's body returned to her husband, claiming that the body returned is a fake—despite ME 2 mentioning that Alliance's recruiting quotas suffer due to being unable to find a way to counter geth technology should you not let them keep Bhatia's body. If there's any doubts that "lore accuracy" really means Retconing canon without any consideration as to how the retcons would logically have an impact in the later games, episode 21 easily dismisses them.
  • InTheGallbladder: I was, for a brief stretch of time, a fan of The Oatmeal. I was there during the campaign to shame Charles Carreon and the "Let's Build A Goddamn Tesla Museum" drive. But I gave up after reading "Some Thoughts And Musings About Making Things For The Web." The thought-out, moving, detailed discussion Mat Inman gives about the pros and cons of his job, as well as what it means to him, devolves all of a sudden into an Author Tract aimed at people who post negative comments regarding any aspect of the comic.
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