Today is the last day of Bikini Suicide Frisbee Days.
It is strange to mourn it's passing, for it isn't the end of a webcomic, merely the end of guest filler in a webcomic. Of course, most guest strips are brief things, not weekly reoccurences - nor of they as supremely well done as BSFD.
Clay Yount, one of the geniuses behind Rob and Elliot, was able to perfectly capture the essence of classic Sluggy Freelance. Doing that in a single guest strip is hard - doing it week after week takes skill.
It helps that it isn't too great a leap from the friendship and wackiness of Rob and Elliot to that of Torg and Riff - but at the same time, he managed to use the similarities without just writing a Rob and Elliot comic with a few names changed.
The previous guest-strip maker on Sluggy Freelance gave us Meanwhile, In the Dimension of Pain... which, let's face it, just didn't work. I have nothing against McDonald, but he just had a different brand of humor, and a different style of art, that just couldn't quite do the job. It is nothing I would hold against him - after all, I don't expect perfection from most guest strips I see - but it meant I skipped every Saturday strip as hastily as I could.
But Bikini Suicide Frisbee Days? They didn't just work, they worked well. And at times, I even found myself as eager - if not more - for them as for some of the currently running Sluggy storylines.
Lately Sluggy has had my interest again, but I'll be honest - I like seeing Torg and Riff around again, but just seeing them wandering around acting like the idiots they were in the good old days just doesn't work. They've been through too much (Torg especially), and while I understand that they themselves want nothing more than to go back to being carefree and silly... it still rings a little false. It doesn't drive me away from the strip, mind you - but it doesn't do much for me, either.
We're waiting for the more momentous events, these days. I know that Pete wants to preserve the humor that the strip was founded on, rather than just run with the more serious storylines it has built up to... but it is already past that stage. Does this mean the comic should abandon humor entirely? No way, certainly not!
But it needs to place the humor within the current setting it has grown into. Bikini Suicide Frisbee Days work because they were outside of continuity, set in the past, set in that atmosphere that really was just about random amusement.
The Bikini Suicide Frisbee days are long past in the main storyline, however - and now they've come to a close for a second time.
It is strange to mourn it's passing, for it isn't the end of a webcomic, merely the end of guest filler in a webcomic. Of course, most guest strips are brief things, not weekly reoccurences - nor of they as supremely well done as BSFD.
Clay Yount, one of the geniuses behind Rob and Elliot, was able to perfectly capture the essence of classic Sluggy Freelance. Doing that in a single guest strip is hard - doing it week after week takes skill.
It helps that it isn't too great a leap from the friendship and wackiness of Rob and Elliot to that of Torg and Riff - but at the same time, he managed to use the similarities without just writing a Rob and Elliot comic with a few names changed.
The previous guest-strip maker on Sluggy Freelance gave us Meanwhile, In the Dimension of Pain... which, let's face it, just didn't work. I have nothing against McDonald, but he just had a different brand of humor, and a different style of art, that just couldn't quite do the job. It is nothing I would hold against him - after all, I don't expect perfection from most guest strips I see - but it meant I skipped every Saturday strip as hastily as I could.
But Bikini Suicide Frisbee Days? They didn't just work, they worked well. And at times, I even found myself as eager - if not more - for them as for some of the currently running Sluggy storylines.
Lately Sluggy has had my interest again, but I'll be honest - I like seeing Torg and Riff around again, but just seeing them wandering around acting like the idiots they were in the good old days just doesn't work. They've been through too much (Torg especially), and while I understand that they themselves want nothing more than to go back to being carefree and silly... it still rings a little false. It doesn't drive me away from the strip, mind you - but it doesn't do much for me, either.
We're waiting for the more momentous events, these days. I know that Pete wants to preserve the humor that the strip was founded on, rather than just run with the more serious storylines it has built up to... but it is already past that stage. Does this mean the comic should abandon humor entirely? No way, certainly not!
But it needs to place the humor within the current setting it has grown into. Bikini Suicide Frisbee Days work because they were outside of continuity, set in the past, set in that atmosphere that really was just about random amusement.
The Bikini Suicide Frisbee days are long past in the main storyline, however - and now they've come to a close for a second time.
It is no small act that Clay Yount has managed to create a series of guest strips of such quality that people are sad to see it go. Rob and Elliot is slowing it's weekly activity as well, due to the coming of Cosmobear.
Which I currently no nothing about, but let's face it - it's likely to be just as good as the rest of their works, and I'm sure I'll be there in two weeks to take in the laughs when it is released.
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