The 5 Circles of Baffling Web Comic Hell
A recent study by the New England Journal of Medicine found that 86 percent of all webcomic artists are, quote, "clownshit insane."
Not that I'm criticizing; I wrote a horror novel about dongs, I'm not going to throw stones from that glass house. But man, there is something about webcomics as a medium that really drives people to reach their craziest potential.
In our exhaustive analysis in the forums we found that all of the mind-blowingly insane webcomics fit neatly into five categories, which we have arranged in order of most innocuous to the very nightmares of the Devil himself. So hang onto your sanity good and tight as we tour these five circles of webcomic hell, beginning with Level 5, where we find...
Crazy People with Good Causes
Even the simplest and most banal message can turn into a glorious display of wild-eyed madness when filtered through the spinning kaleidoscope that is the webcomic creator's mind. A perfect example is the anti-smoking comic called...
#10. Easy Breather:
"I told you my bulge has no comment!"
Sure, the 3D-rendered characters in Easy Breather are a little terrifying. And sure the comic seems a little too obsessed with the "quit smoking" thing, pretty much blaming smoking from everything from rape to the Holocaust...
...but if you read the very first episode, it seems pretty harmless. It's an innocent tale of a little girl finding some cigarettes on the beach. Curiosity gets the best of her, but luckily her wise friend is there to intervene!
Well, that's pretty common sense stuff. Now go tell Mom and Dad, kids, so a valuable lesson can be learned!
Aaaaaand they're naked.
See, this is why webcomics are a thousand times better than newspaper comics. This is why I think James Vipond, the creator of this comic, is a mad genius. A character's mother dies? Gee, what would be a nice way to make the dreary mourning scene go down better?
The answer is titties.
I assure you, the censorship was added by us. People make fun of Mr. Vipond, they call him crazy for making a comic where at utterly random times the characters' clothing vanishes into the ether. But dammit, 20 years from now that will be a staple of all entertainment. He's crazy in the way that Tesla was crazy. The world just isn't ready for his brand of genius.
We leave you to your work, James, and continue to...
#9. Hathor the Cow Goddess:
From the site:
"Hathor the Cowgoddess...is a superhero who wants to save humanity through the combination of nurture, sustainability and bonding inherent in the practice of attachment parenting. Her movement is called the Evolution Revolution, her breasts are her superpower..."
Wait, do you mean that her breasts are the source of her superpower? Because it doesn't make sense to say that the breasts themselves are a... wait, you know what? That actually sort of does make sense.
"...and her sidekick is her baby, always carried in a sling and prominently (politically) suckling at her exposed breast."
Well, that seems reasonable. Let's see her in action!
Aaaand... POW! Public nudity.
I stopped and wrote down all of the questions raised by this particular strip. I wound up filling three spiral-bound notebooks. Including:
Question #1. If she's part cow, how are all of her children human?
Question #73. If the point of being a cow goddess is her superior milking ability, why just the two nipples instead of four?
Question #876. Is that a nipple on her scalp?
Her pet cause seems to be that the world will be saved, not just by breast feeding, but by breast feeding with a live audience. And I think she's right. If you're at Starbucks and you see a topless cow-woman hybrid loudly breastfeeding her human children, are you thinking about war or pollution? No. You're not thinking about anything other than the shit that's going on right in front of you.And while it's hard to argue with her "ice cream for breakfast" platform...
...it's a little hard to take life advice from a horned woman wearing a Hannibal Lecter anti-bite mask.
#8. Law For Kids:
We would be remiss if we didn't mention Law for Kids, the comics made by a group in Arizona to help kids stay out of trouble. Already the subject of many an Internet meme, each one is a masterpiece of minimalist storytelling:
What did they do wrong? The comic does not say. As in Oscar Wilde's tale of Dorian Gray, the grotesque sins of the protagonists that occurred between panels two and three are left to the reader's imagination. Perhaps the transgressions you imagine say something about you.
Also left shrouded in mystery is the final outcome, as the sixth and final panel of each comic is left blank, taunting us with the unknowable nature of the future. In this case we think it's safe to say that those two kids were never seen again.
Now let's up the crazy factor a few notches, and proceed to Level 4...
mindRAPE mindRAPE mindRAPE
ReplyI actually thought at first the CreationWISE strip with the eldritch abomination was just a fancy way of saying "time will destroy our mortal natures, but God's Word is eternal," but then I saw it on RationalWiki, and apparently it's about the doctrine of "millions of years" - that it's a concept that swallows creationists whole. And I guess that makes sense, if you look at the creationist worldview - now hard to imagine - that all of time's vastness is a scant ten thousand years or so from beginning to end, bookended by timeless eternity, and that is what time is - talk of "millions of years" might as well be talk of "thousands of US states." The fact that the Earth is millions of years old, so obvious to... well, everyone else, must seem so alien to them that putting myself in a creationist's head, I can see how it could look this way. Of course, it's quite revealing that they're so afraid of being "swallowed."
ReplyI actually really enjoyed Concession.
ReplyI really hope Diversity and Billy never meet. Now THERE is a terrifying couple.
ReplyI stumbled across Concession through TVTropes and read it like a trainwreck. It was actually demonic possession that made him molest the boy (who, by the way, ended up getting a sex change). Apparently it actually only started because the author worked a concession stand and wanted an outlet for all the pithy things he wished he could say to the customers.
ReplyAlso, one of the characters is a furry who wants to be human and has hallucinations of the author.
I was going to mention this. Also, I am a furry, and I believe that the s**t with all the kangaroo dragons was fucked up. Seriously, that's the batshit insane end of the fandom. Don't worry, most of us just prefer chicks with cat ears.
But wait... concessions awesome, full of character development and twisty plot- I'VE BECOME ONE OF THEM!!! NOOOOOOOOOOO.
ReplyDon't worry, it's perfectly normal. Just try not to let the bigoted retards hurt your feelings.
"That, my friends, is what it feels like when somebody crams your expectations up their a*****e and farts them into orbit."
ReplyxD I haven't laughed at a fart joke that hard in ages. The whole article is gold.
Also "Oop! *gropes self* that's a vagina" is untentionally hilarious in a way.
The advert I got on every page of this article was for stockings and underwear
ReplyReally? I got ads for knives. Hmmmm...
As a webcomic artist myself I gotta tell ya, and I mean this in the most constructive way possible, you really picked some s****y examples of webcomics for this article. Also the variety of webcomics (being over 17,000 available currently) is not even close to being represented in the few categories you offer here. I challenge you to do further research and quote from some webcomics that are actually popular and relevant.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesThe thing is that this is about weird webcomics, not about "All the webcomics ever".
What part of "Web Comic Hell" did you not understand? When somebody says "Here is the type of web comic I expect to read in Hell", do you think he's going to show you something with strong writing and good art?
Sorry, that sounded rhetorical. The answer to the second question is that, of course, you're going to see bad web comics in Hell, and the answer to the first question is that you were far more interested in being offended than being correct.
Oh well.
The joke, he misses it.
I am thoroughly unsettled by the insanity o.o
ReplyPage 2 faith Mose, picture three.
ReplyThe "you'll s**t bricks" moment for me actualy came when I noticed the swastika statue in the background.
I should have been ridiculously offended by the Atheist Gorilla but I could not stop laughing! Same with the 7 asses thing, and your reaction to it. Overall, this literally took me two hours too read, I was laughing so hard. Best article I've seen here by far.
ReplyI think the "Law for Kids" strip was trying to show that the teens either stole the car or they were going over the speed limit. Or both. I like how the officer is staring into the distance, by the way.
ReplyThat's really something that the artist should have indicated.
The thought that came to my mind was that the kids were joyriding. And as many a Bait Car episode has shown, people rarely say "Let's steal this car!" before stealing a car. It seems that the artist was trying to be a bit more realistic about the situation. But yes, perhaps they did overestimate the intelligence of the viewers.
I looked up the faith mouse webcomic. I still don't know what point the guy is trying to make, but dammit, I can't stop reading it! It's insane, and yet I just can't look away...
ReplyThey look a lot like political cartoons. As such, you probly have to be part of some extremist movement to get the messages...
Okay, most of these are super creepy, however the "concession" one, if you take out the fact that they'yre all freaking furries, is just tasteless, not ..... horrible?
ReplyHey, stop hating on the furries. They're people too, ya know. The one from Concession makes sense in context, by the way, due to the demonic spiritual entity which is using an insane wolf to cause the wolf's brother to sell his business.
Ah hahahahaha! I'm making a webcomic that will be batshit crazy right now! Though it propably won't count when intentional...
ReplyI know this is an older article so this comic wouldn't be featured, but I'd highly suggest everyone laugh at the women-rigged-the-elections-because-Obama-was-hotter madness that is Lone Nut Comics.
ReplyI thought the "Why Knot" was what you beat your kids with for talking back. A big knot in a short length of rope gets your point across AND doesn't leave any marks.
Reply90% of smokers are criminals and 90% of prisoners smoke! That's an impressive conviction rate, though. When all's said and done.
ReplyAlso if prisoners quit do they get time off their sentence?
Hah! Seriously though, if you'd ever had to live upstairs from a family of 30 Mexicans, you'd think different.
Reply