The Bad Webcomics Wiki!

There's also the problem that webcomic creators don't have the editorial control that bigger developers have. This can lead to good things; it can stop lead to inovation as creators are allowed to try new things, and when it works it can lead to great things; just look at Indepenantly developed games like Braid of Limbo. Of course there is a flipside, if the creator comes up with a bad idea, there is no-one to stop it from being released.

Warriors, torchbearers, come redeem our dreams. Shine a light upon this night of otherworldly fiends.

I'm not saying they're Small Name, Big Ego, I'm saying their egos are excessively delicate. Even tiny shareware game developers are typically capable of giving as good as they get, laughing off remarks made in good humor, and admitting flaws in their craftsmanship while standing firmly by the cardinal virtues of their work.

The webcomic world, by and large, is a gigantic carebear hugfest in comparison.

Eric,

"I still think that eventually every Webcomic in the world will be featured here eventually."

Except Jerkcity. That shit's perfect and beyond criticism.

Major members of the site have stated that they will not, in fact, be featuring every comic, and in fact that's not what they want to do at all. Pull too far down that lane and the site becomes useless. There is a reason why there's a forum in the back for asking whether or not a given comic is actually bad, and there's a reason, say, EGS isn't on the list (even though in many opinions it's Not That Good).

Sakamoto demands an explanation for this shit.

-grumbles- I dunno, I think I could write a pretty detailed review about it.

New User Handle

Hey, I personally can't stand it, but the model is to aim for comics that are horrible, show no signs of realistic improvement, and are run by people who are crazy/full-of-themselves/should-know-better.

- wikidot user Doodlelosers's comment in this thread

edited 25th Sep '10 7:31:05 AM by GoggleFox

Sakamoto demands an explanation for this shit.

Eh. Fair enough.

I think it would make more sense to just make a webcomics wiki in general, with multiple reviews ranging from good to bad.

edited 25th Sep '10 7:37:08 AM by A_H_R

New User Handle

^^^What, AHR. You would give EGS a bad review?

Likes many underrated webcomics

AHR: They've got one, but it's not very well populated at present... There are also other review sites out there.

edited 25th Sep '10 12:38:11 PM by GoggleFox

Sakamoto demands an explanation for this shit.

@NLK: Yes.

@Goggle Fox: Figures. Probably because good reviews aren't as entertaining.

edited 25th Sep '10 12:51:35 PM by A_H_R

New User Handle

Yeah. When Eric Burns (The Websnark guy) was still active, some of his most popular blog entries were his "You Had Me And You Lost Me" series, where he explained why a webcomic he liked now left a sour taste in his mouth, and why he no longer reads it. These were the only really negative reviews he produced (though he did give generally negative critique other times, those were considerably shorter entries). They weren't scathing or anything, but still, that tiny handful of entries were more popular than most of the rest of his writing on there.

I guess people love seeing something torn to shreds.

edited 25th Sep '10 12:56:43 PM by GoggleFox

Sakamoto demands an explanation for this shit.

As usual, I'm late to the party, but...

Uhm... You can apply it to any work that follows the First Law Of Genderbending, you know.

I thought that was automatic...

edited 5th Oct '10 7:33:31 AM by Marc3K

Good boys go to Heaven, Bad Boys go everywhere else. And I'm both.

In my mind, there are two kinds of reviews. There's the serious way, where at critic properly analyses a work and carefully measures up it's positives and negatives before giving it a score. the purpose of these reviews is to give people an idea of whether a work is worth viewing or not, and can also help the creator of a work to improve if they read it and find out what they did wrong or right.

Then there's the snarky way, where the critic doesn't care so much about giving a fair score. Rather, the review itself is it's own reward by giving us a humorous sporking of the target work. These reviews sometimes use gimmicks like animations to make them stand out from plain analytical reviewing. They shouldn't really be taken seriously.

I believe the BWW is attempting to make reviews of the first category; they do review the comics fairly and analytically.

Warriors, torchbearers, come redeem our dreams. Shine a light upon this night of otherworldly fiends.

I really enjoy the Bad Webcomics Wiki when it's discussing genuinely bad webcomics. Some of the writers on there are great (and some aren't, but make up for it with enthusiasm.)

I do get the feeling that they're grasping at straws right now, what with people recommending Questionable Content and Penny Arcade and Girl Genius. (I don't read any of these webcomics, but they're pretty objectively Not Bad, even if they're not objectively great.)

I know they want to target the better-known webcomics rather than the little guys, but I can't help but feel that they've done most of the popular poorly-handled comics already. Quick, somebody, get really popular with something really dreadful so we can revitalise the BWW!

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

ᐅᖃᐅᓯᖅ ᐊᑕᐅᓯᖅ ᓈᒻᒪᔪᐃᑦᑐᖅ

Oh, give me an @#$!%& break! GG and PA were both knocked in just one thread each.

{complaining about the tone of the thread deleted — Madrugada}

Eric,

edited 22nd Oct '10 10:40:33 AM by Madrugada

If comics like Nobody Scores end up with pages, I do not think much of the strength of their filtering processes.

...eventually, we will reach a maximum entropy state where nobody has their own socks or underwear, or knows who to ask to get them back.

TBH, the person who reccommended GG was a troll trying to spark up a response and should not in any way represent the BWW.

The users that went along with it do a much better job at that.

So, I was browsing it, and I have to ask, Why in the world is there a review of Daryl Cagle's editorial cartoon index on it? It's not a webcomic, it's not trying to be a webcomic, it doesn't pretend to be a webcomic. It's an index of editorial cartoons from various newspapers.

What's the point of trying to measure it against webcomic standards?

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Okay I know this is trying to be humourous but anyone who says xkcd is the "portrait of Asperger's syndrome" needs to be kicked down some stairs. I *know* this is their opinion but honestly if they're going for humor value they could realize it's a comic AIMED AT A NERDY AUDIENCE. And bashing the fact that it uses stick figures is just fucking stupid.

Seriously there is no humor that can be derived from reviews that completely miss the point of webcomics in the first place and try to beat up rhetorical effigies of them.

Wow, that deletion somehow makes it seem more snarky and peeved than what I actually wrote, sorta' like Theiss Titillation Theory of online discourse.

Eric,

Something about the webcomics medium causes the fans to occasionally forget what is and isn't a webcomic. Our very own Webcomics index (back when it was a single page) used to list Dilbert, simply because the comic's webpage had an online archive. And in the 2004 Webcartoonists' Choice Awards (whose nominees are all chosen by webcomickers themselves), Homestar Runner won the award for "Outstanding Use of Flash".

edited 24th Oct '10 1:40:14 PM by MetaFour

I believe XKCD was bashed specifically for doing nothing but pandering to a nerdy audience, who paid for lazily drawn stick figures with no distinguishing features whatsoever.

edited 24th Oct '10 2:25:32 PM by SomethingSomething

Does Dinosaur Comics suck because it forces itself to use the same shitty clip-art every day? Or does MSPA suck because it has an intentionally simplistic coloring scheme to keep updates coming out faster than pretty much any other webcomic? xkcd was never trying to be an artistic masterpiece, it was trying to be funny. (And last time I checked no one "paid" for anything; it's a webcomic. That is free. That people can stop reading whenever they want.)

And last time I checked pandering to a certain audience is not a bad thing. Why isn't he bashing the concept of a webcomic in itself for pandering to nerds who waste time on the internet reading webcomics? Maybe he does, though I honestly don't like the idea of having to wade through more idiotic comic-bashing to find out.

I'm not opposed to the idea of honest criticism of webcomics, but this isn't honest criticism.

edited 24th Oct '10 2:58:43 PM by RLabs

Dinosaur comics and MSPA have actual effort put into the writing. And MSPA has more effort put into the art than XKCD will ever have.

And of course, nobody HAS to pay for any of the three comics mentioned.

But then, xkcd handily has a merchandise section. Its enough to support the author on its own. Who writes a comic with lazy art and writing, that updates a mere three times a week.

That there are comics with better art, and better writing that update more often, that don't even support the author is good enough reason to bash xkcd.

Pandering to the nerd crowd, in this case means pandering to the people who want to feel smugly superior because they got the joke xkcd made today. This leaves the taste of pretentiousness in the mouthes of everyone else.

That is to say, pandering to a certain audience isn't bad as long as it doesn't completely alienate every other audience.

edited 24th Oct '10 3:56:09 PM by SomethingSomething