Thursday, August 10, 2006

Lessons Learned

Sean Howard, producer of a variety of pixelated webcomics, has recently returned to the field.

He left the webcomics field just over a year ago, due both to having a little one enter the family - and, of course, the fact that his webcomics career was plagued by dramadramadrama. I won't go into the who, hows, or whats, since I'm sure everyone and their kid sister can dig them up from the archives of the interweb.

Instead, I'll state that I was sad when he left, because drama aside, he produced a damn fine strip. Enjoyable and entertaining plot, combined with pixel art that wasn't incomprehensible, made for a charmingly good strip, if not one of the web's heavy hitters.

As such, when he announced his return, I was pretty cheered by the news. Unfortunately, A Modest Destiny hasn't quite yet resumed - instead, we've been treated to the Athiest, the Agnostic and the Asshole.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not commenting on the quality of these strips. (As a matter of fact, I found quite a bit of amusement in his latest one, largely due to pondering how the Heisenberg uncertainty principle applied to Wikipedia.)

So it isn't that they are bad comics, persay. The problem for me, rather, is that they are political comics.

I don't know why it is, but the fact remains - I have quite a bit of trouble reading comics with heavy opinions. It doesn't matter if I agree with the opinions or not - Sore Thumbs turns me off as much as Winger.

Is it that I can't stand listening to an artist's opinions? I don't think that's it - there have been plenty of strips I've seen influenced by some measure of personal interest that haven't driven me away. It may just be that when the strip focused on a topic that I've seen a hundred times before, it just isn't able to trigger any function other than disdain, no matter how valid the point or how well it is presented.

In any case, it leaves me all the more eagerly awaiting the return of AMD - and the sincere hope that he will be able to simply re-enter the webcomics world, update his strips and do his thing, and avoid any drama (real or imagined) taking away from the joy of it all.

3 comments:

Kneefers said...

Y'know, that happens to me, too. It really kinda disgusts me when a webcomic tries to bash me over the head with its political views (except in Digital Purgatory, for some reason, but I think that's because Wayne Lozen's Mexicans are just about the funniest things I've ever seen.)
I just go for the cool stories and the pretty pictures, not to be coached on how stupid I am for not adhering exactly to their political agenda.

tedzsee said...

personally, i don't mind some of the more political comics, as long as they don't do it TOO TOO often. personally, i prefer the STORY of Sore Thumbs more than the political stuff.

Myth said...

Sore Thumbs and Winger are interesting in that they have characters and plot outside of the political discussion - those elements are what drew me into the comics (and in the case of Sore Thumbs, are what has kept me there, as least for now.)

With them, it becomes a matter of just not paying attention to strips that set off my 'over-the-top' alarms. In the case of Squidi's latest work, it exists entirely as such, so there simply isn't any reason for me to read it. Not because of the quality - just because of the genre.