Webcomic Not terrible. Just bad.
I don't think the comic is awful; just bad. The alleged "TOTALLEH SERIUZ GUIZ" story arcs made me laugh quite a bit, but the normal strips are just...there. They're certainly not funny at all, but they're mostly harmless. Nothing like Moon Over June or Shredded Moose. The art style is the worst thing about it, really. This is actually a lot more prevelent since he's tried to stop using B^U. Characters often drastically change body shape and weight between panels, and every other pose is blatantly copied and pasted from an earlier comic. He's started to use more cartoony expressions, which doesn't mesh well with the attempt at being more realistic. I laugh at them, but for the wrong reasons. They just look so stupid. He also has a habit of drawing the character providing the "punchline" with an INCREDIBLY smug grin. Oh, and I almost forgot: WORDSWORDSWORDSWORDSWORDSWORDSWORDSWORDSGODDAMNWORDS. Seriously, the guy has some sort of word fetish. There are comics he's made which would almost be kinda maybe slightly funny without WORDS, but he can't seem to recognise this.
I despise Tim Buckley. He is an awful human being. But that shouldn't factor into my opinion of the work he's created. The guy's a criminal, a paedophile, a drunk and he seems to harbor some sort of strange hatred towards every other popular webcomic, but his work is just 'Meh. This isn't very good.' I like Slough Feg, even though their frontman has a bit of an ego, and I enjoyed the first season of Family Guy, despite Seth Mac Farlane being a douche. However, the stuff they make is good: B^Uckeroo doesn't get a free pass, so naturally some people are gonna have a low opinion of him for what he's done.
Webcomic Yes, it is as bad as everyone says.
Rather than focus on the comic as a whole, let us start with some of its aspects:
Art: I will be frank. Tim Buckley is a horrible artist. While Buckley has learned not to draw B^U faces, he now draws characters with oversized heads, nonexistent top teeth, and over-the-top gesticulations and expressions that would make William Shatner cringe. It does not help that Buckley is known to use Google Image Search for inspiration. And by inspiration, I mean he plagiarizes, only admitting it if he is caught.
Characters: All one-sided and unlikable. Ethan is your classic WACKY VIJEO GAMEZ guy who deserves punishment he never receives, Lucas is a douchebag Deadpan Snarker who got angry when his girlfriend cheated on him after he said they should take some time to experiment, Lilah is a Shallow Love Interest whose sole purpose is to orbit Ethan's dick, and Zeke is Stewie Griffin as a robot. It's sad when even minor characters (Rob the Counterstrike player, Scott the Linux user, etc.) are better-written than our "heroes".
Jokes: Can be split up into separate sections. We have year-old jokes that Buckley believes are cutting age, your classic misogynist/racist/violent/dick jokes, jokes that briefly talk about Game X only to go on a tangent (seriously, you can take half of Buckley's comics, replace one game name with another, and nobody could tell the difference), jokes that are over-explained before even getting to the punchline... The list goes on. All of them are mediocre at best. There are some occasional storylines, but they're so idiotic and long-winded that you will literally beg them to end.
I am not going to cut corners with all the "It has a lot of flaws, but it's pretty good otherwise" shit. This comic, written by an egotistical douchebag with no talent, is only legitimately good and enjoyable if you are incredibly drunk, too withdrawn to read any better webcomics, Tim Buckley himself, or all of the above. It makes me sick to see that the comic's page was whitewashed and locked just to avoid the butthurt of Buckley's "fans".
There are hundreds of webcomics floating on the internet that are better written and drawn then Ctrl Alt Del. You literally have no excuse to read this.
Webcomic Quite funny
I found this webcomic really good. I think the jokes are really funny, and the way Ethan behaves makes me laugh loads. Of course, the mood whiplash that happens sometimes is a bit bad, but I don't see it bad as in "hey, that sucks", but as in "oh, man, poor guy". And the marriage with Lilah was done really well.
I really like this webcomic.
Webcomic The End
I've been reading this since it began. The earlier one shots were pretty good, but as it evolved, it started getting less funny. I honestly thought the miscarriage arc was an attempt at drama. Yes, Buckley can be a gigantic douche at times with his responses and shit to negative feedback. But, I was deeply saddened today when I got on and saw that it was over. There was a silver lining although, as it was stated that it would now be a gag-a-day four gamers on a couch comic, with updated versions of the former characters coming in to do minor arcs. I really hope Buckley learned that the earlier style was much better and will bring it back up again.
Webcomic Not perfect, but not deserving of so much hate
I discovered this webcomic a few years ago, and got a cheap laugh out of it. I've been reading ever since and I've seen all the twists and turns and such. Then I saw the amount of hate it has. I can understand a degree of it. Wall of text, same faces, same bodies, such and such.
Still, I...can't help but think the hate is a bit extreme.Sure, some of the jokes can fall flat, the bodies and faces can be similar to an annoying degree, and the animated series was rather disappointing, but that doesn't stop some of the jokes to be quite awesome, or from some scenes to be quite sweet. Sure, this series has lots of problems, but it shines every now and again.
As for the whole miscarriage thing, I'm honestly surprised the internet is so upset about it. I mean, there is MUCH worse stuff on it. Eating babies, child shooting, ripping a fetus out of a womb and eating it, can all be found on the internet, but its this one thing that people are so upset about?
In closing, I'll simply say this. Everyone has their own opinion. I'll respect others opinions, even though I may make a joke about it, and hope others do the same for me.
Webcomic A compost heap of gaming culture
Sometimes a (very) mildly funny joke grows out of it here and there but, when you look at it, it's still mostly one giant heap of shit.
Webcomic Look past it's (numerous) flaws, and it's pretty good.
Tim Buckley can be an enormous douche. The comic explains the joke too often. Wall Of Text. B^U. The miscarriage.
These are all problems, sure, but why is it that everyone thinks it makes the series irredeemably awful? In the end, it all really boils down to the humor. Dude Not Funny is an unfortunately common occurence, but when there is a good joke, it is really good.
*
Webcomic No redeeming features.
The art is mediocre. However, this is assumption, as I can barely see the pictures past the walls of text that Tim Buckley is so reliant on to get his usually awful punchline or point across. The art is slowly improving, but after ten years of mediocrity, shameless copying of other artists ideas, threatening fans, and otherwise alienating the majority of the internet, Buckley has lost all hope for a healthy fan following. Miscarriages have nothing to do with videogames.
Webcomic Doesn't have much going for it.
CAD was the first webcomic I ever read, it somehow draws you in, I thought it was funny despite the obvious flaws I endured it even through the miscarrage, but it's problems got too much to bear.
It's easy to see CAD has been following the same basic formula since 2002 without changing apart from some art evolution. Even that hasn’t evolved much, the characters used to have that same dull B^U expression for everything, while standing in the same ¾ perspective without moving. This apparently saves time; another way is to copy/paste backgrounds, like from Google image search, Buckley still does this nowadays, thinking it is clever. Even if the art has improved only slightly the jokes have not. You can expect them to be lost in walls of text explaining the joke, under the assumption we are all morons, when they are not based off what’s popular ages after people have run the joke into the ground you can expect plenty of dick or boob jokes, interlaced with gratuitous violence, apparently because gamers are sex depraved, violent psychopaths. Add to very poor comic timing, blurting the joke out early on and you get an utter mess of a strip.
But the icing on the CAD cake is the characters, Ethan is the most blatant self insert Mary Sue around at, it’s fine to include yourself in stories, you need to give them believable personalities, faults and development, most arcs in CAD are Ethan being a manchild, who does something stupid and expects to get anything he wants, his best friend and wife go along with it; apologising to Ethan if they so much as doubt him, He always succeeds at anything. Stealing your best friend’s identity? Creating a gamer religion and holiday, demanding your wife can’t quit her job to become a professional gamer as it cuts into your gaming? CAD thinks that’s fine.
Lucas comes across as a smug, obnoxious prick, supposedly the comic foil but just as unlikeable. Lillah is there as she is a girl, with boobs, who looks after Ethan and makes no effort to get him to change because woman should stay in the kitchen according to CAD. Zeke is basically HK-47, hates humans, that’s it. If Buckley ever showed some humility, stopped treating his fans like rubbish, stopped trying to cover up his mistakes, stopped ripping off other artists and copying jokes, perhaps CAD would have respect.
Others like it, I don't think it's worth reading.
Webcomic Okay read
CTRL+ALT+DEL Is a good comic at times and bad at others. Not as good as Penny Arcade! but still good.
Ethan is dumb but I like him, He's a good guy. Lila is nice to him when a real girl would run away so she can see his good side. Luke is mean but a good friend.
I don't like the love story. They forget to tell jokes and it sucks to see Lila in the hospitol. I started pressing next to get past that.
My favorite joke is the apple robot that blows up because it can't do anything. So true. I like this comic.
Webcomic Unfunny
I decided to read it just to see if it was really as bad as people say it is. My opinion: even before Cerebus Syndrome, it wasn't particularly good. Most of the jokes are pretty tasteless.
Webcomic Not horrible, but not good.
I'm aware of Tim Buckley's ego, as well as some of the shenanigans he's pulled, but I always make a priority to judge the art, not the artist, and in this case, the work is simply sub par. Without going too much into it, the artwork always manages to look very lazy, even after Buckley finally reacted to the B^U meme by drawing more than 5 expressions. As far as the integration of a storyline, I'm all for it, if the author can pull it off. Buckley really can't, mainly because half the time, it's hard to tell if he's trying to make a strip comedic or dramatic, which brings me to my biggest gripe of all: the comic simply isn't funny about 80% of the time. Half the time, I literally can't tell if there was supposed to even be a punchline at all, and the rest of the time, the punchline might as well be a 2x4 across the face, for all the subtlety it has.
And usually, the joke ends up being either an over explained tie in to whatever game Buckley was playing at the time, or the hi-larious method of reiterating to the reader what is already very obvious: Ethan is dumb. And he's not dumb in a funny way. He's dumb in an "obnoxious moron who won't shut up" kind of way. I say obnoxious, because the most obnoxious way of showing that a person is dim witted is by not having them ever shut up, which Ethan hardly ever does.
All in all, there really isn't any one thing that makes the comic unbearable, but everything about it is just not that good. The artwork isn't that good, the story isn't that good, the occasional author filibusters are not good, and the jokes aren't that good, and when you have a work that has no real good qualities to it, there's really not much reason to read it.
Webcomic Good but not great
Ctrl Alt Del was one of the first webcomics I found and it's been consistently good enough to stay in my Bookmarks where other comics have been removed over the years. Not every strip is a winner but plenty make me laugh. It's funny enough for me to stick around and that's the key deciding factor for to me.
Sure, the writing of the plot arcs can leave a lot to be desired at times. I don't object to a comic strip suddenly throwing a serious story at its readers - Bill Watterson managed it successfully but Tim Buckley didn't do so well in the execution. Still, I care about the characters and love Ethan in particular.
Is it the best webcomic out there? Not at all. Is it deserving of its huge hatedom? From my viewpoint, that's also a no.
Webcomic Does not deserve an ounce of hate
There is no reason to hate Ctrl+Alt+Del. There is reason to hate something like Pv P which can be arrogant, violent and mysognistic, there can be even reason to hate VG Cats or Penny Arcade*, because they can be verbose, reliant on gore and really really dark humour. CAD is not like that, and of all the main gaming comics it's the least prone to obscenity and relying on shock value(there is violence, just less). You love or hate PA, but with CAD you continue reading or stop.
Equally Tim Buckley isn't a monster. He's a very ordinary person, honest and knows that what's happened to him is amazing. Faced with an internet of hate and his own forum kersploding as only a forum can, well maybe he didn't deal with it in the best way. And sometimes he can come off as arrogant, but you can see he's not trying to and that should count for something.
And that's why I can forgive CAD, for all it's faults, it's always honest and always sincere. You can't even hate it for the miscarriage because it's clear the author knew just how serious something like that is. He talked about it tearing apart the deepest of relations and never once did he portray it lightly or something funny. The only criticism you can make is maybe he didn't fully succeed in describing that, but that's a reason for not caring, not hate. Compare this to the typical aborted fetus joke appearing in most 'dark' webcomics.
CAD is famously a bit wordy and often doubles up the punchline, this can either spoil the joke for you, or give it a wry edge, as if the second punchline is showing you the first isn't that serious. The drama plotlines aren't good drama but I felt this
was a lovely bit of character development and I hope Tim's able to produce stuff like it more and more often. His silly plotlines are silly and all the fun that goes along with a story about martial penguins and his gaming
jokes are definitely his best. The art is uncomplicated, a little copy and paste but helps to keep the light atmosphere.
CAD is like a friend rather than a comedian. It's got the same sort of humour a good friend has, doesn't have great drama, but if you get to know it you can care and become touched. In the end a comedian keeps you on edge, but a friend you can relax and spend time with.