Reviews Webcomic / Goblins

I can't stop reading it, but I can't remember the last time I really enjoyed it.

Goblins is one of half-a-dozen or so webcomics that I read regularly. However, whereas the updates of other comics are greeted with glee, Goblins tends to provoke a response more along the lines of "Well, about bloody time!" - often quickly followed by disappointment. Updates are infrequent and the plot moves at a snail's pace - individual strips often add very little to the experience. This, and a few other rage-inducing habits on the part of the author, (such as going back and retconning the art - and the occasional real clanger of a line - rather than moving the story along, the staggeringly lengthy absence of the title cast from the action, and silly statements like "Everything that happens in the comics is legitimate...according to my own home-brewed rules!") are probably my biggest gripe with the comic. There are lots of others, though.

• The art really doesn't help. Thunt seems to overstretch himself all the more in the most action-packed scenes, to the point where it often requires several tries to even figure out what's going on, let alone sense the gravity of the situation - a massive drama-killer.
• Very little sense of space and time. e.g. Brassmoon is mostly a huge, empty square surrounded by walls the size of skyscrapers. Hundred-metre cliffs that can be climbed in a minute or so. As soon as parties get split up, time seems to flow differently for each group. The three subplots take place in their own little bubbles and the long-term obviousness of how they'll all influence each other makes their length, and most of the details in them, simply wearing.
• The jokes are painful at worst, and at the very best are done better elsewhere. Hampered by the art style in the case of physical gags, and frequently clumsy wording. Very few big laughs for their own sake here.
• The one-liners sound like they're out of 1980's B-movies, and not in a good way. Characters have very weak 'voices', quickly turning into generic wannabe bad-asses whenever the action starts. Again it chip, chip, chips away at the overall impact.
• World-building is very clunkily done, and once more is done worst where it most matters - whole strips of text out of nowhere detailing crucial plot points.

I'm interested (or more precisely invested) enough in how it all ends to keep reading, but I'll very probably be bored and annoyed throughout.