One of us! One of us! One of us!

What's better than the mouth-foaming drama of Your Webcomic is Bad and You Should Feel Bad? A blog devoted to harshing on Your Webcomic is Bad And You Should Feel Bad! Especially when the blog that's critical of the criticism blog is, in and of itself, bad. The first scathing shot across John Solomon's bow is "Your web comic review blog is bad and you should feel bad for using a blatant Futurama quote instead of coming up with something yourself which is rather ironic considering you constantly rip on web comics for doing the exact same thing except with other pop culture phenomenoms instead of Futurama", a sure sign that we're not exactly looking at the next MST3K contender.

Who should feel bad? Who knows. Welcome to the Internet.

Here is my shoddy assemblage of cliches. Now buy my stuff!

There's still some weird mucky liquid at the bottom of the cup of delight that is Demented Dragon, so here we go with A Steel Wing Shattered by Chris Hazelton. First, the story in their own words:

In an average town a three hundred year unseen war is about to come to a head. Leona, a girl with no past must uncover the key to a place no living being has ever been, and secure humanity's place in the struggle to unlock the secrets of the universe itself. Her only clue is the mysterious woman known only as "Alsatia".

Because reading these things takes 1d4 SAN a shot, let's sum it up in brief. If your comic looks like it was lettered in Zapf Chancery, stop. You fail. Oh, and fellas--I know you love the boob size stuff, but it's not an adequate substitute for actual characterization and/or dialogue that suggests the women you know best all have little yellow subtitles when they talk. Nor is having characters walk in on each other naked novel or entertaining, but it does suggest you learned everything you know about writing by parroting anime and manga instead of developing talent, creativity, and an individual voice. And if your series is set in the modern day but it looks like it barely made it out of colonial Williamsburg, well, that's on you.

Here's the bottom line for all you would-be manga-ka out there: if you don't care enough to attempt even a bare modicum of professionalism and effort, maybe you shouldn't be doing this at all. Sure, we can't all be great artists or writers. But if you don't even try to do your best? If you're content to do half-assed work and call it good enough for print? That's an insult. Get the fuck out.

Are we done? I think we're done. Oh wait, he did some other stuff? Crap. Okay.

Chris also has another webcomic, a gender switcher called Misfile, and there's bras and recycled boob humor and cars and shit and more cars and he still hasn't figured out how to use a decent font. Right, now we're done.

Wow, New York guests at a New York convention!

Okay, but seriously, New York Anime Festival. When are you going to announce the good guests? Co-director for the new Evangelion money grabs, that's nice, but your guest list is about as vigorously vetted as a stray dog with three legs and most of the kind folks on it are only marginally harder to get than genital herpes.

Admittedly, exhibitor participation is probably the biggest feature of the New York Anime Festival--which underlines the impression that there simply doesn't appear to be much at the Festival that you couldn't find anywhere else, the Festival just has collected more of it in one place for your mechanical consumption. But with a month still to go, there's still a chance for some genuine excitement to develop...

What's that? Oh, it's only a vending machine.

Walking the streets of Japan? Afraid of becoming a crime victim? One woman may have the answer!

The other white meat

Want $100 off the price of the Fujoshi Paradise Tour? Buy a Digital Manga Publishing employee at Yaoi Con! And then please, please explain to him the principles behind graphic design so that he can take the knowledge back to the others. Life is too short for weak typography. Anyway, Ben comes "sporting a lovely Wa-Lolita outfit in a floral pattern" from Dreamshoppe. Will it look anything like these? Because not many men--even very pretty men--can carry off the Strawberry Shortcake Lives On Through Me look.

Other Yaoi Con delights include Cafe Verfuhren, where you can "[d]elight in the ever changing dynamics between the owner and his growing harem of bishie waiters as they serve up food, drinks, and hot fan-service for your enjoyment." Everyone involved is actually female, but I'm guessing that if your idea of a good time is watching American girls pretending to be boys patterned on female fantasies of vaguely homoerotic male behavior in order to immerse you in the culture of Japan, then this is for you. Bon appetit!

Come tour a magical land where people are fantasies and fantasies are people!

The Fujoshi Paradise Yaoi Tour snagged a brief mention in the New York Times today. Despite its promise to "take you into the secret garden of bishonen", it's just a standard Tokyo tour package with one day set aside for yaoi-themed activities. Okay, two days if you count taking your free day in Tokyo to, as they suggest, "Find your bishonen prince". Which you could probably do in Southeast Asia for cheaper, if that's the brand of cheap fetishization you're after. Or you can take the day to join the Tokyo Darkside goth-loli tour, which is the exact same tour except their special day is spent shopping, talking, and eating goth-loli, with dinner at the Alcatraz Medical Prison Restaurant. The latter seems about as authentic to the EGL experience as Trekkies dining at Mars 2112, but what do I know. Here, have a menu. They do birthdays.

As for the secret garden of bishonen? Shopping in Ikebukuro, two yaoi cafes, a visit with yaoi manga artist Makoto Tateno, and an all-male (sorry, "shapely Japanese bishounen"--speaking of fetishization...) variety dance show in Roppongi. Now, I don't know how big a yaoi manga artist Makoto Tateno really is, but the English release of her series Yellow is hilarious. Or at least the sample pages are, anyway.



Leaving aside the fact that so-called professionals laid this page out just like the Dungeons and Dragons maps I drew in Canvas 3.0 when I was 13, and in fact I would not be surprised if this was laid out in Canvas 3.0--the ellipse tool is a subtle and wily beast--"His identity is a secret, except that he's gay" is the best non-description I've seen since, well, White Wolf's classic "May be a Jew." Now that's the way to deftly establish character!

Drug use will make you sexy... so very, very sexy...

What's next in Demented Dragon's house of hack-rate horrors? Yoko Molotov's Stray Crayons! Now, Amazon lists the Editor on this one as Beth Mashburn. Yeah, the staffer who supposedly has a Masters in English. That's why she didn't bother to edit tounge, wierd (twice!), glamorus / layed, gulitly (incidentally, "fare the night alone" is crap English), rebeled, and experemented / probaly. That's just in 23 sample pages; does anyone over there give a shit? Rhetorical question.

If anyone over there is actually paying Beth Mashburn, for God's sake, stop. You could hire a bright seventh grader to surpass the job she's doing, plus you could pay the kid entirely in popsicles.

Anyway, like the copy says, Stray Crayons is based in the "beautiful, haunting city" that is Louisville, KY. Feast your eyes upon its majesty, folks. Quite possibly this story wishes to be "awesome manga with hot punk rock girls" while also being beautiful and haunting and deep and shit--Maud, our female lead, is a drug-user who's beaten by her boyfriend--but sadly, Ms. Molotov's skills are not nearly up to the task. If you liked Midnight Mirror, this has the same sense of narrative urgency, just with more boob and panty shots. Thrill to 23 pages of Maud talking to herself, sobbing "I probaly look like shit! ...or crazy, because I am an idiot!" and "You're right, I am such a jerk... a whiny little bitch!" while nothing. Happens. At all. It has all the subtlety of a dead raccoon. It's the type of comic where you get a sledgehammer lecture on a young girl's poignant lost innocence, yet the previous page treats you to upskirt action of the same girl.

And there's a sneak peek of Volume 2 on Yoko Molotov's site. It even comes with a "spolier warnin'." That means watch out, there's an awesome phonetic accent inside! An accent the same character didn't have in the Volume 1 preview pages!

Must've been the drugs.

your vanity press is bad and you should feel bad

The hell with it, let's go through the Demented Dragon catalog one-by-one. Demented Dragon is sponsoring Chris Hazelton's appearance at New York Anime Festival, by the way. Draw your own conclusions. Anyway, first up:

Throughout history, mirrors have been reffered to a source of mystery and magic.

So begins the steaming pile of hackery that is Midnight Blue, which promises something about magic mirrors. Instead it gives you a hero, Jay, who appears in sample pages 17-33 but spends pages 18-30 dispensing the following dialogue (presented in its entirety, original spellings and punctuation preserved):

Dammit I really suck... ...it's just not fair. Shit!
Piss off!
Oh shit... Willow
God I suck! Shit!! It's just not fair!
Fuck off you damn fairy!
Kei? What are you so happy about fat ass?! Hey J.R. - you idot cat...
What the hell? Kei you friggin bitch!

Trust me, the other pages are no improvement. It's kind of hard to tell which has more realistic dialogue: Midnight Blue, starring a borderline misogynist who makes Irredeemable Ant-Man look like the bastard child of Gandhi and Jesus Christ, or Richard McBeef. In all honesty, my money? It's probably on Richard McBeef. And that is just fucked up.

Artist Yishan Li is not terrible, though someone should really help her figure out if Jay has facial hair or not. As for who's responsible for okaying the oh-so-accurate depiction of "Western New York" circa 2006 A.D. (no shit, really?), God only knows. But downtown "Western New York"? Yes, we do have art auctions on the steps of City Hall. All the fucking time. And the neighborhood totally looks like this. In 2006 A.D., by the way. Just in case you missed the caption 4 pages ago.

Don't you love it when people can't be bothered to put any effort into their work?

Midnight Blue author Amanda Tomasch also happens to be the Publication Editor for Demented Dragon. She has quite the storied history on the anime convention scene; search out the Animecons mailing list if you like, but frankly, what matters is not so much her past. What matters is that she lacks talent and Demented Dragon sells crap, and maybe, just maybe, that might be the real reason not to prop her up on a guest chair to dispense advice to the gladdening crowds. But as I said before, the anime con circuit does not deal well with the concept of quality control, which is why Tomasch and Hazelton will make guest appearances at IkkiCon, AniZona, and ooh! Look at that shiny button on the JaniCon webpage.

In any case, it's no secret that the vanity press is not a new concept. Does that excuse grossly unqualified individuals from printing up half-assed shit? Not really. You'd like to think Ms. Tomasch, or perhaps the other so-called Editor swanning around this outfit and apparently trying to prove that a Masters in English really is completely useless, could figure out that the English language does not include the words "majestey", "patheic", "repsibility", just as it lacks a place for "reffered", "peice", and "idot". You'd like to think. But you'd be wrong. And Demented Dragon expects you to hand them money for it. Integrity? Basic respect for art and the written word? Pride in putting out competent work? Who cares, we're official manga artists and publishers now, son! We're convention guests!

Oh, and this is just funny in a pathetic sort of way. So's this. And this one too.

Because it's not Scottish

Not sure if you're going to attend the New York Anime Festival? Then sister (or brother), let us tempt you with their dazzling guest list to date, including "prominent online artists" such as:

Juno Blair B, writer and illustrator of Star Cross'd Destiny! Star Cross'd Destiny is a webcomic--sorry, serialized graphic novel--about a teenager called, um, Juno. A "sad, traumatic" teenager, mind you. With powers over "weather and metaphysical darkness." (Can't you do something about your own emo then, lass?) And an '87 Shelby Daytona Pacifica which, I'm guessing, is not at all reminiscent of the author's own '89 Shelby Dodge Daytona.

Actually, there are a lot of teenagers in this; there's an embargo on main characters above the age of 20. Yes, the author is that type of borderline anime Sue. Logan's Run is all you can look forward to if anime fans rule the earth, I tell you. Still, keeping everyone in the same age bracket is a handy excuse to draw everyone the same; props to you if you can distinguish any of them from the thumbnails.

Supposedly this won an award. Supposedly.

Lindsey Henninger, "the most popular artist on anime art portal theOtaku.com". And you can clearly see why! Breast cancer: what anime girls have in common. Actually, they don't, because the teen demographic is not big on mastectomy storylines in their sexy robot catperson boylove power fantasies, but whatever. You get the idea. I mean, she meant well. The point is, she has what it takes to be a prominent online artist at a Reed Exhibitions event. Reed Exhibitions: "generating billions of dollars in business" in 34 countries worldwide, to bring you this. So please, take in what NYAF calls "her unique art and coloring style". Take it in and suck on it. Mmm, delicious.

Chris Hazelton, and I didn't get much farther than the front page for his webcomic Building 12 before I realized life was too short for such pain. My life, anyway, but not yours. As a fun aside, there are probably more aliens (2) than people of apparent African descent in it (0), because that's just the way shit goes down in this fandom. Be sure to check out his mad lettering skillz and a page from his apparently published work, A Steel Wing Shattered. The work is rated 16+ but it already evinces all the comic design sensibility of someone who's 11. Okay, maybe 12.

And that's rated 16+ as according to Chris's "publisher", Demented "We Can't Distinguish Between 'Its' and 'It's'" Dragon. Pay for a fucking editor, people. Just goddamn do it already. Also, it took me all of two seconds to pull this map up on Google--you see how there's that bit to the west that isn't New York City, much less a poorly filtered image of downtown (southern) Manhattan labeled "Western New York"? Ah, but my ire at self-styled publishers who have no interest in learning or applying the basics of editing and presentation--comics don't need asterisks to denote sound effects, by the way--it runs away with me. ("Rift the heaviest graveyard stone" indeed, what did Lafcadio Hearn ever do to deserve this?) I digress. (I bet I could put manga-style pictures to Atlanta Nights and they'd still publish it... yeses.) My favorite line from their website: "Originality in both story and art are always a plus!" And they have neither, so there you go. Dare you not to check out Yoko Molotov's Stray Crayons, which is "based in Yoko Molotov's hometown of Louisville KY, a beautiful, haunting city." Louisville: the Paris of the South. Or, knowing Demented Dragon, West.

Now, not to begrudge people the creative urge, and no doubt these artists will improve over time somehow, but the anime convention circuit sure does love to celebrate itself some low-level-mediocrity-verging-on-outright-crap. Certainly there are times when it's hard to get a person of the caliber you want, or even one who could pass as a journeyman professional. But is that really a reason to give feature status to any warm body with a Wacom tablet who presents at the door? Does that do the artist, the fan community, or the industry--or even an event's reputation--any favors?

I ain't sayin', I'm just sayin'.

When content writes itself

The 1st Annual Naruto Star Trek Convention. There, my job is done.

But your job has just begun! The Convention is looking for panelists to come up with 2 panel topics that, God is my witness, combine both Naruto and Star Trek for discussion. So come to the convention and, as the organizers say, "[f]ind out why Naruto and Star Trek are more alike than you think." Because they're not going to tell you on their website. And frankly, they probably won't even tell you when you attend the convention.

A hint or two would be much appreciated because all I can picture is Picard squealing "I'm gonna be Admiral! Make it so!" while Beverly Crusher cries a lot because she's a sissy-pants medical officer and no use to anyone on the Away Team and then I want to cry too, quietly and alone in a corner.

Everything's wetter under the sea

Time for more mascot escapades, this time featuring the latest incarnations of Anime Boston mascots A-chan and B-kun. Anime Boston seems to have an aquatic theme for 2008, which is no doubt why their webpage features A-chan trying to check out B-kun's tacklebox. And taking notes on what she sees.



Whee! It's like someone spotted hidden treasure down there.